Category eZ

eZ systems Opposes Software Patents

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment
My dear colleague Zak Greant has written a nice article, where he leaves no doubt about what eZ systems thinks about software patents: well, we simply think they stink 🙂 Zak of course formulates this in a more eloquent way and he also provides some reasons why we don’t like them.

Software patents might be one of the biggest issues to gain more freedom, also in democratic societies. Let’s thus say with Martin Luther King: I have a dream, that one day I will live in a world without software patents, where true competition of ideas and innovation exists.

Yes, and I am proud to be in a company not afraid of clear statements.

BÃ¥rd Farstad got a Blog

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

He is a slow hand when it comes to guitar playing and a fast hand when it comes to photo shooting: BÃ¥rd Farstad got a Weblog, named Papelipe. He is one of the co-founders of eZ systems and a true LAMP addict.

You wonder what the blog name means? He writes:

The name Papelipe was invented by my then 2 year old daughter which used it to name unknown things. It is unique and I found it suitable for my blog. At the time it was registered there were no mentions in Google for Papelipe.

Well, that says it all 🙂

BÃ¥rd currently writes about his findings while torturing the 6 servers cluster he uses for eZ publish performance testing.

eZ publish 3.8 will ship with Content Diff

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One major feature which will be part of the forthcoming eZ publish 3.8 release (out in May) is content version diff functionality. It will sit on top of the versioning and archiving system, which is included by default since the early days of eZ publish 3.

Related to Multilang Enhancements

Integrating content diff is a logical move, if you consider that eZ publish 3.8 will also include enhanced multilanguage handling. The new multilang features are most useful when translating content, and here, content diff is just perfect to spot changes in the language version which is supposed to be translated.

Diffing Accross Datatypes

Combined with the content object model of eZ publish, you will be able to diff content per object attribute. This means, that it is not just one big text field like in Wikis, where you can identify changes. Actually, the cool thing is that you can diff accross any “form field” of your content, or in eZ publish linguage: accross the various datatypes.

Of course, diffing does not make sense for all datatypes, for example, binary data like images. Indeed, what you can do with the image datatype, is to diff its metadata like filename, size, and modification date, also the alternative text.

The following datatypes will have diffing capability: price, URL, email, date, time, datetime, float, string, xml field, keyword, media, etc.

Read more in the Content Version Diff specification.

The Future of eZ publish and eZ components

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

Now you can take a look into the future of eZ publish development, as well as the eZ components. I have conducted and published an email interview with five of eZ systems’ leaders of the development team.

eZ components

Ideas for future eZ components are:

  • a framework component,
  • a MVC component,
  • a component for sending IPC messages between different parts of an application,
  • a workflow component,
  • a search component.

eZ publish

  • The eZ publish 4.0 Features List has just been published.
  • The eZ publish 4.0 Roadmap will be published beginning of June.
  • eZ publish 4.0 will be based on PHP 6, mainly because of Unicode support.

Self-fullfilling Prophecy

Our dev leaders provide lots of valuable information and are doing a fine job as fortunetellers – as they are predicting a future they shape themselves, it should become a self-fullfilling prophecy 🙂

Honestly, I fully trust in what they are saying and doing, there’s a lot of intelligence accumulated at eZ systems. Just look at the high quality of eZ components, and you will be able to anticipate just how good eZ publish 4, the next big version of eZ publish, is going to be.

Templates – Who Cares?

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… everyone, it seems!

Those with some years of experience in the software business know: the implementation or decision upon a template engine is always good for flame wars.

Why? Templates are such a basic technology of a CMS, a must-have and not really something sexy. Those who hoped to make templates sexy, invented XSLT.

So why? Because it is a basic technology!

These are the flame war factors:

You can’t get Tempates out of Your Way

Every developer or Web designer building a Web site on top of a CMS, has to cope with the integrated template system, sooner or later. You will have a love-and-hate-relationship, because on the one side they help you, on the other side, every implementation has its pros and cons.

Love-and-hate-relationships are not really something that makes the involved parties calm and relaxed.

Who Takes Over the Bridge?

Templates are supposed to build a bridge between the programmers, who care about the business logic of a solution, and the designers who care about the user experience aka GUI. Thus, there are two groups with diverging interests affected by templates: programmers and Web designers. Every experienced how different their thinking can be? OK, then you clearly see the potential for conflict.

Love, Peace – and Common Sense

The discussion about the new template language for eZ publish, implemented as a library in the realm of the
eZ components, has of course been long, and is still ongoing – but there’s light.

It was interesting to observe, how the eZ components team will fight the fight and I must say, they did a good job.

So, what was it that created love and peace in eZ templates land? It was pragmatism: whenever a discussion becomes lengthy and and unfocused, bring it down to the facts, for example with a summary of past input and suggestions for solutions.

Doesn’t sound sexy? No, it doesn’t. Tempates are not sexy, they are basic technology, so let’s be pragmatic and treat it like that, so let’s cool down discussions and go back to work.

Sounds simple? It does, but is hard work, because you need to focus on the result!

You love such discussions? Jump in, you got time until Monday, 12:00.

PS: Did you find any irony in this text? Let me know 🙂

Yes, there is professional support for Open Source CMSs!

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

I have in the past read several papers about the Open Source CMS market, where the authors argued that such products lack professional support, that you depend on a forum or mailinglist, blabla. This is plain wrong!

For example, the company I work for, eZ systems, is the creator of the Open Source CMS eZ publish. We provide all the services you need, as well as total product responsibility for our CMS in the realm of the eZ publish Network, which includes guranteed bug fixing.

Aleksander Farstad, the CEO of eZ systems has just published an article entitled Power of Enterprise Open Source where he takes a closer look at what it really means to provide an Open Source product, plus professional support.

The essence of his view is: “The power of Enterprise Open Source originates from the combination of freedom and responsibility.” He further writes: “This gives both the users the freedom of choice and at the same time the backing of a responsible party providing a full set of guarantees and services.”

So, you consultants out there, get it right from now on! Of course, some of you already know about this 🙂

Presenting at FOSS Days Istanbul

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

I am going to present a talk and a workshop at the Free Software & Open Source Days 2006 in Istanbul/Turkey. Currently, the program is only available in Turkish, so I’ll tell you a bit more about my presentations here in English. BTW: They will also be presented in English, because I speak no Turkish:

Talk: eZ publish, the Open Source Enterprise CMS

Feb 25, Saturday, 14:00-15:00

eZ publish is an Open Source Enterprise Content Management System based on PHP. It is being used by thousands of customers around the world, installed over 150.000 and with 1,5 million downloads. This talk provides an overview of the eZ publish functionality. You will also get first-hand information on new features and the roadmap ahead.

Workshop: Technical Introduction to eZ publish

Feb 25, Saturday, 15:00-19:00

In this tutorial you will learn how to use the Open Source Enterprise Content Management System eZ publish to set-up a typical small business site where you need to customize the CMS system for the customer. This site will include e-commerce functionality, PDF exports, a customized content structure, RSS feeds to publish news and a WebDAV interface for simpler document management.