Rodeo, revServer etc.

[Kevin Miller]

On 05/08/2010 01:48, "Sarah Reichelt" <sarah.reichelt at gmail.com> wrote:

> Kevin has given his point of view over Rodeo and revServer, and then
> forbidden us to comment, leaving us without the right of reply. Of
> course it is his list and he is quite at liberty to ban whoever he
> chooses, and if the matter had ended there, I would have let it slide.
> Unfortunately, discussion has continued and has expanded to a direct
> and personal attack on Jerry, which by association is an attack on me.
> So I have decided, reluctantly, to ignore Kevin's instructions and
> post my thoughts on the issue. I realise this will lead to my removal
> from the list, but that is a consequence that I am prepared to accept.
> 
> Before I go, I would like to say goodbye and thank you to everyone
> here. I have thoroughly enjoyed most of the interactions on this list
> and there are many of you here that I regard as real friends, despite
> never having met you in person. There are too many of you to mention
> individually, but you know who you are.

I don't think we need to be quite so dramatic. I asked you not to discuss
Rodeo because it no longer has anything to do with Rev and because you
started to attack Rev as a method of promoting it. I'm sorry you saw my
response as a personal attack, it wasn't. You and Jerry are both welcome on
this list. As I've said I wish you guys all the best, I quite truly do.

> Chipp has repeatedly called on us to provide recipes for our problems,
> but this is not really possible. The first problem is the server
> timeout, which has been stated by RunRev so does not require any
> recipe. The second problem is the varying response times and as the
> same CGI will produce widely varying response times, I am unable to
> provide more of a recipe than that, as already reported to Kevin and
> confirmed by Mark's tests.

Well those tests showed that PHP is the same, and indeed we would expect the
same results on any shared server environment with a variety of
technologies.

In order to determine if there was something more going on, I asked for a
very simple piece of logging - this is what I wrote to Jerry:
> One way to find out if it is something the script is doing is to measure the
> execution time of the whole irev script (i.e. use the long seconds at start,
> and append to a log file at the end). If, after observing a latency issue,
> there are 'spikes' in this measurement it means that the culprit is a
> side-effect of the script, rather than the startup time of the script.

That's all we needed to continue to investigate it.

> Andre's tests have now demonstrated that the timeout issue is in the
> On-Rev server and not in revServer itself. This is excellent news, and
> I would still recommend revServer to anyone. But we were unable to get
> an answer from anyone at RunRev on this subject

This is just patently untrue. You got a response from the CEO. I wrote to
Jerry on 22nd of June at 16:38 with that logging request I pasted above, as
part of an ongoing response to this issue and that was the last I heard. You
could have added that to your code, created a logging text file and sent us
the contents. I suspect with that, and possibly a couple of subsequent
tests, the issue would have been identified weeks ago.

> Part of the problem here is that as RunRev customers, we get very
> little communication from RunRev.

I've already commented and agreed on this. But in your specific case, again
its just untrue. I've been available to Jerry throughout this entire
process. Over the past couple of years, until very recently, we've typically
had a Skype every week. I have a regular slot set aside in my calendar on a
Monday evening at 7:30PM. I know Heather has been very responsive too. I'm
not sure what else you could have asked for.

> It is good to read Kevin's plans for better bug
> reporting, better communication, more products etc., but those of us
> who have been here for a while have heard all this before.

You know, its easy when things are not going well to look at it and say that
everything isn't working or hasn't worked. But I don't think that's a
realistic way to view things. We've had many successes over the years and
many times when our customers have been ecstatic. You're starting out on
your own journey now and I'm sure you'll find aspects of it more challenging
than you expect. I doubt you'll make the same mistakes that I do as we are
very different people, you'll find your own ways to get in a tangle like
every new business out there :) But I will not succumb to the "its all bad
and you can't fix it" mantra any more than you should. That's just not a
realistic way of looking at things.

> Finally, a comment on this list itself. I know this is a long post,
> but it is my last one, so I have to get everything in. Some people on
> this list have a habit of shooting the messenger. Anyone who dares to
> suggest that there is anything less that perfect about RunRev is
> shouted down, and most of them just leave instead of being converted.
> The most noticeable exception to this was Bill Marriott. Bill was an
> extremely out-spoken member of the list who got very angry at the way
> bugs were being ignored. He got flamed on the list, but to Kevin's
> enormous credit, he hired Bill and put his anger and enthusiasm to
> work for RunRev. This worked extremely well and I am sure we all miss
> Bill. In fact I wonder how this situation would have been handled had
> Bill still been around.

We all miss Bill, I do in particular as he became a close advisor and
friend. But you cite another positive in our history here, something that
we've done that worked out well for everyone. And perhaps it gives you a
clue that I don't hide in a box when people come at me with criticism. I
didn't ban Bill from the mailing list, either. I respond and look for what
parts of it are true. There is truth in what you say, but we can and will
respond. And I do also think some parts of it might be a little overstated.
My opinion of course, you are free to differ.

Anyway, I hope you'll consider staying on this list Sarah, its been great
having you here.

Kind regards,

Kevin

Kevin Miller ~ kevin at runrev.com ~ http://www.runrev.com/
RunRev - Software construction for everyone