General developer forum

There is also another issue. I run four different Moodle versions privately, ie on my local network but now with v2.1 I will drop that to 3. To change the network, currently a peer-to-peer using Windows XP, (shudder at the antiquity I know but there it is), is a major undertaking, for which I have no time for right now. I am going to use a Linux, probably Suse, for my server, and run 2 virtual machines, XP and Win 7 Pro, to generate 3 different environments for my Moodles. This long winded introduction is, essentially, a commentary on the retrograde nature of the technology that a lot of people are using - even companies and government departments. (I know one here has just graduated, about 2 -3 years ago, from Word Perfect to MS-Office - talk about social inertia.)

I am "consulting" one company who is running this same setup, and I am urging them to spend the money to update - which they will not until their server is about to collapse completely. This is not miserly, but it is that simple old idea that if they are spending a lot of money on technology, then they want to get some value from it - or at least value uintil depreciation allows them to write it off tax wise. As one person put to me, the technology is always changing, and if they can keep their systems stable enough, and if their need does not dramatically change, then should they upgrade for the sake of upgrading? This is not a major company btw, but a family concern, one of the few left in the world I suspect. (They do good business and run a POS program that to me look like it was written in Tubo Pascal.. hahahaaa!! More likely a Visual C++ with a very simple non-graphical UI) OK, here is the crux, the recent VC9 compilations of PHP have been downoaded as has the latest Apache 2.2.19 Win32 SSL, (from Apache Lounge, not Apache Foundation binaries I have been told) and the IT guy there cannot seem to get the PHP to work for their Administration network. He has the latest VC9 runtimes, and has tried a number of combinations, but cannot get them to work in the XP environment. I have been able to get v2.0.x running using additional dlls in PHP5.2.17, but not v2.1. I too have tried to upgrade the PHP, and have failed miserably. I am going to try this hack Petr...maybe if it works I can at least give them some idea that they will only be able hang on to their older infrastructure for another year or so but not much longer. What else can I do?            

I must say that I thought about that last statement being construed as self-directed and perhaps it could rightfully be.  But... as I've said in previous postings I don't think stating that the king has no clothes is being negative and actually biting the hand that feeds me.  I  would assert that I'm actually showing great devotion to Moodle and the open source process in particular by bringing to the forefront a topic that deserves more complete discussion.  The slide from the show merely proves my point, assuming some? of those 2.0 sites registered aren't in production, adoption a year after introduction is pretty sparse and yet a year from now, the most popular, most stable version of Moodle ever delivered will have its support "officially" discontinued (see note above as to when discontinuance actually occurred)... and that after a heated discussion to get it extended.  

Everybody talks about open source and community involvement but I see it as an irrefutable fact that the core of the LMS, i.e., the file system in 2.0 was developed behind the scenes with little community involvement and is the single biggest obstacle to adoption by existing users.

Seems like the more telling slide is on the Moodle stats site where the closer we get to 2.0 release we see Moodle adoption flatlining and then beginning to trail off.  I desparately would want it go the other way and for Moodle to rediscover its original spirit of providing an educational tool designed (and in some cases, written) by educators.

I'm involved with an investment advisory group who call me occasionally regarding questions in the LMS and surrounding markets.  The exchange of information is blind so I don't know who these folks are but looking over the activities in the LMS marketplace recently I'd say that somebody's concluded that the future of commercial LMS software is looking pretty rosy.  Again, I wish that wasn't the case.

Just to clarify, Windows 95, while hardly more than a beta product had an enormous adoption rate.  A good acquaintance of mine (who also happened to be the CEO of our company) was heavily leveraged in MS at the time and had me spend hours watching sales stats to see if his "hunch" on the Mac-killer would hold true.  For a good long time, it did.

Hi Brian.  Thanks for the compliment.  I hope at some point folks will see these postings as also being helpful comments.  This whole thing reminds me of the discussion around the pre-1.95 gradebook where everyone was seen as being negative until Martin D chimed in and said the "gradebook is broken".  I'd sure like to hear some influential folks chime in and admit that "the 2.x file system is broken".  Its brokenness causes me to dispute your assertion that 2.x is somehow better than 1.9 in that I don't care how much new functionality you add, whether it works perfectly or has a few bugs to iron out... if the most basic, most-used portion of an LMS has been made substantially more difficult to use, no real improvement has occurred.