The JBoss Labs team is packaging up it's alpha release of JBoss Wiki 1.0, a JSR 168 compliant wiki that is designed to take advantage of the features of JBoss Portal 2.0. JBoss Labs wanted to use a portletized wiki and after a survey of the wiki products out there, the Labs Team, with the help of the community, decided that JBoss Wiki should be created to leverage the facilities available in their content and metadata management system.

The current feature set of JBoss Wiki is:

• Full support of the JBoss Portal 2.0 security constructs to allow users and roles to be associated with editing and display of wiki pages and attachments within the context of a JSR 168 compliant portal.
• Full support of wiki page histories and rollback.
• An integrated DIFF tool.
• A Plugin framework which allows different wiki types to be defined and associated with different plugin stacks which add contextual content to wiki pages or do translations.
• Full support for attachments (attachment histories are pending).
• Currently supports the JSPWiki wikitext syntax.
• Includes a prototype search engine.
• Simple URL support even while running within JBoss Portal so users can access wikipages by the URL pattern: http://host/wiki/PageName

To see JBoss Wiki in action, check out the JBoss Labs Wiki Pages as it is currently live on the Labs site.

The JBoss Wiki team will be providing multiple wiki page repository implementations, and future versions of JBoss Wiki will leverage metadata associated with wiki pages which are contained in a Subversion repository. The association of such metadata, when combined with other types of aggregated information, such as blogs, forums, and even source code repositories, will allow users of JBoss Wiki to create wiki feeds that are aggregated with content from these other systems, creating an integrated search and content news system.

JBoss Wiki 1.0 Alpha is being submitted to the Portlet Swap project and will be available for download in the JBoss Wiki project hosted at JBoss Labs as well as in the Portlet Swap once the submission is approved.

The wiki announcement led me to JBoss labs. I know its a little off topic. I haven't been excited about things JBoss for a while, but I must admit JBoss Web is exciting! Any news on when there will be a production release for linux? I poked around, but it still looks like early days. In the "modern" POJO world a nice all java servlet container with strong SSL support would rock!

This is a suprising announcement! XWiki and LifeRay are members of the (still alive???) "JBoss federation". They represent 2 members on the 9 members of the Federation. Don't they feel wierd that JBoss develop a project that directly competes with theirs?

Indeed, as the XWiki lead, I see this clearly as JBoss prefering to play solo instead of working with other existing communities. It also seems to be a "fork" of JSPWiki more than working with the existing JSPWiki community.

But this doesn't matter. It's more interesting to work with other more open communities, like ObjectWeb, eXoPlatform, Liferay to make sure XWiki works with the widest range of softwares possible. And by the time JBoss has an integrated wiki, XWiki will be even further than it already his.

I'm going to ask Damon to respond to this, but my understanding is that our website relies heavily on our WIKI and we want one tightly integrated with JBoss Portal and all the security/bells/whistles that it provides.

JBoss Federation is a list of projects that integrate with our JEMS product suite.

Please elaborate on your definition of "open". IMO, you are just taking a pot shot at us for no apparent reason other than that we've decided to compete with your project.

JBoss contributes to a number of OSS projects out there like Apache Tomcat, mod_jk, JacORB, Apache MyFaces, and Apache Scout, to name a few. Our development processes are totally open. You can view all of our roadmaps and planning on jira.jboss.com. It is very easy to get JBoss CVS access as long as you show initiative and show that you know what you're doing. It always has been. Besides individual contributors, we also have corporate ones as well like Novell, Unisys, HP, to name a few.

Bill

[...]IMO, you are just taking a pot shot at us for no apparent reason other than that we've decided to compete with your project.[...]

JBoss is not a member of JBoss federation. It is the host. JBoss wins over federation project -> it benefits to JBoss. Federation project wins over JBoss -> it still benefits to JBoss. Sure, there's nothing wrong with competition :)!

JBoss Federation is a list of projects that integrate with our JEMS product suite.

I think Jboss can obviously do whatever they want to with their Wiki but it is a downright flop for marketing/bizdev people to have such a strong cheating/uncompetitiveness perception in their offering. I mean, who can produce the Wiki that

integrate with our JEMS product suite

the best: Jboss or 3rd party?

Regards,
Nikita. GridGain Systems.

As I said there, I wonder why they don't use an existing portlet-aware wiki like XWiki which is pretty modular and powerful. It's easy to embed it in a portal which is JSR-168 compliant. It's going to be more work to fork JSPWiki that it is to reuse XWiki as is. Other CMS/portlet containers already embed XWiki. So I don't understand why they chose to for rather than reuse...

First off, we *love* XWiki and JSPWiki. We really do. Please use them.

We just wanted a *wiki* that we can integrate quickly and easily with JBP 2.0, security, and our CMS.

XWiki includes a lot of other things that we didn't have time to remove--like photo albums, blogs and such. We just didn't need them. Were using other products/projects for those. We were just looking for something very simple and it was a shorter path to write the few classes which: 1) accept portlet-style actions, 2) translate, 3) display. Then... added edit, history, attachments and plugins with JBoss Portal 2.0 security and user constructs. It was just easier!

Additionally, JBoss Wiki will be using EJB3 and POJO services. I don't believe the other Wiki projects are going that direction (at least JSPWiki has indicated that they don't want to without writing adaptors). JBoss Wiki is simply different enough that we released it.

Federation invites all competition to promote the open source ecosystem. If one product competes with another that is fine. Competition is good. We've always been upfront that we invite all competitors.

First off, we *love* XWiki and JSPWiki. We really do. Please use them.We just wanted a *wiki* that we can integrate quickly and easily with JBP 2.0, security, and our CMS. XWiki includes a lot of other things that we didn't have time to remove--like photo albums, blogs and such. We just didn't need them. Were using other products/projects for those. We were just looking for something very simple and it was a shorter path to write the few classes which: 1) accept portlet-style actions, 2) translate, 3) display. Then... added edit, history, attachments and plugins with JBoss Portal 2.0 security and user constructs. It was just easier!Additionally, JBoss Wiki will be using EJB3 and POJO services. I don't believe the other Wiki projects are going that direction (at least JSPWiki has indicated that they don't want to without writing adaptors). JBoss Wiki is simply different enough that we released it.Federation invites all competition to promote the open source ecosystem. If one product competes with another that is fine. Competition is good. We've always been upfront that we invite all competitors.

Damon, you're playing the fool here. Lines such as "we love you" don't fit the bill. You organize a federation, and you put on the market offerings that compete with those of the people you claim to "federate". It's like a platoon captain shooting his own troops saying "what's the big deal, there's nothing wrong with competition" :-)

First off, we *love* XWiki and JSPWiki. We really do. Please use them.We just wanted a *wiki* that we can integrate quickly and easily with JBP 2.0, security, and our CMS. XWiki includes a lot of other things that we didn't have time to remove--like photo albums, blogs and such. We just didn't need them. Were using other products/projects for those. We were just looking for something very simple and it was a shorter path to write the few classes which: 1) accept portlet-style actions, 2) translate, 3) display. Then... added edit, history, attachments and plugins with JBoss Portal 2.0 security and user constructs. It was just easier!Additionally, JBoss Wiki will be using EJB3 and POJO services. I don't believe the other Wiki projects are going that direction (at least JSPWiki has indicated that they don't want to without writing adaptors). JBoss Wiki is simply different enough that we released it.Federation invites all competition to promote the open source ecosystem. If one product competes with another that is fine. Competition is good. We've always been upfront that we invite all competitors.

Damon, you're playing the fool here. Lines such as "we love you" don't fit the bill. You organize a federation, and you put on the market offerings that compete with those of the people you claim to "federate". It's like a platoon captain shooting his own troops saying "what's the big deal, there's nothing wrong with competition" :-)

Francois, first of all, I think you are in your right to question and critique this. Sometimes, hardworking and well-intentioned people don't always articulate their actions well.

Damon and Roy have a lot of respect and good will towards the XWiki team which is why they didn't respond to yours and Ludovic's nastiness with equal nastiness in eariler posts on this thread. The fact is though that since January, they have been asking them to contribute so that the needed integration with JBoss Portal would be complete (seems that it is not fully JSR-168 compliant and has eXo specific hooks). They even tasked it out fully within Jira and if either JSPWiki or XWiki had completed those tasks they would have been bundled with JBoss Portal. It is not that Ludovic was unwilling, but rather it seemed that he never had the time. Since we're all pretty busy, Damon took the path of least resistence and created JBoss Wiki. Really, what are we supposed to do? Maybe its not too late for either the JSPWiki and/or XWiki teams to meet the requirements that Damon needs, but you shouldn't expect the JBoss team to wait forever for desired JEMS/Portal integration.

I think if either Wiki project still has the drive or energy to work with us to contact Damon directly and work it out. But, I don't think you should hold it against JBoss if we cannot wait forever.

Bill

Damon and Roy have a lot of respect and good will towards the XWiki team which is why they didn't respond to yours and Ludovic's nastiness with equal nastiness in eariler posts on this thread. The fact is though that since January, they have been asking them to contribute so that the needed integration with JBoss Portal would be complete (seems that it is not fully JSR-168 compliant and has eXo specific hooks). They even tasked it out fully within Jira and if either JSPWiki or XWiki had completed those tasks they would have been bundled with JBoss Portal. It is not that Ludovic was unwilling, but rather it seemed that he never had the time. Since we're all pretty busy, Damon took the path of least resistence and created JBoss Wiki. Really, what are we supposed to do? Maybe its not too late for either the JSPWiki and/or XWiki teams to meet the requirements that Damon needs, but you shouldn't expect the JBoss team to wait forever for desired JEMS/Portal integration. I think if either Wiki project still has the drive or energy to work with us to contact Damon directly and work it out. But, I don't think you should hold it against JBoss if we cannot wait forever.Bill

Bill,

It seems to me you are rewriting history your way here. Please don't call my post nasty. You might call it "upset" and I have a few reasons for that:

First, what did actually happen ?

- JBoss wanted a wiki and looked at XWiki and started porting XWiki to JBoss Portal. This made me proud and very happy. I answered numerous questions to Roy to help him out.

- We discussed with Damon and Sacha and XWiki joined the JBoss Federation as XWiki was going to be JBoss Portal compatible.

- Roy did provide a first set of changes, though not as patches and we discussed to potentially give commit rights to Roy for him to commit these changes directly in the XWiki source tree.

- From then on I hardly heard from JBoss anymore. I asked at some point what was going on and Damon said he was going to assign somebody on this.

- Then during the Summer somebody pointed me out to JBossWiki. I wrote an email to Damon and Sacha to discuss this initiative on August 16th. Damon did not answer and Sacha took a full 10 days to reply and told me to call him. I might but for the time being I don't see the point.

Now I don't say JBoss should not do JBoss Wiki and I welcome JBoss interest in the Wiki space. Damon's reason are also respectable, though they could be discussed as one of the reasons the JBoss Portal Team found XWiki interesting was for it's second generation features which makes it more than a wiki.

Now both as an open source project which had provided support for the porting to JBoss Portal and as a member of the JBoss Federation, it would have been nicer to have learned about the JBossWiki directly from JBoss instead of from the internet.

Thank you for your kind offer for us to do the work to make XWiki compatible with JBoss Portal and to be elligible to win a PSP, but I'm not sure it's interesting to partner with JBoss if this is the way JBoss manages it's relationships with other projects.

Ludovic, XWiki

Francois, first of all, I think you are in your right to question and critique this. Sometimes, hardworking and well-intentioned people don't always articulate their actions well.Damon and Roy have a lot of respect and good will towards the XWiki team which is why they didn't respond to yours and Ludovic's nastiness with equal nastiness in eariler posts on this thread.

Bill, I understand that you include all of us in the hardworking and well-intentioned people, and consider nastiness as a variant of lack of articulateness.

You may be aware that I'm very curious to understand business models of open source players. Marc posted a long blog entry about this topic some time ago. I noticed the line "remember we love you" in this post, and I'm glad to see that Damon, and you I guess, are on the same loving wavelength.

From a theoretical standpoint, I have a problem with a federation of competing entities, federated by one of the competitors. I was expecting JBoss federation to help me understand how it may work but, unfortunaly, it turns out that this field experiment does not help me much proving theory wrong.

I find an interesting business pattern here. As long as JBoss Group does not have an offer in a market niche (say wiki/portal...), the project in the federation fills the gap (and counts in the evaluation criteria considered by analysts). Then, when market is ripe and when JBoss technology is ready, Jboss enters the game as a competitor. I must admit that, from a JBoss standpoint, it makes much sense.

From the viewpoint of federated projects, it's a little harder to swallow, and I fully understand Ludovic/Benjamin opinions.

I'm very sensitive to this issue, because federating people is exactly what we do in ObjectWeb. It's a HARD job. I can tell you that with over 60 corporate members, conflicts of interest are many. To ease things, we try our best to remain business neutral. One aspect is to avoid situations where the consortium would be competing with any one member. A good way to do it is to remain nonprofit.

JBoss Group is for profit, doing very well, which is great and perfectly legitimate. But it puts the company in a very bad position to federate others.

This is probably the best answer to give to a tactical move that, from a business point, makes perfect sense.

Any of you that can get XWiki, JSPWiki, etc... working on JBoss Portal, feel free to submit it to Portletswap.com. You will be eligible to win a PSP.

STAY METAL!
Roy Russo

It is an alpha version: cf. http://wiki.jboss.org/errors/404
Hope you have enough bandwith.

That's JSPWiki, not JBoss Wiki. ;-)

The main wiki.jboss.org is still JSPWiki.

You're all making a mountain out of a mole hill here. So what if there is another wiki? So what if you heard about it on TSS first? Should we have alerted Liferay, eXo, and BEA that we were launching a Portal product? To each his own, I say, and this is quite frankly petty bickering.

Competition is healthy for the industry, and there was no ill-will intended behind the JBoss Wiki project. They needed a slimmed down wiki, threw one together in a few weeks, and launched. That is all. It would have taken much longer to convert JSPWiki or XWiki, so they chose the path of least resistence.

As for you choosing to not submit to PortletSwap. Suit yourself. It is an opportunity for XWiki to gain market share by appealing to JBoss Portal users/developers, and it is being left on the table for no subsantial reason.

STAY METAL!
Roy Russo

Should we have alerted Liferay, eXo, and BEA that we were launching a Portal product?

Don't talk of things you might not be aware of Roy.

Actually, before JBoss launched its Portal Initiative and was still playing with Nukes (and probably before you became a JBoss employee) we - at eXo - have been contacted by JBoss (aka Sasha and Marc) to take the lead of the portal development.

That was clearly not for a PSP...but at the end we did not even get it (or more precisely we did not accept it). All the discussion was very kind; Sasha and Marc are nice people (as well as Bill and Julien)...in private but that's part of the game.

So why do I say that now?

It is mainly because the image JBoss try to give, aka to play the victim againts the other open source projects or the commercial projects is ridiculous and no one is fooled in that game.

Every body knows that JBoss goal is to reproduce Microsoft monopolistic position on the Open Source middleware stack.

If a project lead agrees to be employed then he can expect to get some good salary and bonus when JBoss enters the stock exchange in 2006. If not then JBoss will compete with the project to be sure it owns the knowledge...and there is nothing bad with that!!!!

Just admit it, and don't take people for fools with dumb theme competitions and risdiculous propaganda and slogans such as STAY METAL or STAY LETHAL everywhere!

Act as professionals...and as much as possible avoid the "much ado about nothing" that you tend to search for your community marketing!

Just admit it, and don't take people for fools with dumb theme competitions and risdiculous propaganda and slogans such as STAY METAL or STAY LETHAL everywhere!

Yeah Roy, drop that stupid slogan. Are you really that envious of the big hair bands of the 80s, baldy?

Don't talk of things you might not be aware of Roy.Actually, before JBoss launched its Portal Initiative and was still playing with Nukes (and probably before you became a JBoss employee)...

I was already working at JBoss. It is a shame we didn't get to work together, you sound like a sharp guy.

It is mainly because the image JBoss try to give, aka to play the victim againts the other open source projects or the commercial projects is ridiculous and no one is fooled in that game.

Rest assured neither Julien or I, are or play, "victim". JBoss Portal steamrolls ahead, regardless of OS or proprietary competitors in the market (that would include you, of course). From now on, feel free to consider me the suspect, not the victim.

Just admit it, and don't take people for fools with dumb theme competitions and risdiculous propaganda and slogans such as STAY METAL or STAY LETHAL everywhere! Act as professionals...and as much as possible avoid the "much ado about nothing" that you tend to search for your community marketing!

It is a portlet competition, not a theme competition. You are free to enter as well. Do you have any good portlets?

I am sorry you are not fond of my tagline, but...

STAY METAL!
Roy Russo

No comment...

Ludovic,

I am not sure what your expectations are/were, but anyway, you have my phone number so you knew/know how to reach me whenever you want: no need to get an official time slot first. I have always been available for your calls as you know.

François,

Thanks for caring about the Federation. The goal of the Federation is clearly indicated on its main page: to give visibility to projects that comply with these two criteria: i) have a "Professional Open Source" business model (i.e. provide professional services on an Open Source project - OSI license) ii) fit into any of the JEMS component.

It is a free program that i) gives visibility to projects, ii) helps JEMS users find other components they could deploy on JEMS iii) help us show that other OSS components run on JBoss. Nothing more, nothing less.

Would we exclude competing projects to join it? no. Would we agree to have x different logging tools (for example) as part of the Federation? yes.

Like for Ludovic, you know you can always call me to discuss things that need to be solved or clarified. I am surprised you did not.

Cheers,



Sacha


GM JBoss Europe

Like for Ludovic, you know you can always call me to discuss things that need to be solved or clarified. I am surprised you did not.Cheers,SachaGM JBoss Europe

Sacha, there's no denying you're very available and always open to discussion.