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Posted to modperl@perl.apache.org by Dominique Quatravaux <do...@idealx.com> on 2004/11/30 11:41:38 UTC

mod_perl marketing

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Perrin Harkins wrote :

| [...] [W]e have to face the fact that someone who knew enough about
| Perl and apache to write an embedded interpreter module still
| thought that mod_perl was some kind of limited CGI replacement.
| This means we are not getting the word out very well, and it's
| distressing.

Sad but true. Although I've yet to take that long-overdue deep dive
into MP2, I consider myself an experienced MP1 hacker (I wrote an HTTP
reverse-proxy in it, and also did most of the effort writing no less
than a web application framework - for those who can grok french or
can use the Babelfish, see
http://conferences.mongueurs.net/2004/talk/6). During those projects,
the only place where I saw it clearly stated that mod_perl is "program
Apache the way you like in Perl" instead of "CGI on steroids" is the
Eagle Book - which for the record, is an O'Reilly book titled "Writing
Apache Modules in Perl and C" by Lincoln Stein and Doug McEachern, and
the name "Eagle Book" comes from the fact that the cover animal is,
you guessed it, an eagle
(http://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol4_3/tpj0403-0014.html). Even
*that* bibliographic data was a pain for me to retrieve from the
mailing list archive!

Online documentation on anything in the mod_perl guts is very, very
scarce, and I had to RTFS more than once even to perform basic
mod_perlish tasks such as writing a subclass of Apache::RegistryNG.
Even the Eagle Book itself is sub-useful in places (e.g. the infamous
ass_backwards stuff), and other parts of the Apache API visible from
mod_perl has to be guessed from the "writing Apache modules in [...]
C" section. At least this is how things were two years ago: now that I
am "in the know", I don't need documentation all that much anymore and
therefore my point of view could well be outdated.

On the bright side, you guys are doing quite a good job at keeping
mod_perl on the radar of many pointy-haired bosses, and I understand
that this marketing crusade cannot but take the CGI-and-performance
route when the competition is Java. Still, the techs out there hear
about mod_perl's true powers mostly through hearsay. What about
setting up some tech-oriented wiki to tip the balance backwards for
the rest of us? This would be a great place to link the press releases
to when MP2 final is announced.

- --
Dominique QUATRAVAUX                           Ingénieur senior
01 44 42 00 08                                 IDEALX

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Re: mod_perl marketing

Posted by Geoffrey Young <ge...@modperlcookbook.org>.
> I've used it a lot -- my copy is a bit beat up.

excellent :)

> 
> Well, from one satisfied reader, here's a big "Thank You!" to Geoffrey,
> Paul Lindner, and Randy Kobes for writing that book!

sure.

> Don't you mean 02/2002? My copy says first printing January 2002. 

it was published in late january.  I preordered a copy for myself from
amazon, just to see when it was _really_ available, and it came the first
week of february.

> Also, maybe the publisher (SAMS) hasn't given you the support you deserve.

Sams have actually been great.  but the way this industry works, you just
can't sell a book that isn't already selling.

anyway, I didn't want to make this about our book in particular.  but when I
hear about people who _still_ think that mod_perl is some CGI interface I
get really bothered, since there is so much out there (books, articles,
documentation, conference talks, etc) that tell the real story but that
people consistently overlook.

--Geoff



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Re: mod_perl marketing

Posted by Perrin Harkins <pe...@elem.com>.
On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 10:25 -0600, Frank Wiles wrote:
>   I think the API is what really separates mod_perl from other similar
>   technologies.  And I think we all agree that this is what needs to be
>   stressed more to the public to gain better adoption. 

Actually, I don't really agree.  I just thought it was surprising that a
knowledgeable programmer with apache and Perl expertise would not know
about it.  An article about radical new stuff in mp2 like protocol
handlers would be pretty cool though.

- Perrin


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RE: mod_perl marketing

Posted by Clayton Cottingham <dr...@telus.net>.
 

> >
> I'd bet that mod_perl's slower growth rate over the past 
> couple of years has a lot to do with Apache2 and no 
> production mod_perl2.
> 

Good Point


> Thus, people wanting Apache2 would immediately screen out 
> mod_perl. I think that's an awfully big hill to climb to 
> convince new adopters, i.e. 
> either stick with Apache1 or try a non-production mod_perl2.
> 
> Fortunately, with the imminent arrival of production 
> mod_perl2, the growth rates of mod_perl will probably go up. 
> (I'm guessing from hints in this thread that an announcement 
> is imminent, right? Heck, I'm already using it in production.)
> 
> If possible, an rpm version of mod_perl2 ready at the same 
> time as the announcement of a press release would probably 
> help new adopters to try it out.
> 
> Take care,
> 
> Kurt
> 


This is a crucial point for sure, making sure your marketing and software
are timed together




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Re: mod_perl marketing

Posted by Kurt Hansen <kh...@charityweb.net>.
Clayton Cottingham wrote:

>Well then we need to understand, via surveys etc, where all these
>mod_perl'ers came from, why they choose to use mod_perl
>
>>>From there we should have a better understanding of where we come from 
>
>And who to market to, and how we have to educate those markets in order to
>get them to even take a look at mod_perl
>  
>
I'd bet that mod_perl's slower growth rate over the past couple of years 
has a lot to do with Apache2 and no production mod_perl2.

Thus, people wanting Apache2 would immediately screen out mod_perl. I 
think that's an awfully big hill to climb to convince new adopters, i.e. 
either stick with Apache1 or try a non-production mod_perl2.

Fortunately, with the imminent arrival of production mod_perl2, the 
growth rates of mod_perl will probably go up. (I'm guessing from hints 
in this thread that an announcement is imminent, right? Heck, I'm 
already using it in production.)

If possible, an rpm version of mod_perl2 ready at the same time as the 
announcement of a press release would probably help new adopters to try 
it out.

Take care,

Kurt

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RE: mod_perl marketing

Posted by Clayton Cottingham <dr...@telus.net>.
Being a programmer that has worked at two marketing companies I'll add my
two cents

First of all I must say at how little effort goes into mod_perl marketing
and how much knowledge is out here

As say compared to web3d.org whose marketing efforts mostly fall into
/dev/null

With that said I find it particularly peculiar that most of these
consortiums/open source projects dedicated little to no energy into
developing marketing plans.

Getting articles and writting books are a great way to increase awareness
and to drive the market through low level marketing strategies

There are other ways, one thing I see of import in this thread is the fact
that mod_perl is for mod_perlers, to increase our market we cant preach to
the converted, so where are the heathen coders?!!!!!

Well then we need to understand, via surveys etc, where all these
mod_perl'ers came from, why they choose to use mod_perl

>From there we should have a better understanding of where we come from 

And who to market to, and how we have to educate those markets in order to
get them to even take a look at mod_perl






> -----Original Message-----
> From: Frank Wiles [mailto:frank@wiles.org] 
> Sent: November 30, 2004 8:26 AM
> To: Dan Brian
> Cc: modperl@perl.apache.org
> Subject: Re: mod_perl marketing
> 
> On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 09:10:32 -0700
> Dan Brian <da...@brians.org> wrote:
> 
> > I would suggest that future mp2 articles (on perl.com and 
> elsewhere) 
> > take some time to explain the Apache API and why it is by 
> far the best 
> > choice for Perl server development, before diving into the 
> particulars 
> > of accomplishing something with it.
> 
>   I've got an article coming out in SysAdmin Magazine in January that
>   is more about the power of the Apache API than about the normal
>   response phase workings.  
> 
>   I think the API is what really separates mod_perl from other similar
>   technologies.  And I think we all agree that this is what 
> needs to be
>   stressed more to the public to gain better adoption. 
> 
>  ---------------------------------
>    Frank Wiles <fr...@wiles.org>
>    http://www.wiles.org
>  ---------------------------------
> 
> 
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> 



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Re: mod_perl marketing

Posted by Frank Wiles <fr...@wiles.org>.
On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 09:10:32 -0700
Dan Brian <da...@brians.org> wrote:

> I would suggest that future mp2 articles (on perl.com and elsewhere) 
> take some time to explain the Apache API and why it is by far the best
> choice for Perl server development, before diving into the particulars
> of accomplishing something with it. 

  I've got an article coming out in SysAdmin Magazine in January that 
  is more about the power of the Apache API than about the normal
  response phase workings.  

  I think the API is what really separates mod_perl from other similar
  technologies.  And I think we all agree that this is what needs to be
  stressed more to the public to gain better adoption. 

 ---------------------------------
   Frank Wiles <fr...@wiles.org>
   http://www.wiles.org
 ---------------------------------


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Re: mod_perl marketing

Posted by Dan Brian <da...@brians.org>.
The lack of awareness extends to Apache generally, and not just 
mod_perl. Saying that "mod_perl isn't just CGI; it allows Perl coding 
to the Apache API" is not really informative, because people don't know 
what the Apache API is. (The author that initiated this thread replied 
to me privately that his mod_ "doesn't embed the Apache API, is that 
possible?", so it appears to be possible to write a mod_ without even 
knowing ... ?)

Only 2 years ago I was pitching a "Perl application development" title 
to an O'Reilly editor (who shall remain nameless) who asked me why I 
thought mod_perl was a "big deal" (since my outline had a heavy 
emphasis on it). After explaining what I thought about it, I got a 
curious look, followed by the comment, "yeah, we don't think that is 
really going places." And to this day, many Perl people still don't 
understand how you could build large applications using mod_perl, as 
opposed to CGI + templates and PHP (or other HTML markups). Threads 
like (http://use.perl.org/~jjohn/journal/20761) still make the mistake 
of comparing mod_perl to PHP. mod_perl invites developers to invent new 
CMSs, new ways to authenticate, to manage sites, to log data, new ways 
to handle content. PHP is for writing web sites. I personally didn't 
know whether mod_perl's audience is that much larger than its current 
user base; this thread proves it is.

I have used mod_perl 1 since soon after it became available, building 
several CMSs, custom markup languages (as have we all), and so on. 
Verio's entire line (almost) of web hosting customer interfaces is 
built on mod_perl and XSLT. This isn't emerging technology anymore! I 
took the dive to mp2 a few months ago, and am astounded by both the 
Apache 2 API and its Perl translation. You have all completely outdone 
yourselves, and mp is a bigger deal than ever.

I would suggest that future mp2 articles (on perl.com and elsewhere) 
take some time to explain the Apache API and why it is by far the best 
choice for Perl server development, before diving into the particulars 
of accomplishing something with it. Perhaps a "mod_perl for Beginners: 
All Your Servers ..." article could be useful, or adapting Randal's 
intro talk, or something like that.

In the end though, there's a lot of documentation. The eagle book is 
great, and the cookbook was mentioned too. Until people read, there's 
not much we can do about it.

- Dan


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Re: mod_perl marketing

Posted by Perrin Harkins <pe...@elem.com>.
On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 16:42 +0100, Xavier Noria wrote:
> Amazon.com doesn't run Mason under mod_perl?

Right, they run it under FastCGI.

> Or they don't use Mason 
> for the website frontend? For the store?

They do use it for the store, although not every page on every store
they run is Mason.  You can usually tell by the URL.

- Perrin


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Re: mod_perl marketing

Posted by Xavier Noria <fx...@hashref.com>.
On Nov 30, 2004, at 4:33 PM, Perrin Harkins wrote:

> On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 10:21 -0500, Kurt Hansen wrote:
>> On the marketing front, doesn't Amazon use mod_perl, at least 
>> partially?
>
> No, they use FastCGI.  It's a win for Perl, but not for mod_perl
> specifically.  Ticketmaster.com, Citysearch.com, and many other big 
> ones
> use mod_perl and are pretty vocal about it at tech conferences and 
> such.

Amazon.com doesn't run Mason under mod_perl? Or they don't use Mason 
for the website frontend? For the store?

Or is it that when you say "such a site runs under mod_perl" people 
mean "pure" mod_perl?

-- fxn


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Re: mod_perl marketing

Posted by Perrin Harkins <pe...@elem.com>.
On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 10:21 -0500, Kurt Hansen wrote:
> On the marketing front, doesn't Amazon use mod_perl, at least partially?

No, they use FastCGI.  It's a win for Perl, but not for mod_perl
specifically.  Ticketmaster.com, Citysearch.com, and many other big ones
use mod_perl and are pretty vocal about it at tech conferences and such.

- Perrin


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Re: mod_perl marketing

Posted by Kurt Hansen <kh...@charityweb.net>.
Geoffrey Young wrote:

>
>I feel I need to interject here.  _all_ of the points you raise to this
>point are well covered in the mod_perl developer's cookbook, which has been
>available since  02/2001.  in fact, that's why we wrote it - both to address
>many of the things the mod_perl community had learned since the eagle book
>was written, as well as take the "access to the C API in Perl" road.  we
>hardly even mention Registry or CGI (but we do mention how to subclass
>RegistryNG :) and that was very, very on purpose.
>
>the unfortunate situation is that the cookbook suffers from lack of exposure
>(and sales, for that matter) - you obviously understand mod_perl and are
>participating on the list, yet you still didn't know that your issues are
>(and were) well covered with available documentation.
>  
>
Really? It hasn't sold well? I've used it a lot -- my copy is a bit beat up.

Well, from one satisfied reader, here's a big "Thank You!" to Geoffrey, 
Paul Lindner, and Randy Kobes for writing that book!

Don't you mean 02/2002? My copy says first printing January 2002. Also, 
maybe the publisher (SAMS) hasn't given you the support you deserve.

On the marketing front, doesn't Amazon use mod_perl, at least partially? 
Maybe you could get some mention or a logo on their site, ya know, as a 
way to support the community? Maybe some Easter egg that pops up if you 
do a specific search, i.e. something that engineers would have fun 
passing around?

Take care,

Kurt Hansen

P.S. I also have the Eagle book and Practical mod_perl and am very 
grateful for those as well! Especially recently during a move to 
Apache2/mod_perl2

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Re: mod_perl marketing

Posted by Geoffrey Young <ge...@modperlcookbook.org>.
> During those projects,
> the only place where I saw it clearly stated that mod_perl is "program
> Apache the way you like in Perl" instead of "CGI on steroids" is the
> Eagle Book - which for the record, is an O'Reilly book titled "Writing
> Apache Modules in Perl and C" by Lincoln Stein and Doug McEachern, and
> the name "Eagle Book" comes from the fact that the cover animal is,
> you guessed it, an eagle
> (http://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol4_3/tpj0403-0014.html). Even
> *that* bibliographic data was a pain for me to retrieve from the
> mailing list archive!
> 
> Online documentation on anything in the mod_perl guts is very, very
> scarce, and I had to RTFS more than once even to perform basic
> mod_perlish tasks such as writing a subclass of Apache::RegistryNG.
> Even the Eagle Book itself is sub-useful in places (e.g. the infamous
> ass_backwards stuff), and other parts of the Apache API visible from
> mod_perl has to be guessed from the "writing Apache modules in [...]
> C" section. At least this is how things were two years ago: 

I feel I need to interject here.  _all_ of the points you raise to this
point are well covered in the mod_perl developer's cookbook, which has been
available since  02/2001.  in fact, that's why we wrote it - both to address
many of the things the mod_perl community had learned since the eagle book
was written, as well as take the "access to the C API in Perl" road.  we
hardly even mention Registry or CGI (but we do mention how to subclass
RegistryNG :) and that was very, very on purpose.

the unfortunate situation is that the cookbook suffers from lack of exposure
(and sales, for that matter) - you obviously understand mod_perl and are
participating on the list, yet you still didn't know that your issues are
(and were) well covered with available documentation.

anyway, at this point, that we wrote a book that nobody seems to be using is
less of a complaint than a simple fact of life, so I guess it doesn't make
sense to discuss it further.  just venting a bit...

--Geoff

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Re: mod_perl marketing

Posted by "Randal L. Schwartz" <me...@stonehenge.com>.
>>>>> "Dominique" == Dominique Quatravaux <do...@idealx.com> writes:

Dominique> On the bright side, you guys are doing quite a good job at keeping
Dominique> mod_perl on the radar of many pointy-haired bosses, and I understand
Dominique> that this marketing crusade cannot but take the CGI-and-performance
Dominique> route when the competition is Java. Still, the techs out there hear
Dominique> about mod_perl's true powers mostly through hearsay.

I just finished transcribing my 90-minute "intro to mod_perl" talk
into a three-part series for Linux Magazine... it's dribbling out
over the next few months, and will be on my website shortly after
the embargo has passed.

It's always been clear to me that the real power of mod_perl wasn't
the content phase... there are so many OTHER cool things that mod_perl
does, and mod_php and mod_cgi and mod_fastcgi can't touch that.

-- 
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<me...@stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training!

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