Open Source

In a blog on the Joomla! Developer Network, Wilco Jansen posted an article describing the changes that have taken place between Joomla!  1.5's beta-1 and beta-2.

The following are some of the changes in user features for Joomla! 1.5 beta-2 that caught my eye: 

• Implemented caching
• Refactored session management for JSession, database, files, APC, and eAccelerator.
• Complete refactoring of the installer
• Added new archive libraries to better support zip|gzip|tar file extraction
• Several improvements on default Joomla! templates, including support of newest browsers
• Added open-id support
• Further LDAP improvements
• Further improvements on the media manager like the ability to remove multiple files, or image preview option
• Added windows support on the FTP layer

Of the above features changes, I'm probably most interested in the implementation of caching as well as the the refactored session management.  These changes should really help improve Joomla's performance on the server.  Plus, as most of you know, I'm a big fan of eAccelerator and any other tools to get the server humming along.

From CMS Report's very beginning, I had every intention to talk about not only those content management systems (CMS) that are open source, but also those CMS that are considered propriety systems.  I personally don't have a problem seeing companies making profit for the products they develop and promote.  Yet, if you look at the majority of posts I have written in the past year you'll find that about 95% of the articles center around open source CMS and not propriety systems.  Part of the reason I don't talk much about propriety CMS is that I just don't have the same access to them as I do with open source software.  However, a tiny article in one of the IT trade ma

Very interesting article from InformationWeek, How to Tell the Open Source Winners from the Losers.

What really keeps an open source project going? I think it all starts when someone in the open source community asks the tough questions. Take for instance this one, "Has XOOPS lost its appeal?". The project will evolve depending on how the project responds to such challenging questions. In this particular case, those closer to the open source project asked in a proactive response, "How do we give XOOPS appeal and user satisfaction?".

On Drupal's sixth birthday Dries Buytaert announced that Drupal 5.0 has been released. The 5.0 version of the content management system is considered a very significant release by its open source community. Consider this, it's been almost half a decade since Drupal 4.0 was released.

After 8 months of development we are ready to release Drupal 5.0 to the world. Today is also Drupal's 6th birthday, so the timing could not be more perfect. Drupal 4.0 was released in 2002 and finally we feel confident to increase the major version number from 4 to 5.

This just goes to show you how small of a world it is. Traffic to CMS Report is usually rather light over the weekend, but I noticed an increase in the number of people visiting the site Saturday and Sunday. These "new" visitors were coming from Lorelle VanFossen's WordPress blog. She recently posted an article on some of the features expected in the yet to be released WordPress 2.1.

Ryan Boren, one of the lead WordPress developers, has been releasing preview information on WordPress 2.1, along with some other well-know WordPress developers, testers, and users. Here are some teasers about WordPress 2.1, due out soon...

Brad Baker posted on the Joomla! Developer Network an article discussing how one can can contribute to their open source community. While Mr. Baker's article are focused on Joomla!, I think his comments could apply to any open source project. I especially like how he concludes his article.

Beta 4 for phpBB 3.0 has been released. This time around users of the forum application will find that it also contains something new, an update path.

With this beta an update path is provided, though being not fully supported. We decided to give away the proposed update package to let it properly test and fix any remaining issues encountered before using this as the primary method of updating. This means that you should test the update and report any bugs or issues you notice, but not depend on a successful update - you should still not use this beta in a live environment and you should always be able to completely remove your installation to perform a fresh install.

Developers and users of five content management systems (CMS) have been anxiously waiting for Packt Publishing to announce the winner of their Packt Open Source CMS Award. Packt Publishing is expected to announce on Tuesday, November 14th, the top three CMS along with the winner.

The winning CMS will get US $5,000, the second will get US $3,000 and the third placed finalist will get US $2,000.

As I mentioned a couple months ago, the top five CMS were nominated by the public are all that remain eligible for the award. Those five CMS include: