On Mon, 2005-01-10 at 20:46 -0500, Marc M wrote: > On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 19:43:41 -0500, Peter Arremann <loony@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Monday 10 January 2005 09:03, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > > > what would folks recommend as a substitute for microsoft sharepoint? > > > from the poking around i've done, it seems that one group recommends > > > something as simple as a wiki, while another camp says "zope". any > > > other options? > > > > > > rday > > > > The answer depends on which part of the Sharepoint hairball you want to > > replace... Sharepoint is the App equivalent of Active Directory - a bunch of > > unrelated technologies bastardized and thrown together in one app... ...I can't believe I'm about to write this, but this statement is not even close to being 100% accurate. Windows SharePoint Services is basically an ASP/.NET application with a database background, with the choice of SQL Server (almost a database <grin>) or MSDE (cheap imitation of a database). It's included with Windows Server 2003, so you don't pay extra for it. It's a pretty typical 3-Tier Web application using WISA (Windows, IIS, SQL Server, ASP.Net) as a platform. That said, it's definitely part of the MS software lock-in strategy. It works well for what it does, but you also have to go 100% MS to take full advantage of it, which is never a good thing, IMO. By the way, since I deploy Windows SharePoint Services, SharePoint Portal Server and Project Server as my day job, I do have some real expertise here. I'd love to not have to use MS technologies for this, but I have to pay the bills to keep my family fed. Winston, from the movie Ghost Busters, said this best... > > If you look for a portal, use zope, postnuke or any of the other thousand > > portals out there... if you look for colaboration on text documents you have > > to go with a wiki implementation. If you're just looking for a place to share > > docs the way you have it in sharepoint the answer is unfortunately doesn't > > exist... Nothing like SharePoint exists as far as I can tell in FOSS. By the way, Microsoft is touting the "built-in" integration between MS Office and SharePoint (Portal) and WSS. The Office 2K3 suite of apps has all kinds of hooks to integrate and collaborate seamlessly via SharePoint with every Office 2K3 app - This is not just text document collaboration. Again, whether or not this is a good thing is up for interpretation. > Exactamundo. I guess this just shows how, in the Linux/UNIX world, it > is better to run multiple apps, that are actual stable good apps, than > some crappy app that promises the moon, is flaky and expensive, and > gets more expensive as you go along. Microsoft's biggest marketing > slime always says how everything makes for more and better > 'collaboration' and 'sharing'. I don't believe 10% of what I read > from them anymore. Agreed in part, although MS is certainly delivering the goods in places. For example, http://www.bbc.co.uk is a totally customized SharePoint Portal Server implementation, but it comes with a hefty price. The BBC apparently has a dedicated MS developer on staff just to maintain this server. There are real issues with operation, maintenance and security in WSS and SPS which MS has not addressed. > > The best wikis/blog/CMS apps I have seen, have ALL been open source. > If there is a 'one microsoft way' to do any of that, I don't want any > part of it! I think it would do us all well to keep an eye on MS as they are certainly keeping an eye on us! I'd love nothing more than to see some good work done with Fedora's upstream apps to provide a real alternative to WSS and SPS that's as easy to deploy. I have real customers who would absolutely love this. Cheers, Chris -- ==================================== "If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' someone else's dog around." --Cowboy Wisdom
