Openlaszlo FUTURE

[Gil]

I ask some clarifications about the future of Openlaszlo and the roadmap for planned releases (if any!).
Since the fall of Flash i suppose the Openlaszlo strategy changed, and the developer team will focus in HTML5 runtime with the introduction of google closures, a easiest way to create and share components (1 runtime will be transparent) , a close proximity with the community, all to transform this platform into the HTML5 platform development reference.
Thank you for the attention.

[rajubitter]

Don't expect an answer from Laszlo. I never got one, and I wouldn't believe what the company tells you, as long they still have the current management. Those people are not capable of managing a technology company.

If you are looking for a promising dual-runtime RIA platform, better check Adobe Flex with the upcoming release of the FalconJS compiler:
http://www.spoon.as/2011/flex-summit-live-updates/

- Raju

[Gil]

Raju , Thank you for the feedback. I´ve been following your reflexions since a long ago and your warnings about the end of the line, but i always believe in a solution (i still do).Will be a shame not to take advantage of such a investment (developer team, community and investers). I´m delaying the beginning of a new HTML5 project, depending of the news...

[rajubitter]

I've been trying for the past three years to have the management team Laszlo commit to ANY strategy or vision for the platform. All the pain points are still there:

* outdated components
* no IDE
* no mobile story
* absolutely no marketing for OpenLaszlo
* no full DHTML/HTML support for key features (file upload, full HTML text rendering, feature focus on HTML5 instead of Flash, ...)
* JavaScript files are way to large to have a good performance on smartphones in DHTML

From that I can only conclude that it has never been a priority of Laszlo's current management to continue developing and promoting OpenLaszlo as one of the "leading" RIA platforms. Communication between Laszlo's management and the community effectively stopped since most of the key figures - especially former CTO David Temkin - left the company.

I've invested so much time and energy into promoting OpenLaszlo and contributing to the platform, it's not easy for me to say that OpenLaszlo is dead. But from what I'm seeing, I have to say: It's dead.

Of course we still have the source code, and you can continue using the unreleased OpenLaszlo 5.0 version, but without full QA cycles you are probably going to run into some problems, which will be relatively difficult to solve without help from some of the former core developers.

If there's a new owner of Laszlo at some point in time, we'll have to wait and see if they manage to gather a team of people with enough expertise to continue developing the platform. It's not going to be easy.

I believe that there needs to be a fun factor in open source projects, if you want to excite external developers or companies, and get them involved with the project. And I don't see any of that fun and excitement left with Laszlo. There was enough of that in the years 2004-2008, times were a bit rougher after that. But I have lots of good memories of the former OpenLaszlo team and the talented folks working at Laszlo.

Best,
Raju

[bitwalker]

What bugs me is that something so good, is just being left to rot in the sun. Seriously why is there no statement on OpenLaszlo's future given the demise of mobile flash? And the only OpenLaszlo team members who look at these forums, are Raju and Amy, and NEITHER of them still work at OpenLaszlo.

I am honestly of the opinion that whoever runs OpenLaszlo just doesn't care about the community, and by extension, about the future of the platform. Somebody tell me why I am wrong?

[rajubitter]

I agree, it's hard to understand. But in the end, it's a money/revenue problem, I think. If the company would be more successful with Webtop, they'd (maybe) have spent more money on the OpenLaszlo project. I just think that they are way past the point of achieving a turn-around for the open source project. Now they'd have to rebrand it.

- Raju

[Blackdalhia]

Hi there

I share your view : it is a real waste of time for everyone.

It brings me one question : I have developped a full application for tablets (Android of course), and need to find the best transition to another technology. I am using php/ mysql backend, so I would just need to tranlate OL compenent to the new tech.

What would be the closest programming language that would allow a quick conversion from my OL program ?

[rajubitter]

Did you build the app with the DHTML runtime, Flash or AIR? It really depends on how much runtime specific code you have, and which features you are using.

- Raju

[bitwalker]

I am not really in a position of enough knowledge or resources to champion a fork, but I did wonder, how difficult it would be provide a set of openlaszlo bindings to an html5 component set like Sencha(Ext Js/ Sencha Touch ).

That would allow us to hang on to the language and hopefully some of the neat features like constraints, and keep pace with modern UI elements.

Probably its science fiction. What do you think Raju?

[Blackdalhia]

My app is a bit special : I sell a solution which includes an Android terminal which access my website where my OL app is running...

I use flash runtime since my app is huge. I created an android app to encapsulate my app which is only a web page finally, since I want to make the updates as smooth as possible.

Question : will flash plugin 11 apk work on Android 4.0 (even though not supported anymore, I would install the apk manually).

[rajubitter]

The last supported version of Android Flash Player is 11.1, just released on December 15th:
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/923/cpsid_92359.html

That means, you should be able to use Flash Player 11 on Android 4.0, not sure about future versions of Android (e.g., if FP 11 will be compatible with Android 4.1).

- Raju

[Blackdalhia]

so which technology you think will allow me to leverage what I have done with OL ?
Javascript ? HTML5 ? Flex ?

[d~l]

I suggest adding haxe to your short list ..

http://haxe.org

[Gil]

With all this noise i started looking a openlaszlo replacement for my new app, but i didn´t get any compared with simplicity and power of Openlaszlo architecture. My focus was to extjs with a great number of components but a complex development and a dubious license. By curiosity i tried to integrate extjs components in Openlaszlo and it works fine (Panel, Windows, Forms, Charts + event passing to openlaszlo). The mix between the two would involve more work, but for someone with knowledge of openlaszlo internals i think will be possible.

[bitwalker]

I've been looking at sencha touch / ext js for a while too. I think quitting the parallel runtime development and letting each runtime go its separate way is a much better option for OpenLaszlo.

Then for DHTML at least, if we could make bindings for 3rd party GUI components that would keep us modern and flexible. And we would not always be competing with the latest snazzy widget set. Because we could support it.

But it all depends on how much work is required to the core to make all this possible, and if there is a group will. As an individual it is much easier to get off and learn sencha touch.

[rajubitter]

We had a total of 5 people contributing to this thread. As of December 19th, this thread has been viewed 2,697 times (not sure how many unique visitors that are). I'd say that should be at 200-300 visitors of the thread, and only 4 have commented the initial post. That's not the best sign, although I can imagine some people refrain from commenting.

What happened to the "thousands of OpenLaszlo developers", and the "active community", the Laszlo management never failed to mention in the past years? Reminds me of some of the communist countries we had in Europe, where officials never could admit that something was wrong, too afraid of speaking out the truth. The problem is, if you don't talk about the problems, and don't tackle them, things are only going to get worse.

Regarding replacement technologies for OpenLaszlo:
I looked into possible replacements, with a focus on HTML5, in early 2010. These were my favorites:


Sproutcore http://sproutcore.com/ (the company which created Sproutcore is now owned by Facebook)
http://sproutcore.com/about/#tab=whos-using-sproutcore
Cappuccino http://cappuccino.org/learn/demos/ (if you like an Objective-C like version JavaScript, this might be interesting)
ExtJS http://www.sencha.com/products/extjs/ (dual-license)
ZKoss http://www.zkoss.org/ (coded in Java)


Some of the Cappuccino apps look fantastic, check these links. Unfortunately 280North (creators of Cappuccino) was acquired by Motorola in late 2010, and the developers don't have that much time any more to work on the framework.
http://280slides.com/Editor/
http://githubissues.heroku.com/
https://gomockingbird.com/mockingbird/

But I never liked the idea of an Objective-J language. Sproutcore and Cappuccino were aimed at creating apps instead of Ajax-enhanced sites, ZKoss is a good choice for business apps (enterprise), and Sencha, well they have a couple of interesting products, e.g. http://www.sencha.com/products/designer/ and http://www.sencha.com/products/animator/.

If you want to support Flash, haXe or Flex might be a good choice. I've never used haXe, but d~l can probably tell you more.

Best,
Raju

[rajubitter]

If you want to learn more about a possible "DHTML runtime" for Flash, check the video of the Adobe event last week.
https://my.adobeconnect.com/_a295153/p7ysfeovw33/?launcher=false&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal

The fact that a simple Flex app with a few buttons generates 5MB of JavaScript, (still 2.5 after the Closure compiler optimization) does not sound like Adobe will ever be able to compile a complex Flex app into DHTML.

- Raju

[d~l]

Adding to the haxe branch of this thread ..

http://haxe.org/doc/intro

targets:- Javascript, Flash, nekoVM, PHP, C++,
with possibly C# and Java to follow ..

FlashDevelop is one IDE to use

...

for desktop apps .. ScreenWeaver

http://haxe.org/com/libs/swhx

...

also for HTML5 look at ..

http://www.haxenme.org/

Choosing NME opens almost endless opportunities. Create one application and publish to Facebook, the iOS App Store, the webOS App Catalog, the Android Market, the Mac App Store, the Ubuntu Marketplace, NOOK Apps, the Chrome App Store, Steam and other marketplaces without writing specific code for each platform.

...

An interesting option is to build mashup applications using OpenLaszlo core (4.9.0 ??) with imported third party built components (haxe and dojo).

Should we add in interactive svg?

[afriedrichs]

I think some of us visitors to this thread just don't know what to say or do. Maybe we're blindly hoping that OL isn't going down the toilet and that our years of working with it aren't wasted. So we keep coming back to the thread to see if someone has the answers we need but no one really does. It's hard to jump to something else because are we going to end up at the same point with something new? Technology isn't it great.

Not all 'shops' can afford to keep starting over nor do we have the resources to do so. It's kind of the blind leading the blind for us. I don't get a say in what we use for our apps. And some of the ppl who influence what we use aren't the most knowledgeable but it is what is.

We're an old school shop with some very old code. Fighting users who don't like change and their IT managers who want the latest and greatest though they can't afford to pay for it. PC apps are a 'new' thing for many here unfortunately and some just don't have what it takes to learn it and quickly. And then the rest of us don't have time to constantly look at what is out there to know the best way to go when something like OL falls apart.

So I personally keep coming back to see if someone has a good answer on where to go next but there doesn't seem to be a good answer. For now I think we're going to have to keep our OL code as is, for the most part it 'works'. We want to get out of flash and I'm concerned that users will want our apps to be mobile sooner rather than later, but we don't have the luxury of taking that into account at this point.

We've been playing with the nightly build and compiling to HTML5 to avoid some Flash issues we're constantly fighting... ignoring the size of it for now, part of our problem is IE and it's inabilty to handle it very well. Without making many changes it seems to work great in all the browsers we've tried except IE7-9. With many of the IT managers we work with not allowing the users to download any other browser, we're SOL on the HTML5 until IE does something! It's a lose lose!

I'll continue to check back to see if we ever get some offical word from Laszlo, which I'm guessing we won't get and to see what others have turned in instead. But unfortunately like many others I overall just don't have much to say on the 'answer' to all of our issues!

[d~l]

If I can summarise my own philosophy it is "not to put all my eggs in one basket".
i.e. any of the frameworks we are looking at could fail for any of a number of reasons. I remember Adobe pulling the plug on svg support.

I for one am grateful for a working openlaszlo framework .. even if some bugs still remain.
I agree with the last post ..
For now I think we're going to have to keep our OL code as is, for the most part it 'works'.

Personally I intend to supplement openlaszlo (warts and all) with other custom components built from other frameworks (haxe, dojo etc.). These mashups work well.

There may be more activity on "openlaszlo futures" in the mailing list.

[rajubitter]

Thanks, that's very good and detailed feedback. I believe that OpenLaszlo - or whatever the project might be called in the future - should have a strong focus on HTML5. Flash doesn't have a future in the long run, for the next 2-3 years it's a good option if you still have to support IE.

One of the strategic problems with the current OpenLaszlo setup is, that HTML5 is only interesting for Laszlo if they have customers asking for a DHTML version of Webtop. If the majority of the customers is interested in the SWF version of the product, it's very unlikely to see much of an improvement for the DHTML runtime in IE7+. That's one of the main reasons why I believe OpenLaszlo needs a different project setup. If the sponsors of OpenLaszlo would be not only focused on unified communications (using a lot of the Flash features), the project could evolve into one of the leading HTML5 application development platforms. But the management - in the past years - seemed to focused on selling the company, not evolving the platform. Which is probably better for the investors, but not for adopters of the technology.

But thanks for the feedback,

Raju

[afriedrichs]

"not to put all my eggs in one basket".


Some times way easier said then done. Not all shops are forward thinking and sometimes out of the developers hands.

[Blackdalhia]

I think the most urgent is to find a way to get away from flash, especially since it is not supported anympre on Android platform and has never been on Apple iOS.

Now DHTML is not an option since, as Rajubitter said, final app s much too big (mine never finish to compile on an IPAD2 !).

Moving to another exotic but small third party would repeat the same OL story : we will end up in 2 years with a technology that does not follow the 2014 standards or f*cking Apple choice not to support this standard,

So finally today I see the following options:
1/ using AIR to produce application. But I am not too sure how this works.

Can we still use OL to compile application and use AIR to deploy and manage app ?
Will this produce apps that can work bth on iOS and Android ?

2/ Move to standards that have most chances to survice
There are 2 options:

2.1 HTML5
I mean coding the app in HTML5, not using OL to produce a DHTML runtime.
HTML5 has become the new standard, so I think that s one of the best option.

Still have the following questions:
- Although everyone was focusing on the video, can HTML5 creates nice fluid animation as OL/ Flash ?
- Is it as light as Flash applications ?

The good thing about it is that it can be used on all platforms.

2.2 Coding applications for different platforms using C/C++/Javascript/ ....
I dont' like this since it means effort to build and maintain apps on every platforms


To me the future is really driven by mobile application so we must move to a platform that best suits mobile requirements. I also think webapplications is the best options since it gives lots of flexibility and is much easier to maintain. For example my current apps is just a launcher on my Android device that launches a browser in full screen on my OL apps located on the Internet. I don't know if that is possible to have the same approach on iOS.

[rajubitter]

Good points, here is my view. What Laszlo needs to do:

1) Redefine the technical strategy for the platform: What does OpenLaszlo want to be?
a) RIA platform for (mostly) Flash and DHTML/HTML5
b) JavaScript HTML5 platform with additional support for Flash, enabling a smooth migration from older IE versions to HTML5
c) Mobile and desktop browser RIA & app platform: mobile AIR for iOS, Android, RIM; HTML5 mobile webapps and apps (e.g. using PhoneGap)
d) ???

For c) using DHTML/HTML5, the JavaScript code size would have to reduced - maybe using an approach like the Google Closure compiler in advanced mode (kick out all the functions which are never being called in your app, especially within the LFC). Check the stats for

2) OpenLaszlo project setup (license, intellectual property, decision making process)
a) Dual-license like Sencha, powerful tools and SDKs with a commercial license on top of an open source license. The tools need to be good (see Sencha). Will require a few million $ in investment.
b) Open source foundation (like Dojo, or maybe Adobe/Apache Flex), with all the advantages of the foundation model. Make it more attractive to contribute to the platform for both companies and individuals.

3) Understand that open source does not only mean access to source code!


Your questions on mobile apps:
1) I have a complete build script for generating an OpenLaszlo LZX application into an Adobe AIR for Android/iOS application.
https://github.com/raju-bitter/mobile-openlaszlo/tree/master/proof-of-concept/adobe-air-2.5
Check this video:
http://vimeo.com/14014507
http://vimeo.com/14972608
The file size is very compact, 200k for a canvas with a standard window. The startup time in the Android emulator is much slower than in reality. For a normal app to launch, it takes about 5-6 seconds until you get the canvas.oninit event.

2) PhoneGap + OpenLaszlo DHTML app on Nexus One
http://vimeo.com/13332562
That's another good approach. PhoneGap uses a WebView component to load an HTML+JS page into the browser. Phone APIs are accessible through JavaScript calls (meaning for example, you can playback Audio in an Android app using JS calls mapped to Java)
Nitobi, the company which created PhoneGap, was acquired by Adobe. PhoneGap framework is now an Apache incubator project.
http://phonegap.com/
http://phonegap.com/about/features

In mid 2010 I had a short discussion with the Laszlo CEO, and told him that I'd be interested in launching an open source mobile OpenLaszlo project. He didn't show any interest in such an open source initiative. He was probably hoping to be able to create such a toolkit as a commercial service offering on top of OpenLaszlo. Now, 1 1/2 years later, look were Laszlo is at.

- Raju

[rajubitter]

I suggest that we have a web conference with community members and companies interested in re-activating OpenLaszlo in the 2nd week of January.

I sent emails out to both the OpenLaszlo user and dev mailing list, here's the link to the message:
http://www.openlaszlo.org/pipermail/laszlo-dev/2011-December/024699.html

Let's use Doodle to fix a time/date for the web conference:
http://www.doodle.com/rkvbqr7wxumurg66

I looked forward to discuss with anyone else interested in the technology, how we can maybe re-activate OpenLaszlo in 2012.

Best regards,
Raju

[Blackdalhia]

sounds very good to me !

I suggest we build a good agenda for this, for instance :

1/ Description of current issues
2/ Potential solution for Openlaszlo
3/ Alternate solutions in case OL does not react
4/ Next steps

[Blackdalhia]

Can we extend the possible time slots for this webex ?

[rajubitter]

Of course, just go to this page, enter your name, and add some time slots for the days and hours you'd prefer. I'll update my slots accordingly.
That's what we are using Doodle for.
http://www.doodle.com/rkvbqr7wxumurg66

Cheers,
Raju

[rajubitter]

Sorry, looks like Doodle changed the functionality, and participants cannot suggest any dates/slots any more. Which dates/hours would you like me to add?

Thanks,
Raju

[Gil]

I already voted in Doodle and show my willingness to participate more actively in the community, i think if everyone contribute a little to the project,even without having much knowledge of the internals knowledge like me, it could became a great success . I´de like to see discussed in the meeting the following topics:
- the eventual separation between html5 and flash runtimes, focusing in html5 and giving more flexibility to this runtime (encapsulation of html5 tags directly.)
- The position of platform in mobile.
- A way to incentive people to share components and code.

Best regards,
Gil

[afriedrichs]

A bit disappointing to only see 3 ppl putting up possible meeting times... Does this mean there just isn't the interest that there seemed to be? I know my boss will not give me the time to attend the meeting but I was still interested in seeing what comes of it. And the direction in which ppl were thinking it needed to go.

Not sure I'm of much help to anything but like Gil said if everyone does what they can, it could be successful. I do have a custom drop down component that allows the user to position the item highlighted in the list based on what the user is typing in the text box. Probably can use some clean up and such. Might be a memory hog too, but it does what we needed it to do. But overall, I haven't gone into the internal levels of things and have much left to learn... but if I could be of help somehow I could try.

I would love to see HTML5 be more prominent in it as it seems as flash is a done deal, but as I've said earlier, IE not supporting HTML5 very well at this point holds us back. But since there are free browsers out there that do support it, maybe our clients just need to get over using IE.

[rajubitter]

All of that what you are saying makes a lot of sense, although the project needs quite a bit of work to turn it into a modern HTML5 platform.

Let's discuss what can be done in the community meeting call tomorrow, 13. Jan 2012 16:00 CET.

Here's the meeting link:
https://eu42.spreed.com/checkin/jc/503164965

Cheers,
Raju

[Blackdalhia]

hello guys

did this meeting occured ? what are the inputs ?

I was not available on 13th... is there any future calls ?

[rajubitter]

Yes, we held the meeting. I was a bit busy in the past days, but I'll send out an email to the user/dev mailing list summing up what we discussed.

It's currently planned to have similar events in the future.

Best,
Raju

[TennSeven]

Hi all,

I have been working on the Java portions of my application, and therefore have not checked in on the forums here in awhile. I am sorry to see that I missed the meeting that was scheduled earlier this month.

I, for one, would be very sorry to see OL go, as I quite like the platform and have now invested a lot of time and energy into building applications from it. I do agree though that current management is severely lacking.

I would like to be included in future efforts; Raju, I will forward my email address on to you.

Has anyone thought about forking the current release, renaming it, and repositioning the new fork with better marketing efforts and a clearer roadmap? I think that a clear focus on providing great components and functionality for DHTML runtime, along with a polished development environment (a la a working, functional Eclipse plugin) would really go a long way toward getting OL back on its feet.

[sdwcn]

I have been working on OL for many months, whatever it comes along next, hopefully it's good news ...:( sad

[rajubitter]

Laszlo Systems' office location has moved to
http://www.laszlosystems.com/company/aboutus
1215 Bordeaux Drive, Sunnyvale.

That's the company headquarter of Mirapoint Software http://www.mirapoint.com/

Mirapoint, a Critical Path company, is a global leader in the mail server appliance market. By combining email security expertise with extensive messaging appliance experience, Mirapoint offers the industry’s only integrated email security, archiving and mailbox appliances with a dramatically lower total cost of ownership (TCO), as well as security, simplicity and peace of mind.

Our mail server appliances and messaging appliances intelligently serve, secure and manage more than 120 million mailboxes worldwide, from large enterprises and service providers to educational institutions and government entities.

Would make sense for a mail server appliance company to acquire a product like Webtop, but there hasn't been any announcement. If that's the case, let's see what they are going to do with OpenLaszlo...

- Raju

[rajubitter]

Hi everyone,

as some of you might have seen, I've integrated the SWF11 runtime into OpenLaszlo. I haven't decided if I'm going to contribute all of my work to the OpenLaszlo project, yet. I'm discussing that with a Laszlo engineer right now, but first I want to see a public commitment by Critical Path to the project, and hopefully a bit more than the few words they have put into the header of the OpenLaszlo.orb website.

Here's the information on the SWF11 runtime:
http://forum.openlaszlo.org/showthread.php?p=48351#post48351

What I've heard about Critical Path from some contacts in the Silicon Valley doesn't sound that great. They have a history of buying startups which weren't successful for a relatively small amount of money to get a hold of the products and technologies those companies own - in Laszlo's case Webtop.

When Critical Path announced the Laszlo acquisition before Mobile World Congress 2012, not a single word was said on the future of OpenLaszlo. Which proves that they are only interested in Webtop, and they don't see OpenLaszlo as a product they want to market. I'd be surprised to see any serious commitment to OpenLaszlo by Critical Path - and I'm not sure Laszlo has much to say when it comes to the project any more.

A number of people have said that they'd be interested in forking the project, I'd still be up for it. Would it make sense to have another call in the next weeks to see to discuss the next steps?

Thanks,
Raju

[rajubitter]

I've created a survey for all of us to get a better understanding of
how we are using OpenLaszlo, how the project could be improved, and
what the current state of the community is.

The survey will be open until 1st of May 2012, and everyone is welcome
to participate. I'll publish the survey results in the mailing lists
and forums on May 2nd.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/openlaszlo-community-survey-04-20012

Raju

[pydyp]

A suggestion:

You organized, a few years ago, a "meeting" in Amsterdam, for people to show their OL applications. It was interesting. Are people interested to do that again? I really would...

[TennSeven]

Raju,

I, for one, would welcome a call. I don't know how much response you will get here, since this forum kind of "buries" newer replies to threads as long as this one.

I have seen you express some frustration at the level of involvement from the OL community, but I think part of that is simply the medium of your communication; this forum is not very easy to navigate through (it is full of dead threads and topics) and does not make it very obvious when something new is posted. I myself have been visiting the forum less and less, even though I am quite interested in becoming more involved in building a future for OL, just because I do not expect to see critical information on here.

I suggest that, for now, we set up a mailing list or maybe even an OpenLaszlo group somewhere like on meetup.com for active members of the community that want to contribute to Laszlo's future. That way, information like your new Flash runtime or the possibility of setting up a new call will go out directly to the community, without having to count on individuals randomly checking in on the forums and just happening to notice that an old thread has a new post.

I would be happy to start coordinating and setting up a new email list, group or other way of getting information out to the community.

[rajubitter]

Thanks for your response, TennSeven,

I agree with you, the forums really suck. I've heard from various people that they had even problems using their accounts, and when they registered for new ones, they were waiting to be approved by an administrator (who seems to be missing now), and couldn't post anything.

I like the idea to have a separate mailing list, and meetup.com is a good solution. Could you set up a group there for us? That would be fantastic!

Thanks,

Raju

[rajubitter]

@pydyp

Yes, that's something I wanted to do for quite some time. The original plan was to celebrate 5 years of OpenLaszlo in 2009, but no-one from Laszlo management said more than: "That sounds like an interesting idea!". I heard that even a few hundred $ would have been too much for them to pay for such an event.

We should fork the project, set up a new mailing list / community site, have regular meetings in the U.S., Europe and hopefully China or Japan.

Thanks,
Raju

[rajubitter]

Short update on the OpenLaszlo survey I've started on April 21st. In the first 3 1/2 days 29 community members have filled out the survey. The survey will be open until May 1st.

Here are the number of votes per country so far (as of Wednesday, April 25th):
USA 10
Germany 5
China 2
Argentina 1
Belgium 1
Chile 1
Finland 1
France 1
Italy 1
Japan 1
Netherlands 1
Portugal 1
Romania 1
Singapore 1
United Kingdom 1

Let's see if we can add a few more to this list. Thanks to everyone participating!

Raju

[pydyp]

I do agree.
If i can help for anything...

[rajubitter]

Hi everyone,

here are the preliminary results of the community survey. The survey
has not received any more updates in the past 24 hours, it will be
open until 1st of May, but the number of results is probably not going
to increase much.

Until now 31 community members have participated in the survey, with
some interesting results. But read for yourself.

Thanks to all of you who have participated in the survey!

Raju

[rajubitter]

If you look into the results of the survey so far, I'd say the following results are interesting:

1) Depending on what view of the community situation you have, you might be surprised by the low number of community members filling out the survey. If we assume that 20-25% of the community members only participate in such a survey, the community should have a size of 130-150 developers globally. If you think that number is too low, look at the number of forum and mailing list posts, low number of new applications in the showcase.

2) Only two countries with more than 2 responses
The U.S. and Germany are the only countries with more than 2 community members participating. U.S. has 11 developers, Germany 5 - but China only 2.

3) Most of us have been using OpenLaszlo for at least 6 years
60% have been using OpenLaszlo since 2006 and earlier.

4) Usage of Trunk (5.0) very high!
60% use the 4.9 version, but 45% use trunk (multiple selections possible). Probably due to the fact that there has not been a major release since December 2008, when 4.2 was released (the OpenLaszlo team saw 4.2 as a major version upgrade, since a new runtime has been added with it).
http://weblog.openlaszlo.org/archives/2008/12/openlaszlo-42-is-now-available/

5) More people are using the DHTML runtime than there are people using the SWF10 runtime! That's a breakthrough for OpenLaszlo (we have to thank Max, he was the driving force behind the DHTML runtime)

6) Elegance of LZX and opens source - the main reasons for using OpenLaszlo
That's probably not a surprise, but LZX is THE highlight of OpenLaszlo.

7) Open Source involvment
50% of us have either contributed to an open source project or worked as committers. That's a very hight number!!

8) 80% of us use the forums, but only 33% use the laszlo-user mailing list
If only the forums would be more user friendly...

9) Almost 75% of the community members have never been in contact with anyone from Laszlo. Not surprising, since Laszlo has stopped any marketing of the platform since the end of 2007.

10) Community activity - community is almost dead?
43 % of us think The community is almost dead, there's very little activity in both forums and mailing lists. Still 21% think that the community is relatively active.

11) What's needed for OpenLaszlo: 89% say 5.0 needs to be released!
74% are looking for better DHTML runtime (size and performance), only 63% think new components are needed - with 68% wanting better support for mobile devices.

12) Future of OpenLaszlo
39% would like to see contribution of the project an open source foundation, 29% would like to see a project fork - and only 25% would prefer if Laszlo would continue to manage the project.

12) Would you choose OpenLaszlo for a new project?
29% said yes, 25% said no - and 46% were not sure.

Raju

[rajubitter]

I've created an Assembla team space for the community, which has chat
and discussion functionality, wiki pages, team and file management. We
can add SVN/GIT, bug tracking and other features, if we ever need
them.
http://www.assembla.com/spaces/openl...ommunity/start

The chat tool provides a searchable history, and can be found at this URL:
http://www.assembla.com/spaces/openl...nity/chat_tool

The space name and URL can be changed at a later point in time, if we
ever decide to fork OpenLaszlo.

If you want to become a member, send me an email to rajubitter [at] googlemail.com, and I'll send out an invitation to you.

Best,
Raju