The transition from the warmth and comfort of COTS to open source has had it’s ups and downs. You certainly get a chilling experience from most projects. I spent almost a week now trying to get a content management system running for SNAP. We’ve had limited experience. Using our temporary hosting service is not making things any easier. But the bottom line is that I’m wondering what I’m doing. Should I be spending my time writing and planning? Is it too soon to begin developing relationships? Should I be finishing my reading backlog instead?

Certainly, if the project installs had went flawless. If administering the sites would be simple. If, if, and more if’s. I believe this is important. It is all the more important coming from the corporate IT world, where there is always a posse in one form or another to back you up. Open source is mostly a different experience. I need to live that experience. I need to witness how bad is bad. Only then will I know firsthand, what I don’t want to create with SNAP. I’ve lived the traditional experience for 17 years. Now it is time to live the open source experience and live to tell about it.