Jun 17, 2005
The Zope Corporation recently announced the creation of the Zope Foundation which is to be launched in October 2005. The Zope Foundation will be a non-profit that will oversee Zope community projects including Zope 2, Zope 3, and CMF. Copyrights of the Zope code will be transferred from Zope Corporation to the Zope Foundation. The Zope Foundation will also get a perpetual license to the Zope trademarks and take over management of zope.org.
For more information, you can join an IRC Session:
- Who: Zope Corp and Zope Community
- What: IRC session to discuss the Zope Foundation
- When: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 10a - 12p (US EDT)
- Where: irc.freenode.net #zope
Creating a foundation is a frequently used (remember, TYPO3 recently announced the TYPO3 Association) and effective strategy for open source projects. Doing so makes the governance of the project more public and reduces the perception that contributions are benefiting a specific company. Other examples of this trend include Wyona moving the Lenya project over to the Apache Software Foundation, and Mambo moving out from under Miro International. In both cases, the project enjoyed increased attention and participation.
Jun 16, 2005
My article on ECM for Cutter IT Journal just came out and is available here. I am sorry to say that you have to register on the website to read it but there is a no email option if you are worried about the spam.
The thesis of the article is that the ECM vision of having one centralized CMS to manage all kinds of content is dead - or at least misguided. Instead, companies are looking at ways to integrate best of breed CMS solutions into a more federated architecture that shares content. If you read it, I would love to hear your feedback: sgottlieb (at) optaros.com
Jun 16, 2005
There are a number of major open source CMS projects that are participating in the Google Summer of Code program. For those of you who are out of the loop, Summer of Code is a program where software developers are given a project and are given a $4,500 reward if they satisfactorily complete the project on time. Organizations can volunteer to be mentors which means that they assign a project and evaluate the results.
Here are the proposals from the open source CMS projects:
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Apache Lenya: Search enhancement, improving the integration with WYSIWYG editors, workflow engine improvement.
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Bricolage: Porting to Apache2/mod_perl2, porting to other databases (currently supports PostgreSQL only), improve WebDAV support, improve Subversion integration, improve the installation process (amen), site tagging and rollback, improve Unicode support, improve the bulk edit interface, bulk upload of media documents.
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Drupal: Drupal automated test suite, Quiz module, workflow engine, social context of content, REST API implementation, AJAX (buzzzz), subscriptions for module core.
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Mambo: XHTML Compliance, virtual filesystem library, AJAX library, rich internet application for administration.
This looks like a great idea to get people involved with open source and a great way for Google to identify top technical talent.
Jun 13, 2005
There is a new Plone Book available: PloneLive 1.0 by Michel Pelletier and Munwar Shariff. What makes PloneLive really interesting is that it is a LiveBook that is constantly being updated. You can buy it print on demand for $44.95 from Amazon or a year's subscription for $29.95. The PloneLive Site also has a blog and other content. The authors and SourceBeat (the publisher) make a good point that traditional publishing mechanisms may not be able to keep pace with rapidly changing open source projects and dynamic books are the best way to document. Unlike a project wiki, the authors are compensated for their content. It will be interesting to see if this publishing model takes hold.
Unfortunately, the authors made a bad choice in selecting a sample chapter so it is difficult to tell if the book is any good. The sample chapter just superficially covers what a content management system is, what Python is, and how to install Plone.
For an excellent book on Plone, check out The Definitive Guide to Plone by Andy McKay. Almost the entire book is available on SourceForge but I would not do without my paper copy.
Jun 13, 2005
There are two recent articles on the state of OS CMS: "The State of Open Source CMS" by Gregor Rothfuss in the Cutter IT Journal which you need to subscribe to read; and "Straight from the Source: Open Source Content Management" by John Harney in inaugural issue of Enterprise Open Source Journal.
Writing on this topic is a daunting task because the space is so expansive and dynamic. These authors have both done an excellent job of introducing the "market" and describing some of the trends that are happening.
Gregor Rothfuss is very qualified to write on this topic. Not only is he a committer on the Apache Lenya project, but he is also an officer of OSCOM - the organization of open source CMS projects. One of Gregor's more interesting points is that the OSCMS space is overcoming a history of fragmentation with no clear market leader. One of the developments that may change this is the Java Content Repository (JSR 170) which will lower switching costs and allow different CMS to become more interoperable. Open source CMS projects are outpacing their proprietary counterparts in adopting the JCR partly because vendor lock-in is not on their agenda.
John Harney's article is a good introduction to content management and open source. In it, John discusses base content management features that are supported by open source CMS and the advantages and disadvantages of adopting an open source solution. There is particular attention paid to Zope with mentions of OpenCMS, Mambo, TYPO3 and WebGUI.
May 16, 2005
There is an article on News Forge about the University of North Carolina School of Medicine re-launching their internal and external websites in Plone. UNC Healthcare had the classic problem of organically grown websites creating a disjointed and confusing experience for their visitors. Operating on a modest budget, UNC Healthcare discovered Plone and was able to achieve a true content management solution at minimal cost. In addition to typical content management benefits of distributed authoring with centralized control, UNC Healthcare developed and deployed a "Find a Doctor" application on the Zope framework.
May 16, 2005
I just wrote an article for Cutter IT Journal about the decline of the "one system to manage all" vision of ECM and now I am seeing evidence of this trend wherever I look. The May issue of EContent Magazine reports FileNet's new strategy of Federated Content Management. In the words of Chris McLaughlin, Filenet's director of marketing
ECM isn't about picking one platform and stuffing everything into that one platform . . . it is about choosing a platform you want to build forward from and giv[ing] your organization a range of options on how to move forward with a CM strategy.
FileNet is now emphasizing standards and interoperability that "creates a union of information across multiple content stores." This is a refreshing departure from the one-size-fits-all rhetoric that lead to expensive projects that under-delivered and left customers hopelessly locked into their vendors.
May 11, 2005
Today CM Professionals officially announced the formation of a Management Committee and appointment of a new Executive Director.
The Management Committee consists of:
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Patricia Kelley, content architect at Allstate Insurance - Director of Marketing
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Erik Hartman, president of Netherlands-based Hartman Communicatie BV - Director of Member Relations
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Glen Secor, senior consultant and legal analyst with The Gilbane Report - Legal Advisor
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Hilary Marsh, president of strategic online consultancy Content Company Inc. - Director of Communications
Laura Walker succeeds Bob Doyle as Executive Director of CM Professionals. I personally would like to thank Bob for his tireless energy and drive to get CM Professionals off the ground. The organization would not be the success that it is without his dedication and talents. Bob will continue to play an active role in CM Professionals as Technology Advisor.
Laura Walker will bring new perspectives and skills to the Executive Director role. Her experience as the executive director of OASIS will be critical in helping CM Professionals achieve its potential.
Read the full press release.
May 10, 2005
The Gilbane Report recently posted the results of their Survey on Enterprise blog, wiki, and RSS Use. While the survey sample is not representative of a larger population of companies (the survey was voluntary and Gilbane readers are probably ahead of the curve), the results are interesting.
Of the 58 respondents (mostly from companies under $25MM in annual revenues but 10 from companies of over $1 Billion in annual revenues.):
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Over 35 use Blog or Wiki technology
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More of the Blog/Wiki users use them for knowledge management and internal information dissemination, than customer communication.
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More than half of the respondents get support for their Blog or Wiki from their internal IT organization.
May 09, 2005
The Drupal Project has reorganized its documentation into a new set of documentation handbooks. Drupal's documentation is already pretty good thanks to a robust community using and contributing to the software. The documentation team is now using a Zoomerang survey (results) and Web Sort, a web based card sorting tool, to leverage this community to make the documentation more usable.