An improved distribution model for Web Apps | alo's web site

An improved distribution model for Web Apps

It's been a few weeks since Octality launched the Cherokee Market, a marketplace where ISVs and developers can distribute and sell their Web applications.

During these past few weeks many things have happened, and I must admit some of them happen unexpectedly:

• A whole lot of people have signed up in the Cherokee Market. Many more than my most optimistic estimation. My main concern has been about ensuring that our servers scaled to handle all these users properly, for the rest I must confess I have quite enjoyed the experience of seeing how so many people have signed up.
• We received all sorts of feedback about the market. Either people loved the service or they had proposals on how they thought it should be improved. Again, the amount of feedback surpassed by far what I thought we could get. -- Actually, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everybody who, in way or the other, took the time to drop us a line.

Actually, all that feedback has played a very important role on how the market has evolved. Believe me when I say that it isn't easy to change your medium term plans based on user feedback, although I believe that we are doing right being flexible and rethinking some the aspects of the market. For sure, it will provide a much better outcome to everyone involved in this way.

During the last few weeks, we have been working on an evolved version of the Cherokee Market. I do know it's something unusual to do after having launched it two months ago, but again, it's better to be open to evolve the service than try to stick to your initial approach when you know it can be improved.

Check out this scheme. It represents how the original Cherokee Market works:

As you can see, Octality plays a predominant role. Basically, it is the gatekeeper that allows a Web apps to get into the Cherokee Market. I don't think it is a crucial fact, basically because most of the people are already used to this scheme (think of Google and the Android Market, or Apple and the AppStore; it's the same). However, as I pointed out before, even though the scheme was good enough, we believe things could be done a little better.

Actually, a much classical approach could work better on this case. What if we removed Octality from the scheme? What if developers could get their Web applications into the market without the need of someone approving and handling them? Wouldn't it be much more appealing for users to install applications from a extensive bazaar rather than from a little, posh boutique? This fundamental change would make the market less bureaucratic, faster and much more accessible for developers and ISVs.

This mayor change in the work-flow, there will bring a number of positive side-effects. For instance, it'd also be quite interesting to be able to replicate the market, wouldn't it? Allow me to put an example here: I know of a few ISPs interested on setting up an internal Cherokee Market, so they could offer the service locally to their clients.

Believe me when I say that this change represents a huge advance from the original scheme. On the upcoming version of the marketplace, Octality disappears from the scheme, while an independent community takes over the web apps repository. It's open to anyone to join. They are the people who packs and maintains the web app packages along with the repository and its mirrors - which no interference form Octality whatsoever.

So, if you have a web app that you'd like to make dead easy to install, you are more than welcome to join the community. You will receive a repository account on the package source code repository, with which you can upload the new web app packages. Your application will be ready to be installed by any of the tens of thousand of Cherokee Web Server around the world a few minutes after you commit your package.

We are currently polishing the last few rough edges of all the new infrastructure. As soon as it's ready we will do the proper announcement.