[pmwiki-users] New PmWiki Features Page . . .

Neil Herber nospam at eton.ca
Mon May 29 12:25:23 CDT 2006


At 2006-05-29  11:38 AM -0500, Ben Wilson is rumored to have said:
>This list was put together for prospective
>users to make a technical or business decision. Those decision makers
>need as many relevant facts as possible in a concise fashion so they
>may make a sound decision. As such a decision maker, I prefer to see
>warts and all.[5]

If someone is going to make a business decision concerning the 
suitability of any software for their needs, then I would hope that 
the first thing they would do would be a needs analysis. This would 
identify and rank the features that they need for their application. 
It would not be a generic list of common software features.

As long as any software description honestly sets out its 
capabilities, the evaluation of various alternatives only requires 
each product to describe what it does - not what it can't do.

If there is a high-priority item on the needs list that is not 
included in the software description, then that will be quickly evident.

I don't think that omitting things that PmWiki can't do is attempting 
to cover up any warts.

 From a practical point of view, creating a list of features is 
completely objective, while creating a list of non-features is 
completely subjective.

On the other hand, a list of features that have been *purposely 
omitted* from PmWiki can be constructed objectively, and it provides 
an opportunity to show a prospective user some of the thinking behind PmWiki.


Neil Herber
Corporate info at http://www.eton.ca/ 





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