How not to market an open source project

Tonight while surfing around I came across this weblog post talking about idyaDBX. For some reason it piqued my interest so I went to check it out. However, there isn't a single thing on the site that tells you what the hell idyaDBX is supposed to do. There's not even anything that provides a minute hint as to what it is. I was about to give up at their foolishness, but by then I was curious so I downloaded it.

Turns out it's an XML database written in PHP that uses SQL as its query language. At least that's how they describe it, I'd describe it as a SQL database that happens to use XML for its storage. It doesn't expose any XML functionality through its APIs. Interesting idea I guess. So you get an SQL database with a file format you can open in a text editor.

Hint for people releasing open source software it might be nice to at least describe something about the project on the website. And if you were curious about idyaDBX you now know what it is. Happy day.

Posted by Kimbro Staken