roxen.lists.roxen.general

Subject Author Date
Caudium Announcement David Hedbor <david[at]caudium[dot]net> 11-08-2000
Hello Roxen users. The Caudium Group is excited to announce
Caudium. Please read the following and visit our websites at
http://caudium.net/ and http://caudium.org/ for more information.

What is Caudium? The Caudium Group?

	Caudium is a new webserver based on the Roxen 1.3 CVS source
	from the end of June. The group is a bunch of Roxen users that
	are unhappy with the direction that the Roxen development is
	heading. We decided that we could create a server that would
	better serve our needs than Roxen 2.x

What is wrong with Roxen 2.x?

	In our opinion, many things. The loss in speed and stability
	are two major issues. Portability problems are another big
	issue. However the main problem is with how the development
	works. It's basically a completely closed cycle with no public
	future plans and no bug tracking. The lack of respect for the
	small but traditionally loyal Roxen community is appalling.

Isn't a split bad for the community?

	We believe such a split already exist between the Roxen 1.3
	users and those converted to Roxen 2.x. If anything Caudium
	will give the 1.3 users (which are the greater majority of the
	Community) a logical upgrade which doesn't require hours, days
	or even weeks of converting RXML.

What about compatibility?

	We plan to be completely Roxen 1.3 compatible, both the Pike
	API and RXML. We have done some and will do more changes, but
	everything that would break previous things will be have
	defines to enable/disable the compatibility. Modules written
	for Caudium can run in Roxen 1.3, if you use the 1.3 API or
	check for CAUDIUM and do different behavior depending on if
	it's defined or not (like inheriting caudiumlib instead of
	roxenlib etc).

What is the benefit of Caudium over Roxen 1.3?

	It is maintained and actively developed, first of all. We also
	include a fast log parser, UltraLog. UltraLog was previously a
	separate project but is now merged with Caudium. Other
	benefits include PiXSL (XSLT parser), C-code versions of CPU
	intensive parsing, general bug fixes ("can't reload in MSIE"
	is fixed for example). Caudium also works with anything from
	Pike 0.6.116 to Pike 7.1 CVS. The community aspect is also
	better with public bug tracking, task lists, cvs commit
	mailinglist etc.

Support for Roxen 2.0 features?

	This is a tricky question. We all like certain things of 
	Roxen 2.0 and do plan to add support for some things, like a
	emit (or a similar tag). Entities are nice but harder for us
	to implement. It might be fixed though. We plan to add an XML
	compliant RXML parser (which you can opt to use over the old
	one) and more. In general, we will not make a major effort of
	being 2.0 compatible but will try to add things we (and you)
	like.

OS Support?

	Our goal is that Caudium should run on any UN*X operating
	system where Pike works and support dynamic loading. We have
	no plans of supporting Windows.
	
How do I help?

	Get on our mailing list and/or the news forums. Report bugs
	and suggest tasks. Contribute code and/or patches. If you
	prove your skill and willingness to help, you might get write
	access to the CVS tree.

Sounds interesting. How do I find out more?

	Go to our websites. http://caudium.net/ is the "product
	information" site. It has information about our plans, answers
	questions about the fork, has download instructions
	etc. http://caudium.org/ is the community site. It's still in
	early development but contains information about mailing lists,
	forums, our IRC channel, tracking and tasks.

-- 
David Hedbor, The Caudium Group