Page 30 of 50

ZZ/OSS Software Depolyment Infrastructure – How Far Have We Come?

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

Saturday, I will present the forthcoming ZZ/OSS Installer Client (ZIC) release 1.1.0dev1 at a PHP User Group meeting. I am looking forward to get some feedback from the participants. Soon after the presentation, the code will be released.

This is an excerpt from the changelog:

– works on Windows
– new plugins architecture (introduced Plugins Runtime Environment, which is actually installed like an application)
– integrated package manager for installed applications
– plugins manager for installer plugins
– plugins development wizard
– E_ALL support
– development applications can now also be installed
– new default theme ‘kde’ which is “neutral”
– option to automatically remove setup wizard after installation
– handle different magic quotes settings
– progress bar shows download process
– single packages or plugins can be added
– etc.

I am confident, that with this release, we have solved all major conceptual issues about a distributed deployment architecture. The important implementation missing, is the ZZ/OSS Installer Server (ZIS), which we have not yet released under an Open Source license. Once ZIS is out, companies and communities can easily deploy their applications consisting of packages within their software distribution – either in-house, and/or internally.

We will in the forthcoming months focus on the release of ZIS, which will in its first release be a kind of PEARWeb for the ZZ/OSS Installer Client. Nevertheless, the ZIS does not rely on PEARWeb, it is based on CONESYS, the COntent NEtwork SYStem. In this respect, the second major release of the ZIS will allow for automatic and granular distribution of package, application, and distribution data accross servers.

By the way: Christian Stocker will come from Switzerland and also do a presentation on Popoon at the PHPUG meeting.

ZZ/OSS Adopts PEAR's Version Naming Standard

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

The PEAR Group has announced a new standard on version naming. ZZ/OSS will adopt it in total and future releases of our software will be compatible with the proposed standard.

Slowly, but steadily, the PEAR Group sets basic and very necessary standards for PHP software development. Have a look at all Administrative Documents released so far. ZZ/OSS regards all of them as guidelines for professional PHP coding and we fully support them.

What can Economy and Science Learn from Open Source?

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

Open Source software developers are knowledge workers and companies as well as scientists could learn a lot from FOSS projects. That’s the topic of the 1st Thinkathon on March 12th in Tübingen/Germany. The round table discussion will be accompanied by various experts, e.g. from MySQL.

This event will take place in German. Google provides you with a rough translation.

I’ll be there, let me know if you plan to come!

What's the Problem With PHP5?

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

What? There’s already a problem with PHP5 although a stable release is not even out yet? Yes, there is – and I am not talking about technical problems, rather about business problems.

Don’t get me wrong: I love PHP and I am very excited about the new features of PHP5. With PHP5, no doubts, PHP is really ready for the enterprise – at least when it comes to PHP as a programming language.

But what about PHP5 in a business environment? I am sceptical on the business success of PHP5 in the enterprise market:

  • Java is already there,
  • there’s no global player providing professional services for PHP applications development,
  • there are too few really good PHP programmers,
  • where are those professional (Open Source) PHP tools, frameworks, and applications that minimize the risk of enterprise application development?

I will shed a light on these 4 questions and probably some more in forthcoming postings to my Weblog – and I will also tell you, why I still see a future with PHP5 in the enterprise market.

KISS or ASS?

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

Most programmers know about the KISS paradigm: Keep it simple, stupid. Meaning that you should favor simple solutions over complex ones. Have you ever heard of the ASS paradigm? I would translate it to “Avoid stupid simplicity”. Sometimes, programmers legitimate too simple constructs with the KISS paradigm – because maybe they don’t know better.

You can find ASS wherever you ask yourself if a piece of software is as modular and flexible as the producers promised it to be.

In fact, KISS and ASS are two sides of a coin. Software developers with little experience tend to do simple things overly complex because they love to demonstrate how intelligent they are. On the other hand they do not understand all the implications of what they are doing. They chose overly simple solutions because they lack the overall view, especially when it comes to interoperability.

In both cases, it’s a matter of experience, with experience comes abstraction and pattern-oriented programming – or call it “smart ASS” programming 🙂 “KISS or ASS” stands for a steady learning process of applied simplicity and thus a better understanding of programming itself.

A Good Day at LOTS

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

LOTS is over. This very first event on Open Source in Switzerland was interesting, well organised, and the atmosphere simmilar to Linuxtag.

I was most impressed by the talk of Wolfgang Maass on the potentials of Open Source for the enterprise market. He presented some conclusions from a research analysing the oppinions of several CIOs. Most astonishing, he said that licensing is not really an cost issue for CIOs, they are rather concerned with being independent from a unique vendor. I am looking forward to find his slides on the LOTS Website.

Some pictures are available online in the LOTS 2004 Album. On the LOTS Website, there are some more pictures. Chregu also has a brief report on LOTS.