[Xitami] New version for Xitami

[Paul Reid]

> I wanted to know when a new release of Xitami is due..

Maybe never.

Xitami was released as a demo to promote a young programming
company, Imatix. In cross-platform and simplicity of use, it was
ahead of its time. Imatix has been quite successful, not by selling
and supporting Xitami but by selling programming tools and custom
software.

Xitami has been popular, but mostly because it is free. That
generates no income for Imatix, and they are not putting company
resources into it. They apparently have more than enough paid work
to keep them busy. They can't put someone on an Xitami problem for
hours or days, when paying customers are pushing money at them for
custom work.

Xitami is open source, but has not attracted the critical mass of
user support needed to carry on from where Imatix turned to paying
projects. That would be very nice, but I know I can't be of much
help with something as complex as a webserver, and apparently there
are not many others here who have the knowledge and time needed to
improve the product.

Ewen of Imatix, out of the goodness of his heart, and on his own
time, watches this list and has pushed some critical patches out.
But Xitami is still pretty much where it was several years ago. In
fact not counting the stuff added in the 2.5 beta, which was adopted
from other Imatix projects and tossed on top of 2.4, it is really
quite old.

If you want a up-to-date server with ample support, Apache is it.
There are 100 or 1,000 times more users of Apache than Xitami, which
apparently means more than enough skilled programmers to handle
improvements, and a large community of ordinary users to share
knowledge. That ini file in Apache makes my head spin, but it isn't
really all that hard, and Apache's many mature features and quick
patching make it worthwhile.

I'm still on Xitami. My needs are simple and Xitami works for me.
But the day I find something that Xitami just won't do, I'm off to
Apache.

BTW: V-hosts work fine for me with 2.4. Except sometimes the machine
needs to be re-booted to pick up the changes. Since I add a V-host
maybe once in 6 months, and Windows' TCP stack needs a kick every
few months, I don't see it as a problem. For a many-customer ISP,
where V-hosts would be added daily, Xitami probably isn't the best
choice.

 -PRR