As Matt Asay points out, this is a community effort that will combine Red Hat’s efforts with that of its most experienced JBoss system integrators, as no one tool or process can cover the gamut of app server/portal/content migration. This type of communtiy effort represents the essence of collaborative open source development.

Rivet Logic Selected as Alfresco Surf First Wave Partner

We’re proud to be selected by Alfresco as a Surf First Wave Partner. Our engineers have been looking under the hood of a pre-release version of Surf for the last few months, and are quite excited about what it brings to the table for developing certain types of dynamic websites and content-centric web applications. Russ posted his initial thoughts on Surf here.

To learn more, we’ll be hosting and leading an Alfresco Surf Code next month. Register here.

Learn more from our new Case Study: CCSSO Increases Project Efficiency Through Open Source Content Management and Collaboration.

Should be a great show.

It took IBM/Filenet over 25 years  to get close to this number of installations, whereas Alfresco has done it in 2 years.

What an awesome testament to the power of open source.

Register for it here.

In it, we talk about how open source ECM and portal software can help with fundamental document management requirements including:

• Rules based repository that can replace shared network drives
• Effective search and retrieval
• Standards based interfaces, including WebDAV, FTP, CIFS
• Library services
• Forums and other ways to facilitate team collaboration beyond email
• Workflow
• Scanning and document imaging support
• Records management
• Security

You may find our recent Technical Note useful: “Alfresco By Example – A Simple Introduction to Alfresco’s WCM API”

Feel free to download the package (as a zip file) from here. All source code is GNU GPL.

Here’s the intro:

We provide a few simple working examples that illustrate the use of new APIs included in the Web Content Management (WCM) module in Alfresco 2.0. Our purpose is to demonstrate a small portion of Alfresco’s underlying capability that will be useful to developers who are just starting to use (or starting to evaluate) Alfresco for dynamic web site content management and content delivery. We assume the reader has some familiarity with Alfresco 2.0 and its WCM features; for those who do not, we recommend reading Alfresco’s WCM Tutorial first.

Continue reading here.

A sneak peek:

As Records Management continues to migrate onto the desktops of business users across the enterprise, and as new laws and regulations stipulate how content should be stored, classified, and destroyed, organizations have become caught in a profound business transformation.

Records Managers and IT personnel struggle to meet the day-to-day needs of rank and file employees creating and sharing content while dealing with highlevel challenges such as compliance, e-business initiatives, and knowledge sharing.

Legislation demands that enterprises manage the proper control, classification, storage, auditing, and disposition of records. General business users, however, prefer to continue their reliance on shared file systems and e-mail to productively manage and share content.

Adding to these problems is that up to now, traditional enterprise content management (ECM) systems have been costly to implement and difficult to use. Enterprises of all types – from government agencies and financial institutions to insurance and healthcare companies – can benefit from a robust yet simplified approach to records management.

First off, what is the difference between MPL and GPL?

Well, a primary difference is in the reciprocity requirements. The GPL requires that any derivative work of the original software program be licensed under GPL, whereas the MPL requires only that modifications to one of the files containing Original Code or previous Modifications or a new file containing Original Code or previous Modifications must be released under MPL.

In other words, if GPL code resides anywhere within your end software solution/product (i.e., is compiled in), the entire software code base must be licensed under GPL. In contrast, you may combine/compile MPL code with closed-source code as long as your closed-source code does not mix with the MPL code at the file level.

The bottom line: any OEM or end-user who wants to build a solution using Alfresco Community (GPL) must also release their entire software source code base under GPL. Alfresco provides an exception to this if it involves software licensed under an OSI approved license by virtue of Alfresco’s Free/Libre Open Source Software Exception.

If you are an OEM or end-user who wants to ensure that your modifications, extensions, and customizations to Alfresco remain closed, well that’s where Alfresco’s Enterprise license comes in — it waives the reciprocity requirements of the GPL. This dual-licensing approach to open source software is very common (e.g., MySQL)

So now there are two (independent) reasons to purchase Alfresco Enterprise:

1) Support – to get responsive support and consulting help from Alfresco and their certified partners like Rivet Logic

2) GPL Waiver

Other thoughts:

• Alfresco is now truly open source as defined by OSI and free software as defined by the Free Software Foundation (”free” as in “free speech”).
• And as a result, Alfresco’s community should grow much larger. According to John Newton (Alfresco’s Chairman and CTO), this effect has been immediate.
• Look for more Alfresco integrations with other open source projects.

A great move in all respects.