Re: GNUe in actual production use?

Hello Reinhard,

On Sun, Oct 08, 2006 at 08:40:38PM +0200, Reinhard Mueller wrote:
> Let me assure you that we are open to everybody, and we would actually
> be happy about more people joining GNUe.
> 
> I wonder what makes you think that we do not want to open something to
> the public.

My understanding is that the projects and customers are not very
visible, but he can probably explain this better.

My personal problems with GNUe are:

* Steep learning curve. I'm trying it in my private time, and spending
  some days on "Hello, GNUe!" is much -- you work into the task, then
  you have to switch. IRC sessions are useful, but it still takes much
  time.

* The web site is difficult to use. Almost everything I asked was
  present on the site, but I couldn't find it myself. Besides, there is
  some documentation where unique pieces of useful information are
  interspersed with "TBD" and possibly obsolete things (here I'm not
  sure, at least the examples didn't work as I typed them, maybe I
  didn't understand the context).

  Another example: I tried to document my first setup on the wiki, but
  the server was spitting error messages, so I gave up. Now I would have
  to rediscover all that again. Later I found out that the pages are
  saved despite the messages. However, my e-mail to the site
  administrator alias was not answered.

* Old Debian packages. I really hate setting up various things manually:
  you follow the README, it works, then the day is over. After two
  months, you have to do that again. That is why I rely on the packages
  heavily. Every time when I try updating this or that, apt asks me to
  remove GNUe packages with dependencies on some old libs.

So, this boils down to two things: people need more time for GNUe, and
GNUe needs more man power. These are tighty connected. For instance,
Django was for me also not a very intuitive framework, but a
step-by-step tutorial working for the concrete version of the software
and very responsive community help much.

If I start using GNUe, I will [have to] contribute. But up to now, I
couldn't start, and this may be the case with others.

I'm really excited about the idea of GNUe, and I -- still -- want to try
it. In the long term, I'd like to see Django as a GNUe front-end (they
are currently in the process of replacing their DB model with
SQLAlchemy).

BTW, in which city are you living? I'm planning visiting Austria, I'd be
glad to have a beer with you both.

Just my EUR 0.02.

With kind regards,
Baurzhan.