The next result from the survey I want to talk about is the platform that people were running the ProjectForum server on.
Approximately 65% of you reported running on Windows, 20% on Mac, and 15% on Linux. Of the Windows people, 2/3 of those were using the Windows service version (the one that runs in the background like a traditional server process), while the rest were using the one with the little GUI front end.
While we had some anecdotal evidence (and download stats) that essentially supported this distribution, the platform question was one of the ones we were most interested to ask about, as we wanted to propose a couple of changes in that regard.
Solaris and FreeBSD
The first observation was that nobody in the survey reported that they ran on either Solaris or FreeBSD. While we do still get a number of downloads for each, I think it's safe to say that both of these platforms have decreased in importance over the years.Our intention is to entirely drop support for these two, likely in our next release (i.e. 6.6), though the timing is open to change. If this is something that affects you, we obviously hope you'll get in touch to discuss this.
Windows
Right now, we encourage people to download the GUI version for Windows when first trying ProjectForum out; it avoids a lot of complexities related to services, admin privileges, etc. For most people, moving to the service version when they decide to get past the evaluation phase is the right next step.(Incidentally, when ProjectForum first came out, most people were running Windows 98, which didn't - really - support services at all. And for those minority running Windows 2000, it was all still a bit foreign.)
What we're thinking of doing in the future is collapse the two separate versions down to one. The little GUI would work as it does right now, but if ProjectForum was installed as a service, it would control that instead of the "application" version. More importantly, it would allow you to install the service version right from the GUI, rather than via the installer.
In other words, the one download would work both as a Windows service and a regular application, and you could switch between them using the little front-end GUI. I think doing it this way might avoid some confusion, and also help people make the transition when it is appropriate.
For the more technically inclined, right now the projectforum.exe is a Windows application that includes the GUI and the server code in the same binary, while the pfconsole.exe is a command-line executable containing just the server code. Under the new approach, the GUI would be in its own separate binary, and it would launch the command-line version, either directly as a subprocess (which would then be destroyed when the GUI application quits, as now) or via the Windows service manager.
If done right, this shouldn't present a huge change, and hopefully one for the better. But I know how things are set up is one of those things that some people have very strong opinions on, so I wanted to float this approach before going any further.
If you have your own ideas, examples of other apps that handle this well, etc. please share them in the comments.
Next up: likes and dislikes.
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