Tag: xaraya

joint copyright assignment

Many open source projects, including the Free Software Foundation, Red Hat and OpenOffice.org require that contributors assign their copyright when they contribute code. Sun, the NetBeans project sponsor, has come up with an innovative Joint Copyright Assignment (“JCA”) that allows contributors to retain their own copyright while sharing a joint copyright interest in the contributed code. This way contributors retain all the rights granted by copyright law while sharing those rights with the open source project sponsor so that the code is protected by both the Sun Public License (“SPL”) and copyright law.

interesting option. we are trying it out with the xaraya project.

urlbot

Gregor always has given me the impression he was looking for new opportunities for Xaraya, evangelizing the web in general and Xaraya in particular. Quite often the first thing said by gregor on IRC was the paste of an URL pointing either to something interesting or something very lame. With always something new to tell, gregor has been a great motivator for our team.

very lame urls? 🙂 thanks, marcel. i have recently been pondering what the most effective contribution may be for me. pointers welcome.

Fostering the provision of public goods

Let’s say for instance, that Xaraya attracted 5 more non-profit organizations to the development group. They would then be in a collective of IT development for a single purpose. Are there costs involved? Absolutely, but when you compare the costs to hiring an IT staff of 40 to 50 with a range of experience from management, database design, server management, etc.., it makes sense in the long run.

john muses on what would happen if xaraya were able to gain the support of additional non-profits. i think the time is right to actively work towards this scenario. the tools are ready, and the developers can be had at a discount currently. it is highly motivational and piques my curiosity to see the ideas in Free Provision of Complex Public Goods being implemented. who knew that i would see the application of highly theoretical work i pored over for my thesis in my lifetime 😉

Lenya

Late last week, Michael sent out our proposal to donate the wyona code base (renamed lenya) to apache. it has been a very interesting discussion since, and so far it is looking good. in any event, it feels great to enter a new community.
2003-04-08: This Thursday and Friday (April 10th and 11th), Michael and I will be at the office of Q42 in Den Haag. We will do a “Lenya Mini Sprint” there and the guys from Q42 will help us improve the Lenya User Interface. what is a sprint? We will also try to integrate Xopus 2.0.0.8 (which was the last Open Source version) and try to integrate their newest Xopus version (which is not Open Source). At the end of Friday there will be a reception at Q42’s office. Please let us know if you want to meet us in Den Haag or join the party on Friday night.
2004-04-25: the apache lenya community is organizing a sprint on may 14 and 15 in zurich, switzerland. we will focus on repository integration, but people with other interests are also welcome, of course. please sign up on the wiki (and watch the wiki for updates) if you would like to attend.
2003-04-11: just received word that the university of reunion will be using Apache Lenya for their site. here is an offer: pay for the flight and accommodation, and i will help setting up Apache Lenya 🙂

2003-05-13: turns out my work for the past couple weeks has been totally in vain. what started as (yet another) attempt to write a “clean” publication for apache lenya resulted in another publication with hacks. in retrospect, DOH of course, because each publication has its quirks that you only run into when you develop it. the time would have been much better spent tightening up the existing code base. instead, we broke code that was working perfectly with stupid changes, like changing the root element of aggregates. i have no one to blame but myself for this, but i will make damn sure we don’t waste any more time like this. i wonder why software “engineering” has to be so painful. we need a regimen that is more focussed on the bottom line to do away with such nonsense.
2003-05-23: i’m reading through the Apache mirroring FAQ today to figure out how to do a release. i’m pretty excited, luck permitting, Apache Lenya 1.0rc1 should hit the mirrors later today.
update. we are live.
2003-05-27: here is my newest try at shaping up my marketese speak. some gems:

  • content delivery
  • technologists
  • preeminent platform
  • future-proof

2003-06-12: son-of unipublic. this is (to my knowledge) the first independent deployment of apache lenya. very cool. now, when is their opening party?

2003-07-28:
U src/webapp/lenya/pubs/default/lenya/xslt/authoring/create.xsl
failed due to an internal error (took 0:18.754)
it’s high time for CVS to roll over and die. it’s numerous deficiencies are beginning to seriously piss me off.
2003-09-10: bill humphries is just demoing the apple intranet. it is based heavily on PHP and uses the concept of page envelope we came up with for lenya. very cool stuff.
2003-09-20: michael and myself paid a visit to bill at apple today to demo lenya. unfortunately i was not allowed to take pictures on the campus.
2003-11-15: i’m tooling away in las vegas, at the apachecon hackathon, trying to get apache lenya 1.2 out the door. meanwhile, my landlord is having fun with tools of his own. too much fun.

2003-11-28:

NZZ Online and Computerworld are 2 out of the 3 winners of the SiteAngel Trophy, a benchmark comparing performance and availability of swiss media websites. Both web sites are built on Apache Lenya, the open source Content Management System (CMS) originally developed by Wyona Inc. the leading swiss specialist for open source CMS.

computerworld was my first project at wyona.
2003-12-22: michi will represent lenya on a panel at iex that also features representatives from day, interwoven, obtree and red dot. michi will also be speaking at a pre-conference open source forum.
2004-01-30: i want to bring these 2 interesting workshops to your attention. They will be held on Wednesday, February 18 at University of Berne as part of the LOTS (Let’s Open the Source) event. Registration is open until February 16th
Supersonic Tour of Apache Cocoon
Speaker: Bertrand Delacretaz
This fast-paced tutorial gives a quick overview of the Apache Cocoon web applications framework, with a more detailed view of the more mainstream components of this framework: the multi-channel publishing subsystem, the Flow layer and the Cocoon Forms (aka Woody) components. By studying the inner workings of example pipelines and small applications, we will learn how to combine these components to take advantage of the massive amount of functionality offered by Apache Cocoon’s rich set of components.
Focused samples will help us understand what goes where and which components must be studied to be productive with Apache Cocoon.
Attendees are welcome to bring their laptops with the latest release of Apache Cocoon installed, for hands-on exploration during the tutorial, but the packed agenda does not allow for any help with installation problems during the presentation.
Apache Lenya Workshop
Speakers: Gregor J. Rothfuss, Andreas Hartmann
Wyona AG
Familiarize yourself with the features and architecture of Apache Lenya, the Content Management System from the Apache Software Foundation. The workshop will outline functionality by demonstrating projects (University of Zurich, NZZ) that were built using Apache Lenya. An architectural overview, building on Apache Cocoon (which is covered in a separate workshop) will be followed by lessons learned from our customer projects. Participants will learn valuable lessons for content acquisition, content architecture and cms customization, and there will be plenty of time to ask questions. The duration of the workshop is 3.5 hours.
2004-03-21: i’m always learning about new cool tools that ship with cocoon. today, i had a look at the instrumentation support. it allows you to analyze runtime behavior of lenya to spot troublesome areas. you can check memory usage, objects in cache, and many more.
2004-04-11: apache lenya now supports i18n, and conversely, we are accepting translations for the user interface. i am wondering if these should eventually go into their own repository? if the xaraya project is any indication, translations can quickly outgrow the code (in numbers of files.) openlogging reports that the xaraya translations repository is now the second largest bitkeeper repository, larger than the linux kernel. scary. 🙂
2004-05-11:

Cofax 1% (3)
DBPrism 0% (1)
Lenya 23% (40)
Magnolia 18% (31)
MMBase 1% (3)
Nukes 6% (11)
OpenCMS 7% (12)
RedHat CCM 0% (1)
Slide 2% (4)
Other (please comment) 2% (4)
Don’t know, I’ve never used any of them! 25% (43)
OpenEdit 2% (4)
InfoGlue 7% (12)

2004-06-07: it’s nice to get press even if it is not as clued-in as it could be:

Version 2.1.5 fixes numerous issues with the framework and is available for Unix and Windows environments. Stefano Mazzocchi who just last week was elected to the Apache Software Foundation’s Board of Directors, suggests that v2.1.5 is the most stable version yet released. In general, the community touts Cocoon’s XML framework as the “Web glue for your Web application development needs.” 1 of the direct Apache Cocoon sponsored projects, currently in incubation (not a fully ASF supported project) that relies on Cocoon is a Web content management system known as Lenya. The latest Cocoon release fixes at least 1 critical bug that will make Lenya more functional, according to Lenya committer Gregor Rothfuss. “We were quite happy to see it resolved”. The next Lenya CMS release is scheduled for release in the next 2 weeks.

you heard it, people. lenya 1.2 should be out soon 🙂
2004-08-03: with that start of the olympics, it’s a good time to mention that the national olympic committee of afghanistan runs on lenya.
2004-09-23: The board of the Apache Software Foundation passed the resolution to make Apache Lenya a top-level project.
2004-11-22: There will be a boston cocoon / lenya user group meeting on december 9th at 6PM, location to be determined. i will be speaking about creating print on demand solutions with cocoon. bring your friends, and check back at the wiki for more information.
2004-12-01: received the following email in the lenya developer mailing list moderation queue today:

Dear Lenya,
I am a researcher here at Vault, the career information company, and I believe that you work at Apache. I am contacting you to invite you to share your thoughts on corporate culture, recruiting, and other career topics at Apache (or another current/former employer) by filling out this brief anonymous online survey

2005-03-31: there is now a cocoon meetup group for cambridge. if you have an interest in apache cocoon or apache lenya, sign up to be informed about events in the boston area.
2005-05-21: the ASF now offers a solaris 10 zone to each pmc. not wanting to pass on a great opportunity to test drive it, i set up a lenya demo on our zone. i haven’t had a lot of time to explore yet, but some first impressions are in order: it looks like solaris 10 has a more reasonable selection of software installed, but the root shell still defaults to one that does not handle arrow keys, or sensible tab completion.. what’s up with that? i look forward most to exploring dtrace, especially in conjunction with java.
2005-06-02: The Apache Software Foundation is a proud partner of the Google Summer of Code initiative. The Summer of Code is a program designed to introduce students to the world of Open Source Software Development and provide them with a $4500 award for completing an Open Source project before the end of Summer. The Apache Lenya project currently has 3 project proposals as part of the Summer of Code, more may be added later. For details see
Overhaul search facilities
Implement editor API
Implement workflow queries
The deadline for application is June 14th so if you are interested you need act quickly. Competition is very high for these projects, but then so are the rewards. If you would like to create a proposal for any of the above then we need to follow the following process:

- student gains an overview understanding of the technologies involved in the proposal
- student expands the initial project outline to a draft proposal text:
- description of problem
- description of a proposed solution
- benefits of the solution to the Apache community
- an approach
- milestones in delivery
- expected timeline for delivery
- description of relevant students skills
- student and mentors work together to finalize this proposal
- proposal is submitted to project community for comment/approval
- student registers the proposal with Google via their website

The Apache Lenya Team
2005-06-03: apache lenya contributor jonathan linczak was interviewed by the web standards project about his experience in implementing a standards-based site. jon is responsible for the new fully CSS-based menu in the upcoming 1.2.4 release, and has written many tutorials. people like jon really unleash the standards-based goodness inside lenya, and it’s nice to see recognition for that.
2005-06-09: Apache Lenya now has WebDAV integration, thanks to a patch by Doug Chestnut.

2006-01-26: Kudos to my former colleagues at wyona for landing wired as a customer for apache lenya. While it would of course have been nice if this had happened on my watch as COO, it’s still satisfying to know that my laying the groundwork led to such outcomes.
2006-11-01: BeCompany, a new apache lenya systems integrator.
2007-06-19: welcome to radical transparency. eventually, you’ll be able to see this sort of graph (Apache Lenya Top 10 Committers) for every working person in the world. looking busy while doing nothing is on the way out.

the cute startup

ever wondered why postnuke is dead as of late? i did, too. well, the new “crew” has been silently starting a company. its so cute it makes me puke.

thumbs up? hello 80s?

but wait there is value. Results can be delivered in PowerPoint, ready to present.

and don’t think you will have to spend a fortune. With CMS however, companies can limit the expenditure to under 7-digits while still getting the absolute most for their buck. gee i’m glad i don’t have to spend 7 figures.

while the clowns wrote this gem: CMSs support inbred security features to ensure only authorized webmasters can edit and add web files. somebody (or was it the same persons) shipped .722 with a HUGE security hole.

for our sanity, a tachion demise would be best.

Xaraya

I tested the new smartphones last night. I had to check into this site, of course, and it rendered not bad at all. I’m inclined to do a simpler, one column layout without the sidebars if I ever decide to buy one of those. I still think their GUI sucks ass (its based on tiny buttons with illogical function mapping). I’d much rather have a phone with a touch screen, but they are very bulky. So I guess I will skip this generation of mobiles. The picture is almost original size. It’s highly alarming that every mobile device is demoed with sports scores. Who gives a fuck about sports scores?


2002-11-05: Xaraya is now public. Initial reactions are very positive. I’m glad we didn’t do any forums, because forums attract scum. In other news I did an interview with internet intern, a german mass market internet rag (some 400k circulation). I talked about the reasons behind Xaraya and why Xaraya will succeed where other php cms will fail:

  • skilled developers
  • a real architecture
  • no incompetent advocates

The article should be up in 2 weeks.
2002-11-09: I opened a whoopass can’o’worms when I outlined my plans to implement workflow for Xaraya early next year. I want to start very simple (actually the work would be done for a client project) because I knew from preparing the web services talks that workflows are a very complex topic. Gary suggested I look into wfmc which is the industry standard for workflows. Very nice, but I guess implementing it would keep me busy for a year. Workflows might be a topic for oscom too. Both wyona and zope already implement some support for xml-defined workflows.
2002-11-28: I created my first WSDL file today, with the help of some tools. I’m pretty sure my WSDL is invalid. Scripting languages with their weak type systems and WSDL don’t exactly mix well. I hope to eventually enable web services to call into the APIs that Xaraya offers. At this stage, it is merely a nice idea, but I’m slowly making progress.
2003-01-25: I took the plunge, and am now running a current Xaraya snapshot again. Lots of new toys to play with 🙂

Yeah I know I have been slow with updates, but a) live has been hectic b) Xaraya is not yet very convenient for blogging.

On the bright side, comments should now be fully functional, with a nice tree view.
2003-02-12: Another one joins the MT love. Marcel is a buddy from the Xaraya PMC, and the 2 of us should really be using our own dogfood, but alas it is not there yet re: blogging comfort. One day soon, though.
2003-02-12: Xaraya Usability Recommendations is probably one of the more extensive studies about usability in the open source field. And we are not even at 1.0 yet. Kudos to Doug and Drew for this fine doc. If we follow through with this one, good things are in store for the web layman.
2003-02-21: This feed validates as RSS. I took the plunge, and fixed the RSS feed for Xaraya. Unlike postnuke, Xaraya will ship with a rich feed that makes use of the 2.0 format. We now also have SOAP support. Mike pushed a changeset that enables to call Xaraya API methods over SOAP. Here is the relevant part from the WSDL.
<wsdl:arrayType=”xsd:string[]” />
<xsd:complexType name=”wsModAPIFuncRequest”>
<xsd:sequence>
<xsd:element name=”module” type=”xsd:string” />
<xsd:element name=”func” type=”xsd:string” />
<xsd:element name=”type” type=”xsd:string” />
<xsd:element name=”args” type=”xsd:xsdl:myelement0″ />
</xsd:sequence>
</xsd:complexType>

2003-02-27: Aye, Kevin, we will work extra hard on usability.

The PN user registration process is plain silly. It is one of the things that I was hoping to see the last of in eventually moving to Xaraya. I have a suggestion for anyone working on the end-user (non-admin) aspects of the core modules. Pretend that the typical user is my mother who gets very flustered when web site processes aren’t as easy and straightforward as possible. And Mom cries when she gets flustered. Please folks … don’t make my Mom cry.

2003-04-21: congrats team.

It is my pleasure to announce the first Beta Release of Xaraya (.900). This release is the culmination of nearly a year’s worth of hard work and undying dedication to creating. All of the developers on the project have devoted many hours to reach where we are today. The first Beta release for Xaraya is intended to capture a baseline of what needs to be accomplished before the final release. This is merely another step in the long journey that began with PHP Nuke, and then PostNuke for many of us.

2003-06-25: My friend John Cox is being interviewed about Xaraya:

With the articles system combined with the dynamic data system (both written by Michel), a webmaster no longer has to wait for developers to dream up new modules. All a webmaster has to do is dream up what they want to display, and from there it’s just a matter of adding 2 templates into the system and creating a new publication type to gather the data.

I just installed Xaraya again after neglecting it for a while, and I must say, very impressive. Time to mop up the nuke market with their silly systems.
2003-06-30: Looks like everyone and his dog is converging on XML pipeline processors these days. With more powerful XSLT editors, maybe the time for these technologies to appeal to a more mainstream audience has come.

2003-07-02:

KAYWA
No anagrams found.
WYONA
AN YOW
NOWAY
NAY OW
ANY OW
YAW ON
YAW NO
WAY ON
WAY NO
XARAYA
A RAY AX
LENYA
LAY NE
LAY EN
AN LEY
AN ELY
AN LYE
ANY EL
NAY EL

2003-07-20: Xaraya goes new ways again. They now use phing, a php clone of ant, to maintain build files for the distribution. Very neat. The more standardization, the better. Apache Lenya is using ant more and more for various scripting tasks too. This nicely leverages the very good ant documentation and literature, and means you have to learn fewer concepts.
2003-08-02: Xaraya is now bitkeeper project #6 by number of change sets.
2003-11-04:

Trolling through the Bitkeeper tree on the site, looking at the change sets, the different names, the comments, it just sort of occurred to me this is beginning to look like a factory, chugging merrily along I’m noticing more and more people on the public mailing lists wanting to take the bk plunge. The collective consciousness has apparently reached a critical mass conclusion and internalized that this is the normal way of life around here. Quick rewind to 8 months ago, when most everyone (me especially) were still trying to figure out how to do a merge… You’ve come a long way, baby.Marc

I am very happy that we made the decision to establish sound processes, use bitkeeper instead of cvs, and aim for quality. It took longer than the usual crappy php project, but then again it is of much higher quality. We are now the number 3 user of bitkeeper, only surpassed by MySQL and the Linux kernel. Amazing.
2003-12-12: This post led to an avalanche. Wow, 19 months later, the repercussions are still working its way through the php cms community 🙂
2007-06-20: linux.com is now running on Xaraya, a CMS I co-founded

comments working 20%

i beat the comments code into submission. it now allows to post comments, although there are still tons of bugs: replying doesn’t work, it only shows the first comment of an article etc. i don’t feel like fixing all of carls bugs, so i will stop here 🙂

New code directions

the recent postnuke forks might be a good thing, if the following 2 things materialize.

embedding technology
postnuke: The Embedded PN initiative will allow us all to leverage all the amazing pieces of php code out there in a fast and reliable way, by allowing client applications to work under PostNuke seemingly. This will hopefully become the PN applications server framework.

dynamic api
envolution: This would more or less be a direct replacement for the current hooks(autolinks, wiki, and ratings) but would not replace hooks. It would allow for direct api calls to classes that provide functionality for any module to call if it is turned on by the site administrator. So for instance polls and comments could be loaded dynamically and used within any module as a direct api call. This would allow the site administrator to add polls directly to a news article. This would also allow comments to be used by any module that you want to allow to use them. For instance you could allow comments on your downloads. This is a small example of the functionality this could provide.

guess where those features will end up.