LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 29, 2003

MySQL and SAP

Corporate code releases are always an uncertain prospect. The contribution of a large body of code is always welcomed, but only time will tell what sort of development and user community will eventually develop around that code. SAP released its relational database management system (SAP-DB) to great fanfare in October, 2000. Compared to some of that month's other events (Atipa acquires OpenNMS, VA Linux hires the Debian project leader, the PostgreSQL hackers to go work for Great Bridge, EBIZ and the Linux Mall merge, Turbolinux gets $30 million in venture funding, LynuxWorks files for its IPO, Progeny Linux ships its first beta distribution, Linus claims "no show-stopper bugs" in 2.4.0-test10), SAP-DB has been a raging success. Still, relative to the other free database systems (PostgreSQL, MySQL, and perhaps even Interbase/Firebird), SAP-DB has not pulled in a particularly large community.

Nobody can say the same thing about MySQL. This free relational database manager, despite a lingering reputation for lacking the features that "real" database systems have, claims some four million installed systems. MySQL's user community is large and strong, and MySQL AB, the copyright holder for MySQL, is apparently thriving. But MySQL's "fast, reliable, but still a toy" reputation (at least in some circles) is probably not helping MySQL AB win those really big contracts.

So the announcement of a partnership between MySQL AB and SAP makes a fair amount of sense for both sides. Under this deal, MySQL AB gets the right to sell commercial versions of SAP-DB, which will be relicensed entirely under the GPL and renamed. SAP-DB will thus become a product much like the current MySQL offerings, but one aimed at "enterprise" deployments.

MySQL AB gets a new product to sell which has a lengthy large-deployment track record and which should prove easier to market to large companies. SAP's sales force and existing large company customer base should also prove most helpful in that regard. And, of course, MySQL gets to mix together the best of both systems to create "the next-generation MySQL open source enterprise database."

SAP, meanwhile, gets access to a brand with great respect in the free software community. MySQL AB has a proven ability to create an active developer and user community around a free database system; this skill will come to great use in reviving interest in the database formerly known as SAP-DB. More significantly, however, is the fact that MySQL AB has figured out how to sell proprietary licenses to a free software product, pleasing its customers while simultaneously avoiding alienating the developer community. The company's ability to walk that fine line bodes well for SAP-DB's future.

If there is a down side to this deal, it is that the SAP-DB client libraries, which were formerly licensed under the LGPL, will, in the future, only be available under the GPL. That change is crucial to the entire strategy, of course; it is the lever that will force proprietary software vendors to buy a commercial license. But it is a change which will upset users who were making use of the previous LGPL licensing; a look at the sapdb-general mailing list shows a handful of messages from users who are unhappy with the new state of affairs.

Of course, those users have not really lost anything; the current SAP-DB release cannot and will not be taken away from them. They simply will not have the same access to future releases. SAP-DB users have the right to fork the code base and maintain the code independently, and they might just do so. But it is hard to see a forked SAP-DB attracting a larger community than SAP-DB has now, especially when the folks over at MySQL appear to be having all the fun.

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The SCO case gets weirder

We were planning to keep SCO off the front page this week. Really. But no such luck.

This week's fun centers around a press release issued by Novell. But first some background: SCO, recall, has been trumpeting its ownership rights in the Unix source and patents for some time. The main "SCOsource" page states:

The patent claim was effectively debunked by Don Marti back in March, but the ownership claim has gotten an easier ride. Until now. Novell, the company which obtained Unix from ATT, has issued a press release taking issue with SCO's claims. In particular, Novell is asserting that it still owns the copyrights on the Unix code base:

Novell's claim notwithstanding, SCO has been quoted reiterating its claim to the Unix copyright (and threatening to sue Linus Torvalds for patent infringement as well). But SCO's annual report, as filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, includes an interesting disclosure:

SCO, it would seem, is not the copyright owner; it is simply the paperwork shuffler, working for a 5% cut. That is not quite the picture that the company has been trying to present.

Whether this turn of events weakens SCO's case against IBM remains to be seen. SCO rushed out a response stating that it doesn't matter:

In fact, the original complaint does talk mostly about trade secrets and breach of contract. It does also, however, assert (once again) ownership of Unix and claim that IBM's actions have caused a reduction in the value of its Unix assets. Novell's claim challenges SCO's standing in the case; it may also be used by IBM's lawyers to question SCO's truthfulness and good faith in general.

Regardless of how the IBM suit goes, however, it now seems clearer than ever that the 1500 or so recipients of SCO's "Letter to Linux customers" can simply file that letter next to their AOL disks. SCO's case is not about patents or copyrights; the company has no standing to go after random Linux users. This letter was pure FUD and possibly libelous.

Novell does not stop with its copyright assertion. The company's press release challenges SCO to produce its evidence, and hints at legal moves to come:

It is also interesting to note that LinuxTag's lawyers have given notice to SCO Group GmbH that SCO must cease its "unfair competitive practices" as embodied in its attacks against Linux. If SCO can't produce some convincing evidence for its claims soon, it may well find itself dealing with lawsuits from the other side of the courtroom.

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Open source content management systems roundup

[This article was contributed by Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

The third Open Source Content Management (OSCOM) Conference this week has all eyes on Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS). Well, maybe not all eyes, but Open Source CMS are certainly getting quite a bit of attention this week.

There are far, far too many Open Source CMS projects under development to touch on all of them here, so consider this an overview of some of the more popular, interesting and/or capable CMS projects being used today. Note that this includes actual CMS systems, not Content Management Framework (CMF) projects like Midgard, Mason or Zope, which typically require significant assembly work before they can be deployed for any particular application.

Almost all Open Source CMS projects support features like RSS feeds, threaded comments, user authentication, templates, integrated search engines or support for external engines, version control, in-browser editing, scheduled publishing, support for multiple languages and so on. Perhaps the most important feature for most developers is which language the project is written in, and how easily extensible it is.

Slashcode, more frequently referred to as just Slash, is arguably the best-known CMS out there. Slash is pretty much aimed at news/Weblog-type sites, so it may not be best for general purpose sites. Slashcode is written in Perl, uses a MySQL backend and is available under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Slashcode is owned by OSDN.

In a similar vein, there's Scoop, the code that powers kuro5hin and a slew of other news sites and weblogs. Like Slashcode, Scoop is written in Perl with a MySQL backend and is available under the GPL. If you're looking to run a news site or Weblog, but prefer PHP to Perl, there's PHP-Nuke, PostNuke and PHPSlash.

For more of a "professional" approach to running a news site, there's Cofax. Cofax ("Content Object Factory") was mostly developed by staff at KnightRidder.com and Philly.com with participation from other Knight Ridder newspapers. Cofax is designed to help simplify the presentation of newspaper content on a Website, and to speed up real-time Web publication. One example of Cofax in action is the Silicon Valley site; it is also used to power more than 30 Knight Ridder newspaper sites. The Cofax CMS is written in Java, uses MySQL or Microsoft SQL Server for data storage, and is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License. The instructions on the Cofax site are Windows-specific, but it has also been tested under Sun OS 5.8, and could probably be coaxed to work on a Linux server as well.

There are a number of CMS projects for more general sites. Though Red Hat is best known for its Linux distribution, it also offers an Enterprise Content Management System. Red Hat's CMS is written in Java, requires PostgreSQL or Oracle and a J2EE servlet container and is supported on Red Hat, Solaris, Windows, AIX or HP-UX. Unlike most of Red Hat's offerings, the Red Hat CMS is available under the IBM Public License rather than the GPL.

Another all-purpose CMS is OpenACS. OpenACS is a little different, in that it is written in Tcl rather than Perl, Java or PHP. OpenACS has a number of applications such as bug trackers, chat, e-commerce features and much more. The OpenACS code is distributed under the terms of the GPL, and requires AOLserver and an Oracle or PostgreSQL backend. The Creative Commons site is just one example of a site powered by OpenACS.

Where would we be without Wiki-type sites? There are a number of Wiki-inspired packages out there, but tikiwiki may be the most full-featured. Tiki is PHP-based and offers LDAP authentication, webmail, tasks and notepad features, image galleries, games and a slew of other features not normally found in Wiki implementations. If you'd like to get a feel for Tiki, check out the demo site.

Bricolage is another general purpose content management and publishing system. Bricolage is written in Perl and uses PostgreSQL to store content. Macworld recently announced that it is using Bricolage to power its site. If you'd like to run Bricolage you'll need Apache with mod_perl and Mason. Bricolage is published under a BSD-style license.

The WebGUI folks call their solution a "application framework" rather than a CMS, but it does the job just as well. WebGUI is written in Perl and can use MySQL or PostgreSQL as a data store. It will run on Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, and Windows with Apache or IIS. The Law Society of Western Australia is using WebGUI for their site. WebGUI is available under the GPL and is developed by Plain Black Software.

OpenCms, is pretty flexible in that it will run on LAMP platforms with Tomcat or on Windows platforms with Oracle and BEA Weblogic. OpenCms is used on a number of sites, including the Tribeca Film Festival site. OpenCms offers a WYSIWYG editor through a Web browser, but only for folks using Internet Explorer. Development for OpenCms is coordinated by Alkacon Software.

This is, of course, just the tip of the iceberg. There are quite a few other Open Source CMS projects out there, curious readers can start with the OSCOM Matrix of CMS projects.

Finally, OpensourceCMS is another site worth visiting if you're shopping for an Open Source CMS. Especially if you're looking to test-drive Open Souce CMS packages before actually messing with installation. The nice thing about Open Source is that you can always "try before you buy" but the installation process for many CMS packages can be a bit painful, or at least very time-consuming. OpensourceCMS does not have every CMS project available, but they have a pretty good list of demos you can try out.

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