First preview of new Open ERP interface

Nice & good looking...

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC3L4A7NaWlQnTWF4l_eb9QuBC0E3Wz_CDQCA4_K8orP4xJJEE-BzuJPkEoamrB4JxtQsYQ4a9vROOzcROQf_JUG-0HjSdZKL7IUiCm6-BIxpLc3-7_XYEelTgo2CATaD30YzM/s1600-h/sales.png

License change from GPL to AGPL

Here is an extract of replay from the FSF (http://www.fsf.org/) concerning license changes

>> At which condition can an editor (owning copyright) change the license  from GPL to AGPL?


"The copyright holder on a work always has the option of relicensing that work under any terms they choose. Keep in mind, however, that previously released copies of the work would still be under the original license, and anyone who has a copy can continue to modify, copy, and redistribute from their copy under that older license. Thanks once again for your interest, and I hope this helps."

www.lemonde.fr

How Open Source Development is Funded

Open ERP which I discuss at length is commercial open source sofware.

Many other open source projects are non-commercial (at least this is how they like to be advertised). Yet money remains necessary and it seems the Joomla community is having some troubles here, so they surveyed how other projects find resources:
 
http://community.joomla.org/blogs/community/1117-how-open-source-development-is-funded.html

Enjoy and think... can it be open, free, sustainable ?

Open ERP raised 3 millions euros

Open ERP will announce todoay that they just raised 3 million euros.

A few things:
    - the open source model of the company ios not affected.
    - Fabien Pinckaers remains the CEO and still holds the majority of the share.
    - They also announced the opening of their USA offices.

I will of course come back later on this...

Rich web frameworks for GlassFish v3 (ZK, Vaadin, ...)

 Just a link to an aquarium post...


http://blogs.sun.com/theaquarium/entry/rich_web_frameworks_for_glassfish

May be my next app application framework...

Open ERP GPL vs AGPL

Here is a copy of  a post from Fabien... worth looking at:


"More over, I think it's not an AGPL infringement because only the trunk version is in AGPL. The current stable version is still in GPL v3.0".

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/agpl-3.0.html

So this means that newer version will oblige to contribute back the code and will better cover software as a service case...

Again think to your business model....

GPL Violation - Open source model not so easy and friendly than it sounds ?

There has been a serie of e-mails on the Open ERP partner list about some potential violations of the GPL by some companies. In clear somebody are suspects a company to distribute extensions and modified versions of the Open ERP code without contributing their code etc

I don't want to start a flame war, nor did I contacted the accusator nor the suspected violator. Yet the subject is not so easy as one think:

- Software as a service issue and the so called AGPL license interpretation.
- Difficulty of having evidences of the violation.
- Parties. Only the copyrighter and the violator can truly manage this aspect of things.
- The obligation of providing sources and not restricting rights does not oblige to contribute back via for example launchpad or sourceforge...(GPL vs AGPL again).
- Finally don't forget that normally, by principles you should presume that the so called violator is in fact innocent...

Posted on the list the following article is nice is and truly good reading http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2009/11/08/gpl-enforcement.html.

Having said that, Open Source is a cool concept but it is not always so easy to make business with the concept. The GPL license is great for its viral aspects but it makes difficult for companies to invest up-front in development. When investing time and effort (thus money) they can have the legitimate fear of being abused by free riders.

A consequence is then that Tiny and partners immediate interest is to develop only when contracted to do so.

I am not saying nobody invest in the code (Tiny does a lot, a few big partners too), but the fact is: everybody must find a way or another to get paid.

This create two stress points in the economic model (I am talking here of a GPL commercial open-source model):

 - customer find sometimes hard to finance what they consider a 'base functionality'. I will come back on that one later.


- the editor and the partners may stand as competitors. This is implicit in the Open ERP business model presentation and people should think (at least a bit) about it before becoming partner.

Back from the Java Roadshow 2010

Here is a quick, incomplete summary of what I saw, heard with a touch of personnal  feeling...

Remark number 0: there was a limited audience that day (compared to previous venues). Lack of 'announcements' or economic crisis ? Probably a bit of both...

Sales of SUN clothes and gadgets have soared as they will not be available anymore.No hope to get a mug with the SUN logo... So the merge with Oracle was at least good at that...

The acquisition by Oracle is being finalized now.

JDK 7
There has been a short review of JDK 7. Not Java 7 yet because that would require to go through the JCP - it seems there are currently some conflicts/problems on the process itself. Ultimately this will become Java 7 when these 'political' issues are solved.

Here are a few things:

- more annotations (now also on base type).
- modularity - JSR-294. This will help specifying dependencies to module. With range of version etc. Compile will typically check against the lowest version of each version and runtime linking will take the highest (most recent one).
- various language extensions (switches on String - got great welcome).
- simpler resources cleanup (object that inplement a closable interface will get closed when exception occur) thus simplifying resource protection code.
- improvement for dynamic language support
- compressed 64 bits pointers.

JavaFx
- Ok, nice idea. Variable binding looks great. Demos was ok but not that simple to write.
- Where can it be used ? Well on any phone Java enabled etc - sorry I missed the reference (Java ME 2?). So forget IPhone (?) and Android (more or less sure) - but should be ok on Windows Mobile (ah great).

JEE 6
- Improvement, and new concept of 'profile'. So you can be compliant by implementing a subset of it.
- Single WAR file.
- New servlet API - and yes possiblity to upload file in a standard way !
- New JPA.
- EJB 3.1 (Light = can be used outside a container).
- Dependancy injection (very, very good point - lets get away for the JNDI horrible stuff).

Glassfish V3 

GlassFish continues to be the reference implementation of JEE6 and looks like a geat product that will continue to be the reference implemenation and is announced as 'production ready'. It seems fast and easy to embedd. Session preservation (accross restart of the container) is great (for end-users) and truly good for developpers (simplify testing your changes)

Glassfish incorporate Apache Felix and so is OSGi compliant !


Java tip & tricks

Well I learn that there are 480  (-XX) options on the Sun JVM. Don't ask me them all. We had a good presentation on the garbage collector. A nice peace of software that tries to adapt memory allocation to various circumstances... With some option again for tuning - for example if you have many threads and performance problem related to contention...

Note that there is a new Garbage Collector (G1) since JRE 6u14 (so a motivation to upgrade to the latest JVM).

For info http://java.sun.com/performance/reference/.

Profiling with visual VM http://visualvm.dev.java.net/

Note that the Garbage Collection was there when the language started (in 1996). So making it a hot topic for the yearly roadshow...


Java for Business
Basically support proposal for the JVM with 3 level of services. Please call for prices...

Embedded Java
Basically Java SE but tailored by modules to get a smaller footprint. Good if you are in the appliance business.

Real Time Java
On realtime Linux or realtime Solaris, Java real time extensions enables to control the throughput and / or predictability of your application (a new range of business for sure).

The last tree points means IMHO : lets try to find a way to get finally a bit of money from it.

But it is not so simple. See for example the way Google used the language for Android without using the runtime to get away the licensing fee...

One more for the road. I will post the link to the presentation slides when they are available.

My final, last point... Walking dinners with hot lunches are not compatible...

European Java Roadshow this Friday

Friday I will be attending the European Java roadshow in Brussels:


http://de.sun.com/sunnews/events/2010/jan/java_roadshow/brussels.jsp.

The morning agenda is more marketing stuff. The afternoon will be more technical with Java EE 7, FX etc

Open ERP - Open object programming memento

Olivier, who gave the technical class has prepared a memento documenting the essential aspect for developing on the Open Object framework.

Here is the link:

http://www.openobject.com/memento/

It is a very condensed but high quality set of handy information.