Why Don't We Hear More About GNU Server Pages (GSP)? 6
Ozten asks: "I am currently looking at GSP and trying to convince the big e-commerce company that I work for that Open Source technology doesn't mean more maintenance than large packages on the market, such as Blue Martini or IBM Websphere. I am looking for facts and firepower on GNU Server Pages, but info is sparse except for bit mechanics and its links. You would think that with a high profile site like the Star Wars Shop using GSP, it would get more notice. Any other facts out there? GSP seems like the best free software since gnu-SlicedBread, where is the hype?" Actually, I would like more facts than hype. With production sites using this technology, I would be interested in hearing how well the things have held up, in addition to any advantages and disadvantages over popular solutions like ASP.
Hmm.. (Score:2)
*Not a Sermon, Just a Thought
*/
Dead technology (Score:4)
Yes, I'm biased, but I truly believe that the next generation web site will have to think about a lot more than just generating dynamic content quickly. And these products implement both dynamic and static content using separate presentation logic in a sensible manner.
Never used it or heard of it until now (Score:1)
Because there are so many other solutions... (Score:2)
Why do you want to use them instead of WebSphere? (Score:3)
This is not a flame; I'm merely trying to be pragmatic here.
Probably the reasons you don't hear more about them is that the last release was in February, 1999 and the bitmechanic guys haven't IPOed since. Don't get me wrong, I love open source stuff and use it whenever possible. Furthermore, the guys at bitmechanic have written some absolutely brilliant Java stuff (like ConnectionPool -- wow!).
The sad fact is, though, that unlike many open source/Free projects, no one is selling support for GSP. Your "big e-commerce company" surely has a lot of bucks to throw at IBM, WebSphere is a great product, and IBM has a lot of smart people working for them who will
The documentation issue goes much further beyond "I'd like some javadoc that tells me what the paramaters to foo() mean", too. So much of this industry's labor force is consultants, which unfortunately can (not necessarily does) mean two things: short-term and underqualified. So if you're the GSP guru and you leave, your managers are up a creek to get it fixed by the clod that Skimmer Consulting Agency sends them to replace you. That's double if you've changed the code or made extensions. I am always shocked at the incapacity of many consultants to understand other people's code, no matter how well factored it it. (I'm a consultant myself, so I'm not just bashing here.) On the other hand, Skimmer Consulting Agency can easily send your bosses someone who at least ostensibly knows something about WebSphere pretty easily. Whether or not they admit it to you, that's a consideration, too.
Good luck!
~wog
It's obsolete (Score:4)
Another problem is that GSP was written to the Servlet 2.0 spec, and fails to run under 2.1/2.2 compliant servlet runners. If you have to run JSPs within a servlet 2.0 environment (like apache jserv), look at gnujsp [klomp.org], which is largely JSP 1.0 compatible.