Irina Guseva: Random Thoughts on CMS, WCM, ECM and Other Acronyms

Lucid Imagination continues to show its (mainly dollar-amount-driven) dedication to open source Apache Lucene and Solr search technologies. Recently, the company released a nifty tool called LucidGaze for Lucene.

LucidGaze is a monitoring tool for installations using the Java Lucene search library. It supports Apache Lucene version 2.4.1 and later. Aside from helping developers optimize their Lucene-based applications, the other piece of good news is that LucidGaze is free.

The product works by reverse-engineering characteristics of the Lucene application and providing a framework for developers to improve application management.

Using LucidGaze, developers can harvest data (e.g., the rate of queries, query speed, text analysis times, memory consumption, changes to index structure, etc.), analyze the performance and optimize their search apps.

More on LucidGaze features on CMSWire.

The subject of open source software licensing is rarely considered titillating. More often it inspires early afternoon naps.

Well, there’s been a change in the script and we’ve got a small civil war on our hands. Tempers and tensions have risen between US-based Bluenog and Netherlands-based Hippo — both companies deal in the content management space, both are tinkering with open source.

Now it’s not the fight we’re interested in — though it’s been a fun interlude of Days of Our [Software] Lives. Rather, it’s the principles behind the issue that are worth paying attention to.

In short, Bluenog has been accused of violating Hippo’s and Apache’s software licenses by using Hippo’s code and not properly giving attribution. We had a chat with both parties. Here’s what they had to say.

More on CMSWire: Oversights by Bluenog Spark Open Source Community Anger

Repackaging someone else’s code, sticking a new logo to it and selling it under a new name is one way to do it. But it is not the only way.

Perhaps, if there was a proper disclosure of origin from the very beginning, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. It seems, Bluenog (intentionally or not) have chosen a different path.

Another question here is whether open source is too liberal to be controlled: in code changes or licensing violations. One can hope for others’ good manners and sticking to legalities, yet the reality shows this is not the first (and not the last) debate on OSS licensing.

FatWire is back in the news. These folks have been busy lately. In between “rescue” plans and moves towards worldwide “domination,” the web content management vendor also had some time to work on two new releases — Engage 7.5 (content targeting) and Analytics 2.5 (content optimization) — which bring major architectural changes involving open source-based technology.

Using the open source Apache Hadoop-based technology framework based on the Map-Reduce algorithm (which was also implemented in Apache Hadoop), FatWire is shifting from vertical to horizontal scalability and scale up to 100M hits per day per install. The potential can really be unlimited, theoretically speaking.

More on CMSWire: FatWire Turns to Open Source to Improve Scalability in Personalization, Analytics Products

Yes, the Central Intelligence Agency is among 18 U.S. Intelligence organizations to benefit from the Apache Lucene/Solr enterprise search technology.

In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s VC arm, has announced its investment into Lucid Imagination, a commercial provider of open source search technologies.

This may mean a lot of things (just scratching the surface here): great exposure for Apache (not bad of a present for the ASF’s 10th birthday), promotion of open source adoption, better data mining opportunities for the U.S. intelligence — you name it.

Facebook and Google, interestingly, are also (indirectly) in the mix.

Full story on CMSWire: CIA Invests in Open Source Lucene, Solr Search

This had to happen sooner or later. With all the buzz around the soon-to-be-standard CMIS and all the issues and debates surrounding the spec, it was only a matter of time before a Java giant like Day Software would do a Java-based implementation of the proposed standard.

Meet Apache Chemistry (the name is based on CMIS, as in !CheMIStry). This is a recently possibly soon to be approved Apache Incubator Project that aims to provide a Java (and possibly JavaScript) CMIS implementation framework.

What to expect:

• a high-level API for developers
• a low-level SPI close to the CMIS protocol
• default implementations of the above
• covering both the AtomPub and SOAP bindings defined in the CMIS

Day has partnered with Nuxeo (who contributed their own initial implementation) to sync and consolidate with Day’s CMIS implementation.

These are the initial sources for the Chemistry project:

• Nuxeo’s Chemistry codebase
• The JCR-CMIS sandbox components developed at Apache Jackrabbit

More details later, stay tuned!

Had a chat with Day’s newly-appointed chief marketing officer Kevin Cochrane on Thursday (interrupted by landing and boarding announcements) and this morning. Initially, wanted to get all the glorious details about Day’s new open source award, then we talked about CQ5 and transitions.

It’s a Swiss treats day for a Swiss vendor. Enterprise CMS provider Day Software has received the Swiss Open Source Award 2008 in the business category.

Recipe for success? Mix two tablespoons of Day with several pounds of a new chief marketing officer, who has arrived from Interwoven via the open source devout Alfresco. And, voila! The open source awards will follow.

Surely, I am not the first one to speak highly of Kevin Cochrane. He knows his oats, and that doesn’t go unnoticed.

Cochrane is a good fit for Day Software with his palpable passion about content management (without getting spread thin on all that ECM, DM stuff), combined with the ability to infuse others with this passion.

Day has been long (over)due for good marketing techniques. Even boring white papers is something Day has still to explore. Must give it to Day’s PR firm. LEWIS PR has been staying on top of things lately.

I suspect with Cochrane’s contagious swirl of activity, Day will have a better chance of finally starting to pop up on more of U.S. short-lists.

Additionally, Day is (finally!) getting ready to release the latest version v5.0 of its WCM platfrom – Communiqué. Scheduled for mid-November CQ5 promises to be nothing but a piece of heaven — at least that’s what it sounds like from the marketing folk . It’s been too long of a WCM slump for Day. CQ4 was released way back in 2005.

CQ5 looks nice on paper. I am always able to find flaws after seeing so many WCM systems, but, from what I’ve heard from Cochrane, CQ5 looks really promising. Still under embargo, so will tell you more next week after I get a chance to have a proper look-see at the product.

In his forth week with Day, the company’s new CMO is not a CMS newbie. He was the fourth employee at Interwoven, where he was responsible for Interwoven TeamSite product line for 10 years. But when key IT requirements aren’t being executed around core content management principles, R&D is short-staffed and the product is starting to deviate from responding to customers’ best interests — it is time to move on and start fresh. Alfresco fresh, in Cochrane’s case.

Alfresco, says Cochrane, offered that refreshing open source exuberance without any compromises. He spent 2.5 years at the commercial open source pioneer as a vice president of product management. But left even before Alfresco 3 was completed — although not without getting the commitment that Alfresco 3, with its so much needed GUI overhaul, would be brought to life.

At Day Software, Cochrane says he’s finding new things, hidden gems every day. Waking up every day and being thrilled about your job (“the easiest job in the world,” funny, haha, says Cochrane) is something not all of us have the luxury of.

Highlighting Cochrane’s wünderkind to wanderkind transformation, CMSWatch thinks Cochrane would spice up Day. I tend to agree: savvier (if any) marketing is definitely something that Day couldn’t get its act together on for a long time. Cochrane shows potential to shake things up and change this perception (which, as we know, is also reality).

More on Day’s ambitious 2009 plans, open source embrace, CMIS response, etc.,: Day Speaks on 2009 Plans, Open Source, CQ5 and More