eZ Systems set to boost innovation while enhancing business value to professional users
In one of the big announcements at this year's eZ conference, eZ Systems revealed some important changes to the way they encourage and integrate innovative contributions to eZ Publish, their open source platform. The eZ Publish core is currently developed solely by eZ Systems engineers.
Now, eZ Systems will offer the eZ Publish Community Project, a version of their open source platform which will open the development process up to long-term, trusted community members. Concurrently, eZ Systems will release eZ Publish Enterprise, a version of its platform which benefits from the accelerated innovation of the community edition, but which will be managed from a dedicated code base and subject to stronger, more rigorous testing. As a supported version of the platform, eZ Publish Enterprise will offer additional value to customers using eZ Publish in a mission critical environment. These changes are set to take effect with the up-coming release scheduled for September 28th, 2010.
By splitting the Community Project and Enterprise versions, eZ Systems aims to increase the value of their offering across the board, from the eZ community to customers and business partners.
eZ Publish Community Project is a great opportunity for long-term partners and community members who have demonstrated their skills and knowledge to have even more influence on the eZ Publish roadmap. The more than 37,000 members of the eZ community will now have the opportunity to directly commit to the eZ Publish Community Project code repository. The Community Project amounts to a new way of contributing to eZ Publish's core in a simple, more efficient manner, and not just by way of Community add-ons. Now more than ever, governance of the eZ community is in the hands of its members.
eZ Publish has traditionally been known for high quality standards. With the strong subscription product support and maintenance available through eZ Systems, and stringent quality assurance standards, eZ Publish has been an enterprise-ready product from the beginning. Now, in order to benefit from the accelerated innovation in the eZ Publish Community Project, without compromising the high quality standards for professional use, eZ is introducing a new edition of its software. eZ Publish Enterprise will be managed in a dedicated code base–a code repository with stronger testing and packaging, featuring integrated Enterprise add-ons available only for eZ Publish Enterprise subscribers.
The new development and product distribution model will be rolled out with the next version of eZ Publish on September 28th 2010:
- the core eZ Publish Community Project based on SCRUM (3 week sprints) for developers, researchers, or any of those interested in the bleeding edge development of eZ Publish. This will be downloadable from the Community Portal at http://share.ez.no
- eZ Publish Enterprise, the version designed for professional use of eZ Publish either under the traditional GPL license or the Professional User Licence (PUL). This version will be available on a bi-annual basis (March and September), and available only through eZ Publish Enterprise Subscription.
Website: http://ez.no