Posted
16 days
ago
SpringSource, the company behind the popular Spring Framework has announced a new maintenance policy: SpringSource Enterprise Maintenance Policy, effective September 2008.
After a lot of discussion in the community they have now added a
... [More]
Frequently Asked Questions document.
Spring Framework was originally created to overcome the limitations of Enterprise Java Beans (version 1 and 2) and make it easier to build J2EE applications. It has introduced dependency injection to a broad audience and changed the way many enterprise applications are built today. For many years it has been a vendor independant Open Source project available under the Apache Software License. Some time ago the creators of Spring Framework started their own company, received venture capital and things started to change. They've added new products like a new application server, bought Covalent and are looking for opportunities to gain some money.
In contrast to their new proprietary products which require a commercial license there has not been a real opportunity to make money from SpringFramework itself. Community support was fine, regular maintenance updates fixed the issues that were discovered and there was no need for commercial support. The recent announcement of their new maintenance policy seems to be their answer to that. They try to create a need for their support offerings. So the new policy basically states:
Free maintenance updates will only be available for three months after a major release
Maintenance releases will be available to paying customers under a commercial license for three years after a major release
Bug fixes will be commited to a maintenance branch but minor releases will not be tagged after the three month period so the community will not know which versions are stable
Though the major releases will remain Open Source the bug free minor versions (three months later) will not. Spring Framework 2.0 was released in October 2006, Spring Framework 2.5 in November 2007 which means that the community will be without minor releases for more than 9 months if the frequency of their releases remains similar.
Sure, you can always build from the sources but this looks like a bad idea given that SpringSource refuses to tag consistent and tested versions.
I can understand the desire to make cash from SpringFramework but I am not sure this way will be successful. For me the products of SpringSource have lost their strong advantage of being vendor independant and fully Open Source. Upcoming projects will have to consider this fact and investigate alternatives.
References
Spring Framework
SpringSource Enterprise Maintenance Policy
Frequently Asked Questions [Less]
Posted
about 1 month
ago
Though most of the Java libraries are already in the official Maven repository you will from time to time encounter artifacts that are not available there. Reasons for this include licensing issues (e.g. Oracle JDBC drivers and some Sun Java APIs)
... [More]
and a lack of maintainers.
Most users of Maven run an internal repository for those artifacts and to distribute their own work products.
Recent versions of Maven support uploading artificats along with their sources directly into your internal repo through WebDAV:
mvn deploy:deploy-file \
-DrepositoryId="$REPO_ID" -Durl="$REPO_URL" \
-Dfile="openfire-${VERSION}.jar" \
-DgroupId="$GROUP_ID" -DartifactId="$ARTIFACT_ID" \
-Dversion="$VERSION" \
-Dpackaging=jar -DgeneratePom=true
Read more... [Less]
Posted
about 1 month
ago
Estonia is a small country in the north east of Europe in the Baltic region. As a former Soviet republic it became independant in 1991 and is a member of NATO and the European Union since 2004.
Estonia has a strong information technology
... [More]
sector and plays a leading role in terms of eGovernment. It has declared internet access a basic human right and there are free wlan hotspots throughout the country. Over 90% of the population own a mobile device while in 1991, when Estonia regained its independence, only half of the country's 1.4 million people even had a telephone line. Being a very small country without much natural resources, Estonia has realized that it has to move fast and that innovative ideas are the way to future.
In terms of political and civil freedom Estonia quite ahead in Europe. Reporters sans frontières has ranked Estiona 3rd out of 169 countries in its press freedom index while Germany is only on rank 20.
Liberal economic policies, low taxes and a well-educated population build a solid ground for entrepreneurs.
Next week I'll have a look on my own. [Less]
Posted
about 1 month
ago
Packt has released a new book on Openfire a Java based Instant Messaging server.
Openfire Administration by Mayank Sharma is a step-by-step guide for everybody who wants to setup an internal IM server for private or corporate use. It walks you
... [More]
through the whole installation and configuration process including integration with external authentication sources like OpenLDAP and Active Directory and covers a bunch of useful plugins.
In contrast to other similar products Openfire is based on open standards as it uses the same XMPP protocol that is also used by Google Talk and Apple's iChat. Openfire is available under the GNU General Public License so there are no license fees and is maintained by a vibrant community. There a lot of free and commercial clients that you can use to connect to Openfire like Spark and the Flash based SparkWeb, Psi, iChat and many more.
Additional free plugins are available that cover a wide range of requirements like connection to other IM networks like MSN, ICQ/AIM and Yahoo!, server side archiving for compliance and integration with the Asterisk PBX.
If you are new to running IM infrastructure and interested in setting up a proven enterprise ready solution Mayank's book is for you and will provide you with the information required to install and run a professional IM solution.
References
Openfire product page at igniterealtime.org
Openfire Administration at Packt [Less]
Posted
2 months
ago
Wenn ich von meiner Teilnahme am diesjährigen MinD Camp berichte, taucht eine Frage immer wieder auf: Was hat man sich eigentlich unter dem Programmpunkt "Kuschelworkshop" vorzustellen?
Read more...
openfire java archive xmpp lucene instant_messaging
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