Nikoport

In a very interesting move, CodeGear (aka known as Borland) has released Delphi for PHP, now this is a tool, which by name is quite a thing i have been waiting for. This is a RAD development environment, only for Windows, but remembering that Borland has a good history releasing products for othe platforms i am sure, that in the case of success the next platform will be Linux - there are millions of PHP enthusiasts all around the world, who will be more then excited getting such a tool for development under Linux. If not, there will be hundreds of people who will take over the open source framework of VCL for PHP that Borland(CodeGear) has provided, and implement it for Linux and Os X.

The Delphi for PHP features a very large collection of built-in components as usual for such development tools. There are even some components, that use AJAX for database access (MySQL and Interbase are supported, more database support is promised in the nearest future). The price for those who will buy it until the 31st of march is 261 euros, after that the price will rise to 308 euros. If its good as i hope, this is a software, i am going to get in the next couple of hours. =O)

I am downloading the Trial now, and for me it is the most excited and unexpected product for quite some time. I hope, that CodeGear with this Delphi for PHP will have a big list of successes as they have had in 80s and 90s. I am surely going to drop a few lines here on this article about the Delphi for PHP in the nearest future. Is this the tool, that is going to change the situation for dying Borland (CodeGear), and reposition the market around the PHP, ignore for so many years by the major developers ? I hope so.

Who’s going to be the next one to adopt their tool for PHP ? Microsoft with a .NET for PHP ?

Google and Microsoft together have joined the OpenAjax alliance, which is quite a funny fact, because Google actually is one of the co-finders of this alliance. It is a kind of weird when a co-founder delays its decision about joining a project that he created. This fact is a very important issue for the future of the Ajax, as having so many enterprises on board, who influences a lot the development of the hottest net application strategy of the last years will hopefully help them to develop a new strategy for Ajax development. A very important fact, which is quite forgotten by a lot of people, is that at the same time W3C is developing a new standard for Ajax, and this whole thing may turn OpenAjax vs W3C, and since i believe that W3C do not have a lot of credit lately, they better join forces with OpenAjax or they risk end their standard development which will be ignored by the vast majority of the browser developers. Important notice is that between those who participate in OpenAjax alliance there is a big important name missing - Apple Inc, i guess they are going to join at some point, cause all other major browser developers including Opera are there. Important to notice, that besides browser developers some big names for the server side applications and servers are there, such as BEA, Oracle, Sun and Sofware AG. The big question is who’s going to be the first to publish the specification, and who’s specification is going to be really adopted by the vendors.

Microsoft has announced, that it will open the source code of the FoxPro core modules to their CodePlex community development site. This announcement comes just a couple of days after telling the world, that the last FoxPro version, will be really the last FoxPro. FoxPro times have passed and a lot of products, even Microsoft itself with Access and SQL Server defines the borders and frontiers, where are not much space left for FoxPro, though for some of the cases FoxPro still may be one of the best choices available.

It seems, that the big corporation decide to make a commercial product into an “open source”, only in the case when this commercial product do not have a future anymore. A good example to compare would be Borland with its Interbase database (from closed to open source and back), and Sun with Star Office (closed->open source->both ways). It seems to be a pretty common practice, for a product survival, since Netscape has turned its dying Navigator into flourishing and powerful Firefox. I believe, that the decision of turning FoxPro open source is something, that should have appeared already some time ago, this way a lot of work and forces would be saved from disappearing.

These all open-source community troubles with hackers happened on a regular basis, but this time, such software as a Wordpress was affected, which has without any doubt, the biggest blogging base on the net. This time, a hacker, has managed to alter the source available for download, which people all over the net has downloaded last week, including some back-doors and stuff like that.

No matter what the fact is, the most important point about this attack is very clear - such thing would hardly ever happened to a close source program. First of all, only in an open-source project it is possible for someone completely unknown to contribute to the software development directly, without strong control, secondly - someone who is working for a firm, will have some serious legal difficulties, based on the contract, the firm will most probably sue “the contributor” and hence, he won’t be able to find any reasonably job in our industry, but in open-source you are just an email, registered somewhere at the free email service, like Google or Hotmail.

I think that open-source community should use this chance and the lesson by learning and improving the security system. Previously, I have praised a lot wordpress developers, and i still do, such thing could have happened to any popular open-source project. Now the most important is to implement the system, which would protect users from such attacks, increasing the security of the contribution code, increasing the difficulty of such attack again, but i don’t believe in any real measure which would allow eliminate such threats at all, since open-source idea is based on the trust and willingness to help, which sometimes is just a wish to harm.

Sun has finally decided to open Java to the community - may be a concurrence from microsoft with .NET made them finally do it, may be even someone inside have finally realized, that it is the best way to help java grow, i don’t know, but i have no doubt at all that it is a good idea. “Free Range” as they have called this announcement, for which i have been waiting for a … ghm … let me see … a LOT of years … GNU General Public License (GPL) is the license which is being used by Sun, which is a very good solution, in my opinion. Both Java SE(JDK) and Java Micro Edition are released under it, when my favorite JEE is still being under Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), though sun is promising to move it under GPL as well.
But wait a second is Java really free, cause it seems improbable …

From Sun’s site:
Q:
Are you open sourcing the Java language or the Java SE platform specifications?
A:
We are not open sourcing the Java programming language, nor the platform APIs and specifications, which are governed by the JCP. We’re open sourcing Sun’s implementations of the Java SE and Java ME specifications.

No, java language is still a closed source (remember, microsoft is watching you), but Java’s implementation - JDK is going to be released under GPL, which will allow creation of alternative java implementations.

Having started working with java somewhere between 1997 and 1998 (yeap, the good old java 1 with AWT and the rest of the wagon), seeing one or two bettas of JAVA 2 with the swing, and then impatiently waiting each month for a newer versions, testing betas, writing applications, fixing the bugs … Java made a long journey with me during all those years, until 2005 when i have switched myself more to .NET. Right now i am looking to get back in touch with java and explore more of the stuff released recently … One thing i was really missing all those years was a reasonable hosting for JSP, maybe with all those announcements and the buzz, more hosting providers will open the doors to java, it is certainly deserves it.

and for the last … Open JDK … i am excited to see some alternative java implementations in the nearest future … This is a way to go …

I was really shocked today to hear that Adobe is about to give their javascript engine to Mozilla. To give and for free, no payment and apparently no interest from Adobe’s side. It is going to be connected to the SpiderMonkey under the Tamarine project and should be available in firefox as early as already in the year 2008 (version 3.5 or 4).

Just to give you an idea about what it is - this is an Actionscript 3 engine is an implementation of unfinished!!! specification of the version 4 of ECMAscript. This ActionScript-Javascript code is one of the most important parts of the Flash 9 engine. Yes, the Adobe(Macromedia) flagship product - Flash in its latest (ninth) incarnation. I am still astonished about this fact. No doubts, Adobe is doing this for some good reason but so far as of now - i really dont know what is the reason.

Adobe is going to face stronger concurrence from Microsoft - Expression Designer and Metro formats should be coming on the market in the next couple of months, and everybody knows, that when redmond guys are coming to the market, then you better watch out and hold on. Perhaps it is a move to help develop since a lot of years the stagnated javascript in browsers, as by no chance would they come to Microsoft and ask them about the cooperation in this area. Franz Hecker ( executive director of Mozilla foundation) has already written in his blog his thoughts about this cooperation. He expects as a result following changes:

• Faster AJAX applications executions
  

  In its own testing Adobe has seen up to a ten times speedup of ActionScript applications due to the introduction of the AVM2 technology

• Major cooperations with Adobe in the future (for Adobe gaining a partner such as Mozilla is a very good thing)
• Innovative web 2.0 applications development speed increase (dont know about this one, as long as IE is still around =O) )

I anticipate more such “donations” to mozilla in the nearest future, as a sign of Firefox support, especially from IBM such move would be less then surprising.

This year i have started testing different CMS’s, but what i have seen until this moment, have not satisfied me much. Having digged into the code of the various sites across the net, and having been used some corporate CMS i have to say, that none of them were close enough to convince me of using them for the Portwatch. I think there are a lot of the CMS developers, who have no idea for what and for whom they are writing and creating the software.

Yes i am going to expand the PortWatch a little bit - with its own site, and as i am inviting various people to work with me together, i think that this project may even have some kind of a future =O)

From those which i have recently seen:

• Joomla seems to be bound to the tables-design, and its a big pity, cause many of the Joomla’s features are attracting me
• Plone - more options are available here and since its a python-based CMS it should be possible to use almost anywhere with almost any reasonable hosting provider
• OpenCMS is java-based and hence i cannot use with my current hosting provider
• All those Nukes(PhpNuke or even .NetNuke) seem to have a lot of “Nuke” problems with the security
• All blog-based CM systems like Wordpress or Textpattern do not impress me much with their capabilities for this purpose.

From all this things i think i am going to go for Plone, as it would be pretty ignorant and arrogant to be writing about the standards while using a system which does not implement them =O). Currently i have a small list of the CMS, that i would like to investigate in my free time, there are a lot of systems, and maybe one of them is the one, which i am looking for ? Maybe Xaraya ? =O)

p.s.: This site has a lot of info available about the more then hundred available CMS

3 more open source firms should be preparing to be aquired by the Oracle in the nearest future, when believing this article at the business week. After aquiring the InnoDB, now its “Zend Time” as it seems. It would make enough sense, from the business point of view - securing all alternative to microsoft development, positions. As recently Borland has announced that after disappointing year results, they are going to sell , maybe it is a good time, to buy them, before some other “sharks” would do that ? I strongly believe, that “saving” the Borland is much more important, then securing Sleepycat Software deal, though i understand that these deals have different dimensions.

For me, as a developer, seeing such firm as a Borland, being bought by Microsoft would be the worse nightmare in years. Yes, i know that Borland is not an open source, and that recently it was not so successful, but behind this name, there are great web developer communities (for some time i was making part some of them), and no doubt, that if some of the product would be fixed, then the number of the developers would greatly increase. It would give the market one more chance, and a bit more of concurrence, cause the principal idea of the delphi and the kylix is absolutely great.