As anyone who pings it knows, weblogs.com is not holding up well under the strain of the blogosphere’s growth curve. Today Dave Winer is asking for help in getting it re-engineered. He seems to be convinced that it has to be done in C; I wouldn’t be surprised if a smart PHP or Java (Velocity maybe?) implementation could carry the load just as well. On the other hand, for someone who’s never written an Apache module, this would be a simple one, it’s a useful skill, and that’s about as close to the metal as you can get. In any case, I’m pretty sure Dave’s right that it wouldn’t be a good idea for a big company (like Sun, for example) to step up and say “we’ll do it” because the suspicion of cheating from outsiders, and the temptation to tilt the table a little for insiders, would both be a real issue. A pity, because a big company (like Sun, for example) already has the infrastructure to support this and wouldn’t even notice the bandwidth. And a pity because I already know how to write Apache modules and would like to learn Velocity. I’m dubious that the notion of “one central place that everyone pings” is going to hold up for the long term, but for the time being it’s useful and would be a good project for anyone with the cycles to spare.
