Re: Tools

[Derek Neighbors]

On Sat, 2002-10-19 at 05:27, Dragi Raos wrote:
> Hi, everybody!
> 
> I was pretty excited when I saw there is open source ERP effort, and
> then a bit disappointed when I discovered that, while tools part of the
> effort got under way quite nicely, actuall apps are still far away.
> Perhaps that's in part because of reinventing the wheel on the tools
> side.
> 
> I would like to point app developers' attention to another open source
> app dev tool, POSSL (www://www.possl.org). The tool author, New
> York-based Prolifics (www://www.prolifics.com) simply opened version
> 4.28 of Linux port of their cross-platform tool, Panther, and left it
> from there on to the community (which has not done much).
> 
> The tool currently works on all Unix-based OSes and Windows (Prolifics
> recently abandoned Mac, VMS and a score of other, more obscure
> platforms) with a variety of database back-ends, with several middleware
> packages (open-source version only with WebSphere or stand-alone,
> propriatery also with BEA products and COM/DCOM/MTS), and in character
> mode, GUI and Web (from the same forms). It has form, report and menu
> designer, client runtime with debugger, server-side components and Web
> app broker. Logic is programmed in any mixture of C, Java and
> propriatery interpreted 4GL, JPL.
> 
> Perhaps this list is not the right place to hawk 'competing' tool, but I
> simply thought that some of the people here might want to take a look.
> It is one of the most undeservedly neglected tools I know of (both open
> source and propriatery version of it - though the later has some very
> impressive references and is actually doing well, though quietly so).


You may think of it as reinventing the wheel.  We think of it as
providing a completely liberated solution.  A few items to note.  

1. POSSL was not opensource at the time GNUe was started.
2. POSSL (to my knowledge) requires non-free software to be used.
3. POSSL is under a copyright holder that has strong commercial
interests.

These things are important.  Under the current scenario, I would ask why
did Linus Torvalds create GNU/Linux?  He could have obtained a
proprietary kernel and installed the GNU system on top of it and had a
working system?  Much the same way one can obtain a oodles of
proprietary software (like websphere/visual age java, etc) and intsall
POSSL on top of it and have a non-free system.

The gist of the GNU project is to provide a completely free
alternative.  Under consistent and compatiable licenses.  GNU Enterprise
is a part of the GNU project and so aims to work cohesively with the
rest of the GNU project.

 
-- 
Derek Neighbors
GNU Enterprise
http://www.gnuenterprise.org
address@hidden

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