Hi Andy
In a way I am surprised to read your E-mail. Especially since you
claim to be a contributor to JBoss and XDoclet. I would imagine that
you have a deep knowledge into Java/JSP and App Server in general.
Each Community, as the Magnolia one, NEEDS people like you to help
them go ahead. So it's really sad you want to jump off.
But what really surprises me is that with your undoubtedly qualified
developer knowledge, you did not seem focused enough to find the few
reasons for Magnolia to move from 2.1 to 3.0. You definitely would
have separated the Magnolia APPLICATION from the Jackrabbit
REPOSITORY. Yes, the guys at Magnolia did a tremendous job in
updating the Magnolia CMS. You will not find anything similar and as
easy to use (and for free!). Magnolia would definitely be up-dateable
easily, if it was only for Magnolia! But the reason why Magnolia 2.1
and 3.0 are not compatible is the CONTENT REPOSITORY API FOR JAVA
TECHNOLOGY (aka JSR 170 standard). So unfortunately the reason for
not being compatible is NOT the CMS, but the changes the repository
had gone through! On the other side you also must accept (in fact, we
all appreciate that) that Magnolia is growing up. Magnolia is very
common among large enterprises and therefore has to meet the
according requirements. These enterprise specific enhancements
("Modules") have been separated from the Community Edition, simply to
not confuse the Community. The core is absolutely the same for CE and
EE!
I myself was also disappointed that I could not migrate easily from
2.1 to 3.0 (and I got many projects of all sorts of sizes) but we
really can't blame Magnolia International for that. In fact, we can
not blame the guys from the JSR 170 project either, since the changes
to the repository were necessary and important (but made it
incompatible to prior versions).
However, Andy, if I would have invested all the work you did for your
company's website (seems like 2 years) I would not give up that
easily. In our business we know that there are fifty ways to solve a
problem! One solution would be getting the "Packager" from Ralph
Hirning, another one, what I have done, is to write a small "Node
Transfer" servlet. The servlet simply reads from one repository and
writes into the other. Most websites I migrated where done in 4 to 8
hours... Knowing, that the "incompatibility" is due to the repository
might help you figure out a migration path. If not, just drop me an E-
Mail and I gladly will help you find a way.
But what I don't agree with, is your assumption that Magnolia "has
lost touch" with the community! Magnolia has still one of the largest
communities! There are more than 150'000 Magnolia downloads
worldwide. So assuming, that a quarter of the downloads have turned
into projects, results in more than 37'000 installations. Magnolia is
really very easy to use and therefore users do not have many reasons
to write to the user list. On the other hand the repository and
Magnolia have been packed with so many features and utilities, that
it reached a degree of complexity which does not anymore allow a
developer to just quickly dig into some source and develop a web site.
BTW: there were several discussions and suggestions in the dev and
user list on how to migrate to Magnolia 3.0!
Well, too bad you want to leave the community. But take it as a
personal advise: I would reconsider your decision. There is no Open
Source CMS out there which comes close to the "dream-team" Magnolia/
Content Repository. The power is in the integration of an easy to use
CMS and a powerful, hierarchically organized, repository.
Good luck (and hope to have you back soon)!
Giancarlo
On May 15, 2007, at 6:08 PM, Andreas Schaefer wrote:
Hi Magnolia Team / Company
That is not going to work with me and so I am going to replace
Magnolia with another open-source project or use plain old JSP
pages because I cannot afford to buy a $10,000 license or to waste
a huge amount of time upgrading it. Upgrading within 2.x was bad
enough but that is too much.
This is what I had to say on my blog (madplanet.com/weblog):
As a former contributor to JBoss and XDoclet I know how much work
goes into an open-source project and I do not mind if a company
does support an open-source project and sell an advanced version
for profit. An open-source project can be good for companies as
well as the community and can give us all many opportunities. If a
company starts to change the application in a way so that it is
incompatible with previous versions and does not provide any
migration path then it starts to trade in the community for a few
paying customer then it is killing the fabric of the future success
of its open-source project which eventually hampering the success
of its for-profit version.
That happened to me with Magnolia, a JSR-170 based (Web) Content
Management System, I started to use two years ago. Even within the
major release 2 an upgrade was difficult and time consuming but I
was successful at the end. Now with the new major release 3 I was
told that there is no migration path except writing my own tool or
buying a tool. This is the straw that finally broke the camel's
back. How can I trust that this is not happening in the next
release and that the upgrading tool is still working. I finally had
to pull the plug because I cannot afford the time to deal with the
upgrade especially when there is no trivial migration because
Magnolia use JSR-170 in a non transparent way.
My companies website is too simple to warrant a $10,000 license or
wasting a lot of time with it. I can do it with JSP, a little bit
of HTML and SSH to copy the files around. At the end I probably do
not safe any time but I will spend the effort when I am going to
change the web site and not when I have to upgrade the underlying
software. Upgrading JBoss with Tomcat and a JSP application takes
minutes rather than days.
The point that upgrading Magnolia was hardly discussed on their
user mailing list is an indication that they lost touch with the
community. Today they lost another one, me.
Signing off - Andy
----------------------------------------------------------------
for list details see
http://documentation.magnolia.info/docs/en/editor/stayupdated.html
----------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------
for list details see
http://documentation.magnolia.info/docs/en/editor/stayupdated.html
----------------------------------------------------------------
