Since 2004 Dean Marshall has been a helping moderate MrRat's support forums, offering code suggestions and implementing APF related solutions. MrRat listed me Dean as the 'official third party support' person and whilst MrRat's Amazon Products Feed (APF) script is easy enough for most people to implement for themselves there are always situations where some assistance is required with installation or troubleshooting and support work.

Mambo, Joomla and Amazon Products Feed

Following his discovery of the Mambo Content Management System and the subsequent fork of the project to become Joomla, Dean released a Mambo/Joomla component to integrate MrRat's APF script into sites powered by the popular CMSs. This quickly became the leading Amazon component within the Joomla / Mambo communities. But the 'APF bridge' was - and still is - a little awkward as the bridge makes a separate request out to the main APF script.  As Mambo and Joomla are powered by PHP a growing interest in a less awkward PHP based solution was sparked.

For the last few months Dean has been working feverishly in his spare time (not that he has much) - building on the fantastic work of MrRat. Put simply - it is his intention to release a version of MrRat's Amazon Products Feed script converted to PHP.

Dean says:

As you hopefully know already APF makes it easy for developers and web masters with little or no programming experience to build a personalised on-line store utilising Amazon's complete product catalogue.

Website operators have a lot of choice nowadays about how to integrate Amazon products into their site - it is a competitive environment and packaging the right features for end users is a key requirement. MrRat did a great job with APF and I think the challenge for me now is to move it forward.

Why Convert MrRat's APF To PHP

Converting to PHP is an important step. Perl was - and maybe still is - the glue that holds the internet together, but it is considered a geeky technical language and presents a steep learning curve to amateur coders. PHP on the other hand can be viewed like the Visual Basic of the web, low barriers to entry and anyone with basic coding knowledge can pick it up and have a bash.

As well as opening the script up to more end user customisation and to third party plug-in implementations the move to PHP will make it easier to integrate the script with other PHP applications such as Content Management Systems and Blogging platforms thus bringing the benefits of the script to a much much wider audience. The choice of Perl as the underlying language has become a limiting factor and one that needs to be overcome now - or the script's uptake and future development will stagnate.

Building a commercial ecosystem around implementing and supporting the script

Unlike MrRat I make my living implementing and supporting scripts of various flavours and from now on a significant amount of my time will be invested in developing scripts - primarily for the Mambo family of CMSs. I intend to bring the TinA script to as large a market as possible and in doing so my intention is to build and support as large a client base as possible. Realising that in order to expand the scope of the script as large as possible it is important that a script  like this builds as large a commercial eco-system around it as possible. People using the script do so in order to make money - those who build the script, build add-ons such as templates, plugins etc or who offer support and customisation services also deserve an income.

So what about Tina's license - and will Tina be free

A final decision on license and price have not been made. It is intended to respect the basic idea of the Open Source movement - although both myself and MrRat have beliefs that the 'Official' Open Source movements have lost their way and that the 'officially recognised' licenses are perhaps not the way to go.

In deciding on a price for the core script itself I am mindful of the script's history - or MrRat's pride in having delivered a script that allows 'anyone' to consume Amazon Web Services and integrate an on-line store into their site. Whilst realising that a FREE script would continue this 'tradition' I am also mindful of the fact that it takes a lot of time and effort to produce and maintain a script like this. Furthermore I am aware that a script like this can easily lead to revenue of hundreds of pounds (£1 = $2) per month and that the script is clearly intended to provide a commercial function. Anyone endeavouring on a commercial venture (especially one that requires vast quantities of someone else's skill and time) should expect to make a noticeable financial contribution up-front and perhaps on an ongoing basis.

As stated above - the specifics of how these two competing principles:

• Available to all
• Paying for skills and time in a business context.

will play out in the final analysis.