Free as in free beer?
Published by admin on
Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 05:06:00
- Filed under General, News, Announcements
Hi there!
This time I’m back with some personal news ;-)
It’s been a while now that I started working with and for the Servoy platform in various different projects, with my employers during the day working on regular Servoy solutions (and sometimes banging my head like we all do with this wonderful tool when we don’t get it, you know, or when we are looking for some piece of information and vainly look for it in the wiki, and when we start searching the forum and find people in various state of despair having a vaguely related problem, looking for THE solution… and generally finding it) and as Servoy Stuff Open Source developer during the night, building plugins and beans and writing tutorials and maintaining this web site and collaborating on the ServoyForge project and generally working for/with/helping people all around the globe.
As times went by, I have been sollicited by a number of Servoy users for various crazy stuff and I must say that I enjoyed it a lot. I enjoyed it so much more than what I was doing during the day that it’s been a while now that I started looking for a way out of my employment, but doing it in a way that would be the less disturbing for the projects I was reponsible of, thus spending time training people that would be able to take over, and also finding a way to ensure some kind of revenue because you know, well, as we say in french, “il faut bien mettre du beurre dans les épinards!” - you need some butter in your spinach ;-)
So that’s it now. I resigned a month ago from my company and will be free of my contract with them starting this friday! (Sept. 17th)
What will I do?
1/ I will be working half time for an Australian employer (still living in Canada though, - that’s the internet for you!), while
2/ setting aside half of my remaining time for various plugins/beans projects that I am involved with right now (or still in discussions), and
3/ the other remaining half doing some of the Servoy Stuff that you all know and love ;-)
Now what will I do of the last remaining half will you ask? That’s simple:
4/ I will find my way in the Servoy Open Source subversion code and help patching and enhancing Servoy as much as I can, of course!
OK, but what does this mean? Will there be no more Open Source stuff coming from here?
Quite the contrary!
The way I see it, Open Source just doesn’t mean that I cannot make a living too, right?
While some projects might end up being strictly closed for some clients who will want it this way, I will still be releasing Open Source components, plugins and beans that will hopefully benefit others, and of course I will still maintain and enhance my current Servoy Stuff projects (BrowserSuite, VelocityReport and the others), except that I intend to do it even more!
And the only thing that will change apparently is that I will be for hire - especially for wild Java/Servoy projects: the crazier, the better ;-)
So who you gonna call? Servoy Stuff!
What kind of future for Servoy Stuff?
Published by admin on
Sunday, July 18, 2010 - 00:01:04
- Filed under General, News, Announcements
Yes, that’s the question I’m asking myself right now.
Although this blog will still be relevant, as the expression of personal ideas and opinions about Servoy/Java development and the Servoy microcosm, I’m still undecided about what to do with the rest of the site.
Now that ServoyForge is out and is so much more adapted to host and maintain my plugins/beans and other various Open Source projects, with all the tools available there (svn repository with anonymous access and commiters access, extended issue tracking, version management and roadmap, wiki, file downloads, forums, user managements, etc.), there’s not much justification for keeping this site up.
In any case, I will have to get rid of all the redundant information, make sure that people are properly redirected to the ServoyForge relevant projects, but this means that most of the content of Servoy Stuff is going to be deleted.
It’s a bit of a shame since this site has been very successful… Looking at the stats today, I see that more than 14 months after launch, there has been 13303 visits and 26593 downloads since I started tracking them in July 2009: the tutorials being the most successful, followed by the BrowserSuite and the VelocityReport of course…
Anyway, I guess that apart from this blog, and maybe the FAQ (that needs updating, really), there’s not much to keep.
So, unless you have some very good ideas of content that you would like to find here, a new (stripped) version of the site will be available soon, with the blog being the primary content this time, and all the rest freely available from ServoyForge.
Still hope to see you around!
Would you rather take the blue pill or the red pill?
Published by admin on
Tuesday, July 6, 2010 - 01:00:03
- Filed under General, News, Development
Recently on Servoy’s forum someone linked to a blog where he started putting his impressions about FileMaker (described as ‘the comfort zone’) and Servoy (with its ‘learning curve’).
Nice subject, I thought, you can write tons of stuff about that’s for sure!
Somehow his dilemma kinda reminded me of that scene in The Matrix where Neo is offered a choice between the blue pill (a nice little dream) and the red pill (the shocking reality). When comparing FileMaker to Servoy in terms of software engineering, the choice is strikingly simlilar to the one offered there.
The blue pill:
- everyone can, without much effort, build enterprise software
- no need to learn about computer stuff… that’s for geeks only
- Object Oriented Programming? Come on, do we really need that?
- transactions, who the hell is using this anyway?
- programming languages are not necessary, you can do it all with wizards nowadays
- no need to know SQL to query a database intelligently, the program will do everything for you
- naming conventions? that’s so eighties!
- who needs a DB schema today? normalization? who cares, just put everything in a flat table, the program will sort everything out for you.
- etc. etc.
The red pill:
- building enterprise level software is a craft, and it takes long years of experience and learning to be able to write good software
- you will need to understand how things work to build things right
- if you want to build sustainable code, there’s no way out of OOP
- care about transactions in multi-users/multi-threads/multi-threads/multi-nodes is essential to your data safety
- no wizard of any sort will be capable of building an entire software of enterprise quality for you, you will have to do it yourself
- creating/querying database without a good understanding of SQL is going straight into a wall
- you need to organize your code/methods/forms/objets right from the very beginning, otherwise you will end up with an unmanageable mess, that you will have no time to rewrite later, and regret deeply
- undestanding database schema, entity-relationships, constrains is something you can’t do without if you are serious about software programming,
- etc. etc.
[Read More…]
What’s with this ServoyForge stuff now?
Published by admin on
Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - 03:07:00
- Filed under General, News, Announcements, Development
You certainly heard about it, you’ve seen it announced on the forum, on ServoyCamp, it soon will be in the Servoy newsletter as well…
You went there, seen it, got the tee-shirt…
Right, but what the hell is this new site about?
Fear not, Servoy Stuff is here to explain all about it!
Let’s look at the blurb, what does it says?
“The mission of ServoyForge is to organize Servoy Open Source projects into a centralized community-owned platform.”
Yes, we have a mission: we want to organize all Servoy Open Source projects, - and yes we could have called it SOS but in the end decided against it, it sounded a little bit too desperate ;-)
What about community-owned platform? To me that’s the interesting part: We owe nothing to no one, aren’t guided by any merchant agenda, - in fact the only agenda we profess to have is that we want the Servoy platform to be the one we dream about!
Are you in?
I gather that if you are still reading this, you probably are…
So how do we propose to do that? Well, still according to the announcement, the site “will enable talented Servoy/Java developers to contribute more easily and will offer innovative Open Source components to the Servoy community at large.”
So is that what it is? Is that it?
Yes, sir: A mean to communicate with other Servoy/Java developers in the world and make things happening!
To that end, we evaluated a few of the best Open Source project management/development platforms available to find the one that would suit best our needs. In the end we chose to build the platform on top of the Redmine system (another community-owned system, BTW).
So what’s in it for you? When you open a project on SourceForge, you benefit from:
- svn repository, complete with members and anonymous access, and a web-based repository browser where external developers can easily browse your code (and you can point them to it with a simple URL too!),
- team management, with role based control on the whole interface for your contributors, reporters, project leaders and other simple users,
- module management, you can activate certain functionalities at will, - or choose not to,
- sophisticated issue-tracker, with status management, role-based attributes, control over categories, time management, workflow, versions roadmap, notifications, all of this accessible from your Eclipse/Servoy installation using Mylyn,
- all activity is logged and accessible (browsable and searchable),
- news management is here for your announcements,
- wiki for your documentation (with versioning enabled), and easy to use syntax
- forums management for your own projects, with email notifications,
- files management for the release you make, and any relevant files,
- document management for your documentation,
- an easy way to be found and be part of a large base of talented contributors and reporters all working together on different projects..
[Read More…]
How not to destroy your Open Source Community before it even exists.
Published by admin on
Monday, June 7, 2010 - 00:08:42
- Filed under General, News, Announcements, Development
While being enthusiastic about Servoy’s announce that Servoy 5.2 will be Open Sourced (see my post on that subject), I really hope that they are going to do it right. What do I mean?
Most major Open Source software are backed up by companies who have interests in it (think of Eclipse and look at how IBM/Adobe and others are major contributors to the project), so it is not unusual for a commercial company to Open Source a product, or even pay part of its staff to maintain one. I will not list again the many benefits that this move can offer (just see what Jan Aleman said in the official press release), the problem is that there can also be very bad consequences if the company is not “open” enough.
About openness, you might remember the famous post about the failephant of the Ushahidi project. This is something to keep in mind.
Yes, in matters of Open Source, there is a flip side of the coin: benefits on one side, big dangers on the other. What will make a big difference when you draw is the company’s attitude towards openness in general.
Now since I like the platform very much, I would like Servoy to get all the benefits and none of the drawbacks.
Josh Berkus, CEO of PostgreSQL Experts Inc (quoted “one of the foremost PostgreSQL consulting firms in the world” on Servoy blog), lately summarized how easy it was to destroy an Open Source community.
Interestingly enough, the Josh Berkus who did this presentation is the very same guy who will be doing next thursday’s webinar about Open Source Servoy and PostgreSQL…
Please read his very informative (yet funny) slides called “10 Ways to Destroy Your Community” - there is also an abridged version for the impatient (funny and informative as well), called “Destroy your Community in 5 easy steps“.
For those of you who also want some background comments about these slides, you can read the post Josh made about Sun and the Ten Ways.
If Sun and dozen others did it so badly, there is still hope that Servoy will do it right…
[Read More…]
10000 visits today!
Published by admin on
Monday, May 17, 2010 - 06:39:11
- Filed under General, News, Announcements, Development, Plugins/beans
Today, not even a year after its launch in May 2009, the Servoy Stuff site is celebrating 10000 visits!
It’s only been a month and a half since the site reached 5000 visits, so I can say that the last 2 months attracted a lot of attention, and I wanted to thank you all for your support!
Be sure that there will be more interesting stuff related to Servoy in the future, so keep coming.
To properly celebrate this, I’ve made publicly available the new VelocityReport plugin, that we’ve created together with Jeff Bader. Version 1.0 is now available for download from the Servoy Stuff site related page.
You’ve heard rumours about it: they say it is going to change forever the way you do reporting in Servoy. The truth is that now you will have yet another powerful option to build your reports.
We coined this one ‘Servoy reports, the easy way’, and you will see that it lives up to its name! :)
Seriously, this is yet another (French Canadian/American) Swiss knife tool for Servoy, you have to try it to believe it. Not only can you build powerful HTML reports and export them to PDF with it, but you can also use it as an internal templating tool or an extended charting tool (with as much options as Google charts) and a barcode tool.
There’s only one thing missing: the long awaited ‘make it work’ button (this one is a special request from Ian ‘Kahuna’ Cordingley ;-) - I’ll see what I can do, Ian!
To make the most of this new stuff, read all about it on the associated google code site.
Enjoy!
Servoy 5.2 Open Source
Published by admin on
Sunday, May 9, 2010 - 21:16:07
- Filed under General, News, Announcements, Servoy
Yes, it’s official, the upcoming 5.2 version of the Servoy platform will be Open Source under the AGPL license.
But what does it mean exactly? Does it mean you will not have to pay for client licenses anymore (as my boss immediately believed when I announced it)?
Of course not! Open Source doesn’t necessarily mean Free!
Rather, you and I will have access to the Java sources of the developer and client, which will allow third parties to get a better understanding of the inner mechanism that drives such and such functionality, and it will ease the process of extending the platform, or patch it with bug fixes.
Does this mean that anyone will be able to do anything with the sources? Nah, although if you have an Open Source project you should be entitled to use the project and enhance it, provided that you Open Source your project too. The AGPL license being based on GPL, you project will have to be Open Source too if you want to freely use the product, otherwise, you will simply continue buying licenses for commercial development you do.
Open Source means access to the source, and as Jan said it in the Press release, it will benefit the worldwide Servoy community. The idea being:
- Vast expansion of the Servoy eco-space
- Increased developer interest
- More extensive options for developers to take control
- Community driven improvements
- Hotfixes can be executed and applied immediately
- Innovative ideas can be shared/tested around the product
That’s quite an ambitious program here, in any case really good news that they are moving towards it!
How I understand it, is that there will be a read-only access to the Servoy SVN repository, meaning that you will be able to build your own version of the platform, and if you find a bug or write an enhancement, you will be able to create a patch against that SVN version and submit it for review to Servoy. Then, depending on the pertinence of your patch, and the orientation that they want the ‘official’ version to follow, they will accept it or not in the SVN trunk. This is how it goes for most of the major platforms (Eclipse being one).
One thing that will be needed also to make this a real Open Source community, is an open support system with a voting system, which will allow every registered users of Servoy to have a say in what are the priorities. This works very well in Eclipse for example where you get a fixed set of votes (20) that you can use on bug fixes/feature requests, the more vote, the more priority a bug fix or feature enhancement will have. This voting system and open issue tracking is an essential part of building a community around a product, and I hope that they are not going to forget about it.
In any case, we will soon have the details of all this, let’s just say for now that there is good hope for an even wider community-driven Servoy platform!
Kudos for this to the Servoy team!
VelocityReport plugin history
Published by admin on
Monday, April 26, 2010 - 06:53:51
- Filed under General, News, Announcements, Development
Jeff Bader contacted me a few months ago because he wanted to Open Source his nice XhtmlRenderer plugin. Basically he couldn’t find the time to support it anymore and he thought that it was kind of competing with the BrowserSuite, so he asked me if I would be interesting in porting it to Servoy 5 and see what could be made out of it.
At the time, I didn’t really know what to do, I knew about the plugin but had never tested it, and I had no real idea how to make it relevant after all the effort I already put into the Browser Suite.
Then, a few weeks later, my boss came to my office with one of her crazy ‘on-the-fly’ requirements for a future project… The project was not that difficult (it involved some kind of management tool to create surveys and to gather results in Servoy), but there was one part that was a bit frightening in it: she showed me the kind of reports she wanted to output from the data gathered. It was 8 to 10 pages long, with each pages having a different structure, one with a simple text, with paragraphs and styles, the second with a table of 8 column and another table of 4 columns (with one big column of text and little results column and background colors to show a kind of graph of the values), the next one with some charts and explanations underneath, etc.
All along I thought: god, it’s going to be a nightmare to create this kind of report dynamically with Servoy and Jasper Reports.
And then I remembered that the last time I had a seemingly impossible report to create in Jasper, I actually did it in HTML in no time! It was for a calendar tool that I have made (in Java, web-based, not in Servoy), with a monthly view of 7 columns x weeks and different ‘events’ with background colors and a certain number of lines of text inside each cell.
I did it in HTML and used the xhtmlrenderer library (aka the Flying Saucer project). What was nice about it was the CSS capabilities of that libary and the fact that it was dead easy to create PDF with CSS styling.
So remembering my usage of the xhtmlrenderer lib to output a report, and knowing that there was this plugin waiting for me to put my nose into it, putting all this together, I saw the light! (It happens to me too, sometimes :)
[Read More…]
Signed beans/plugins for Servoy Stuff
Published by admin on
Friday, April 23, 2010 - 03:34:30
- Filed under General, News, Announcements, Development
Following the latest Java 6 update 19 fiasco, followed a few days later by another buggy release 20, which was forced on our throat thanks to Oracle total lack of care for us developers (without any beta like it was always the case when Sun was… Sun), you will find from now on that every plugins/beans available for download on the Servoy Stuff site will be signed by “Patrick Talbot Open Source Developer”.
This certificate has been provided thanks to the generous offer of Certum CA, a Certificate Authority recognized by Sun in the JVM (works on Mac OS X too, don’t worry!). They offer FREE one year (renewable) certificate for Open Source developers and I am the proof that it’s for real, and this is an initiative that must be applauded these days where companies like Oracle clearly don’t care a bit about us developers, except for our money, I mean.
So once they have installed this certificate (which will be the case when they accept the first time to run Servoy with one of the plugin/bean used in your solution), your clients will never hear about me again, which is fine because I’m shy, really ;-)
On another note, I have found this article on the JavaLobby DZone site which I’m sure you will enjoy as much as I have (the author you know already ;-)
I think we should all support the author who is expressing here some reasonable concern and offering reasonable solutions. The more we all make noise about it, the more Oracle might have its ears scratching and who knows… they might be listening.
I know another company who recently showed that they were ;-)
Java 6u19 and other news
Published by admin on
Monday, April 12, 2010 - 00:11:33
- Filed under General, News
Hi there!
Time flies when you are having fun… I see that my last post was celebrating the 5000 visits and today there are more than 7300 already! I haven’t blog too much lately, again quite busy on some new project that I hope you will like (this is soon to be launched in preview, hold on a little!).
Following the advent of Java 6 update 19 that now add a new constraints to third party plugins/beans, I have updated all the beans/plugins available on the Servoy Stuff site with signed versions as well.
You need to know that if a client (with java 6u19) is trying to connect to Servoy with a smart client and if some of your plugins/beans in your application_server/plugins and application_server/beans are not signed they will not be able to launch their client!
Servoy just updated Servoy 5 to 5.1.2 and Servoy 4 to 4.1.6 to workaround this problem, basically signing all the jar libs they are shipping. Make sure you update. Then to be able to work with third party these must be signed as well.
This is why I now provide signed version of all jars. The only problem is that this is signed with a self-signed certificate, meaning that I didn’t pay a signing authority to confirm that I am who I say I am, (I think I already pay a lot with my time here, and to be quite honest I’m too broke to even consider buying one, to give it to others)… Always a question of money in the end, isn’t it? Now if you want to sponsor me with a real certificate I’d be happy to resign all the plugins and beans for real ;-) but in the meantime the self-signing certificate is working anyway, there is just a nagging screen that your users will see stating that the certificate cannot be verified, and if they want more info, they will see that this is signed by ‘Servoy Stuff’.
Maybe that’s not what you want, in which case you can also sign the plugins/beans yourself, just use the nifty testsigner tool that Johan Compagner just put on the forum, donwload the tool and follow his instructions here: http://forum.servoy. … &t=13974#p73294
Talk to you soon with some new and exciting plugin that will take your reporting in Servoy to the next level…
