bubuawards v.05 solution
Mr. Tahir and Mr. Norman have blogged about discrimination on this (or next?) year's bubuawards, self-tagged: "Indonesia's Most Prestigious Web Competition". While I know previous bubuawards reputation, the current limitation of web technology is amusing to discuss.
The amusement came from the Competition Requirements for Individual level, especially number 6 and 7 are a bit ambiguous.
One, they contain the same text to start: "The use of application programming languages and database..." This means that the rules will govern usage of programming in the competition. I've termed database together with the programming since you can't access the database without any programming.
Next is where the two rules forked. One stated that "such as ASP, MSSQL are not allowed" and the other "such as PHP, MySQL are allowed". "such as" indicates that there are more (other than the ones listed), but the differentiation isn't clear. What would .NET and Java qualify? Python? RoR? PostgreSQL? Perl scripts?
Word is, the organizer cannot provide platform availability for said technologies.
AFAIK, every single web technology available now is trial-able. Take, for example, Microsoft Windows Server 2003 required to run ASP.NET applications. Microsoft have provided a trial version of it that runs for 180 days. Long enough to deploy and vote, IMO. If you're concerned about licensing, you can check the EULA for Windows Server 2003.
In the first paragraph of the said license, Microsoft have stated that you can use the evaluation version to demonstrate and evaluate. That is exactly what they're going to do. Demonstrate the submissions, and evaluate the designs. The second statement is about production/live operating environment. Since all of the submission would be mock-up version, this shouldn't count as a production environment.
To conclude, I think bubuawards organizer need to extend their web technology allowances (by reiterating through all of the options stated above), or lessen it altogether. Make it just a combination between XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Or they can split the competition between web developers (that deals with application logic) and web designers (that deals with user interface). This will create a better and fair competition.