[Ecm] [igenko-dev] Re: igenko vs. Nuxeo 5 EP

[Stefane Fermigier]

Hi,

you are asking many question and raising many interesting points, I  
won't be able to reply to all of them right now, but here are some  
answers / comments:

On May 29, 2008, at 8:38 AM, Hendy Irawan wrote:
> Regarding EJB3 vs Spring.
>
> Nuxeo company is a JBoss certified vendor, which probably is a  
> reason of so many JBoss technologies used inside Nuxeo.

Our focus is really more on the Java EE 5 standard than on a  
particular software vendor implementation.

We've started by adopting the JBoss 4 stack, because at the time it  
was the most advanced open source appserver on the road to Java EE 5  
certification, but we want to be able to support every Java EE 5  
appserver (as long as there as customers for it).

We've been working on Glassfish support for some time, and will  
announce something about it soon. We're also ready to work on  
supporting any other Java EE 5 appserver in the market, if customers  
are willing to pay for the additional work (or to contribute the work  
they would do themselves to make it happen).

> I would presume that JBoss won't be so happy if Nuxeo is using Spring.

We're not specially concerned with pleasing JBoss, more with making  
our developers and customers happy :) And we believe that going with  
the standard (Java EE 5) would help us get our platform adopted the  
major accounts we are targeting as a company.

> Even if the implementations of those parts are not jointly  
> developed, the interfaces and service descriptions should be. i.e.  
> in the style like OSGi compendium. The whiteboard and extender OSGi  
> best practice patterns should be embraced, which decouples these  
> modules from the runtimes.
>
> I'd take for example the OSGi configuration admin service. There was  
> never a problem of using Felix CM bundle on Equinox runtime. And  
> hopefully, such flexibility would be possible with regard to igenko  
> and Nuxeo bundles.
>
> I would presume that's one of the exact goals of OSGi inception in  
> the first place, isn't it? I hope Peter Kriens can give more  
> thoughts about this. (I apologize for CC-ing this message to you too).

Right. Our most immediate motivation was to be able to use some  
components unchanged both in a Java EE container and in Eclipse RCP.

>
> - Functionnalities : Nuxeo seems to be more "Entreprise content
> management" oriented than Igenko will. We are more focused on the
> website/eCommerce side
> I would agree on this.

You are right about Nuxeo: our focus is on ECM, i.e. providing an  
infrastructure to manage all unstructured information in the  
enterprise, not just websites.

The Nuxeo WebEngine, which we have yet to announce formally but is  
already in our mercurial repository, will be an option for people  
wanting to develop "websites" on top of the Nuxeo platform.

> For the moment (but that is only my advice, other contributors may
> have a different one), I don't plan to merge Igenko with Nuxeo
> platform. Igenko is for me (and I think for other contributors) a way
> to play with and to learn new technologies without having to learn big
> enterprise solutions.
>
> Also, Igenko is very Web 2.0 oriented, including on area where
> customers are not ready yet (Flex website for most of them). The Flex
> side and how it will be possible to build component and content
> oriented websites is something that is really important for us.
>
> I can't comment on the above, hopefully Nuxeo community can provide  
> more insights about this. What I'd think is that Nuxeo core platform  
> can be usable without "the whole shebang". i.e. I'd presume that  
> Nuxeo is integrated on a "code to interfaces" basis, rather than  
> concrete classes.

We've designed the Nuxeo Platform (sometimes called the "Service  
Platform") so that it can be used a a pure service provider (using  
either local or remote calls) for people who want / need to develop  
applications that have to deal with content.

> If Nuxeo does adhere to OSGi best practices that Peter Kriens  
> envisions, there should be no problem in hot-plugging/hot-swapping  
> implementations during development, or even during runtime! This is  
> something I've long wanted to see in action. ;-)

In theory, yes. In practice, there is still a lot of work to make it  
happen, but we're working in this direction (more on this in June or  
September, hopefully).

> Regarding OSGi runtime, I'd also raise awareness of the OPS4J and  
> Pax projects. (http://wiki.ops4j.org/confluence/display/ops4j/Open+Participation+Software+for+Java 
> )

Thanks for the info.

We're also thinking about using Guice at some point (specially if we  
can find a way to make Guice and OSGi work well together).

> A slight problem is licensing. Where Nuxeo (LGPL) and OPS4J (Apache  
> 2.0) has flexibly open licenses, igenko uses GPLv3 which can really  
> be troublesome for commercial companies.

You're absolutely right. We can't mix GPL licenced code with our own.

> For integration efforts I think there has to be willingness from  
> igenko developers to license parts of its components as LGPLv3.

It's up to them, and I have to learn more about the differences  
between LGPL v2 and v3, but this is an option.

> Looking forward to all your comments.
>
> Anyway, I would be very interested to know the following things  
> about Nuxeo :
> - How many external contributors have you regarding to Nuxeo  
> employees ?

I really depends who you call a contributor, but last time I checked  
the commit logs, there had been about 25 commiters from Nuxeo, and 25  
from outside of Nuxeo.

>
> - You seems to have POJOs like us, do you use a JCR mapping framework
> like Jcrom or Jackrabbit OCM for that ?

No.

>
> - If I want to build a website based on Nuxeo, Nuxeo provides some JSF
> components and template that I use to create my website project,
> that's it ? Is there a Backoffice GUI for power users or is it build
> by developpers ?

You should check out the WebEngine, once we announce it will the full  
doco.

>
> - Did you use some reflection framework like cglib for lazy loading  
> support ?

I don't think so but I may be wrong.

>
> - Do you export your POJOs in other technologies (Javascript for
> example) ? If yes, what technologies do you use for that ?

We're using at least Seam Remoting.

>
> - Could you explain us how you have manage publication on the JCR
> side. Did you used JCR workspaces ?

I'll let someone else answer this question.

>
> - Could say us what are, from your point of view, the key differences
> between Alfresco and Nuxeo ?

 From a technical point of view, Alfresco is monolitic and Nuxeo is  
highly componentized (through the use of OSGi).

   S.

--
Stefane Fermigier, CEO, Nuxeo
Open Source, Java EE based, Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
New! Nuxeo TV on http://nuxeo.blip.tv/
Web: http://www.nuxeo.com/ - Tel: +33 1 40 33 79 87


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.nuxeo.com/pipermail/ecm/attachments/20080529/ac020029/attachment.htm>