I received an email from someone that wanted me to talk about TYPO3 Version 4.5 LTS. The suffix “LTS” stands for “Long Term Support”. For the first time a TYPO3 version will be maintained by the TYPO3 Core Team significantly longer than the usual release cycle would suggest. In 2010 TYPO3 has switched to a fixed 6-month release cycle which means up to now support for a version was only provided for 18 months (only three of the latest three versions actively maintained). The LTS versions will be supported for at least 3 years thus offering a good option for users that don’t need or don’t want to update every 6 months.

TYPO3 is used for a great variety of websites ranging from the smallest private homepage up to large multi-server, multi-language enterprise portals. Upgrading for everyone is reported to be easy, since the development team focused on maximum backwards compatibility with older releases. This provides a very easy and stable migration path to TYPO3 Version 4.5 LTS.

Older features are still supported and the use of deprecated features can be easily tracked in a log file. If you're still stuck in the dark ages of the browser war, you'll also want to note that TYPO3 Version 4.5 LTS is the last release to support Internet Explorer 6 for the Backend.

New features and improvements found in TYPO3 Version 4.5 include:

• A fast and flexible pagetree based on, configurable Backend layout and rearranged editing forms for pages and content elements.
• The new LiveSearch box providing instant auto-completion. A similar technology empowers input fields to find connected records in a snap.
• The whole Backend gets an optical facelift. Icons, colors and the general arrangement of elements were streamlined. Many details were fixed to provide a more consistent appearance and workflow.
  

Let me start by clarifying a few things:

1) I work for a CMS vendor, for an enterprise CMS.

2) I am also a big fan of open source.

Yet, I am attempting to write this article with all bias aside; with all generalizations thrown out the window. Without feeling like I am trying to justify this article, I think it is also worth mentioning that the CMS vendor that I work for produces a product that I would avidly use even if I didn’t work for them.

Every vendor, whether they are enterprise or open source do research on their competition. Although the internal information that these vendors have are usually pretty good, there is not a lot of thorough comparisons readily available on the net. When I look on the web, all I see are generalizations. I want to get rid of this, drop biased opinions and give you the hard, honest truth. Sure, I can only talk from my experience, and I have not used every CMS under the sun, but I have had the pleasure (and sometimes pain) of using a diverse range; enough, I would say to be able to stoke the fires. To back this up if someone asked me:

• What is the best photo editing software? I would give an honest answer of Photoshop. But Paint.net is free and so is Gimp, I hear you say. Although expensive, it is the best tool for the job.
• What is the best Media Player? I would say VLC! But Microsoft had dedicated teams to build Windows Media Player, I hear you say! Doesn’t matter, VLC is free and the best tool for the job.
• What is the best Developer Environment? I would say Visual Studio? But I don’t use .net, I hear you say! Great, because you should choose the best tool for YOUR job…..the whole point I am trying to get across with this article.
• What is the best FTP Client? I would say FileZilla!
• What is the best browser? There is no ONE tool for the job.

I think it is important to first define what the two systems are in order to be able to thoroughly compare the two options.

• Open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. The public is allows to copy, modify and redistribute the source code without paying royalties or fees. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology.
• Proprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of its owner. The purchaser, or licensee, is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, but restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.

From a high level perspective you could argue that both have advantages and disadvantages. It is only when you analyze the functionality of the two systems when the decision on what way to go is made that much easier.

The folks over at Geeklog have announced that their blogging application now supports PostgreSQL. Geeklog's move is similar to other open source projects that have recently diversified their support for more additional database management systems.

Dear Geeklog users, today we are proud to announce the public availability of Geeklog with beta PostgreSQL support. This is the culmination of a Google Summer of Code project to implement this feature. PostgreSQL support builds on the already impressive list of MySQL and MSSQL support. This continues to improve Geeklog’s interoperability, which now offers support for the most popular relational database management systems.

Support for Postgres currently is in beta and "should strictly be used on local and testing environments". Geeklog also supports MySQL and and MSSQL.

Last week, DotNetNuke Corp. announced the availability of DotNetNuke Professional Edition 5.1. This edition is the latest release of its web content management and application development framework for business-critical websites and web applications built on Microsoft .NET. The DotNetNuke Professional Edition is built on the same open source core as the free DotNetNuke Community Edition but includes several exclusive features and is fully supported and documented. The annual DotNetNuke Professional Edition subscription costs $1,999 per instance.

New features added to both the community and professional editions of DotNetNuke 5.1 include:

• Added Management Console to simplify access to admin functions
• Auditing for core tables to increase security
• Content Approval and Versioning
• Stop banners displaying and clickthrough count incrementing when indexed by crawlers
• Skin Event Handling
• Google Analytics Support
• Custom XML Sitemap Ranks

Besides the new features and normal bug fixes, DotNetNuke 5.1 also offers additional improvements over DotNetNuke 5.0 including:

Like a lot of people, I too wonder what will happen to the MySQL, Java, and hardware once Sun is integrated into Oracle.  I have opinions but those opinions alone aren't worth a hill of NetBeans.  Luckily, people like Gavin Clarke know what they're talking about.  Clarke has written an excellent article at The Register titled,  Sun and Oracle: end of a beautiful dream.

Oracle will take the decisions Sun could not, and that's what'll have people at Sun worried. And while change should be welcomed, there's no way this should be seen as a bright new dawn for Sun customers or those who've come to believe in its actions on open source or Java.

The first thing you can expect from a Oracle acquisition is due-diligence of the assets and a comparative analysis where Oracle has competing assets. Oracle will weigh up what's worth keeping and jettison the rest. The latter will be marked by end-of-lifing via support and maintenance, or releasing code to the community - where it will fade and die.

The article isn't as gloomy as the title or the above excerpt would imply. However, the article is pragmatic and leaves little room for dreamers.  Be sure to read the article!

Today it is exactly three years ago since PHP 5 has been released. In those three years it has seen many improvements over PHP 4. PHP 5 is fast, stable & production-ready and as PHP 6 is on the way, PHP 4 will be discontinued.

The PHP development team hereby announces that support for PHP 4 will continue until the end of this year only. After 2007-12-31 there will be no more releases of PHP 4.4. We will continue to make critical security fixes available on a case-by-case basis until 2008-08-08. Please use the rest of this year to make your application suitable to run on PHP 5.

"IT has no value whatsoever if you can't help people carry out their missions."

-Chris Niedermayer, "Go with the grain", Government Computer News, May 2, 2005

I'm currently testing a development version of Mozilla's Firefox 3 (codenamed Gran Paradiso). The contents of the release notes for Gran Paradiso Alpha 1 may surprise a few users.

Currently Firefox 3 is scheduled to be officially released in May 2007. When Firefox 3 is finally released it is expected to no longer support older versions of Microsoft Windows including Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows ME. Support for Apple's Mac OS X 10.2 will also be dropped. For the Mac platform, Mozilla is recommending users run Firefox using OS X 10.3.9 or higher.

Several new features for the Alpha 1 version of Gran Paradiso include:

• Cairo is now being used as the default graphics library, affecting all graphic and text rendering
• Cocoa Widgets are now used in OS X builds
• An updated threading model
• Changes to how DOM events are dispatched (see bug 234455)
• Changes to how web pages are painted
• New SVG elements and filters, and improved SVG specification compliance

Many of the new features are a result of changes in the Firefox rendering (layout) engine, Gecko. For this alpha version, Gecko 1.9 Alpha 1 is being used under the browser's hood.

Brad Baker posted on the Joomla! Developer Network an article discussing how one can can contribute to their open source community. While Mr. Baker's article are focused on Joomla!, I think his comments could apply to any open source project. I especially like how he concludes his article.

There is no utopia. No one, and no project, is perfect. Do we have faults, yes, some of them may be more important to you than they are to me, however the fact remains, if you are here for Joomla, the structure is already in place (maybe not ideal, or perfect) for your contribution to be accepted. So, will you contribute? If so, I look forward to seeing you in the community, genuinely helping people, in any way you can, within the current provisions that exist.

Explaining to someone how an open source community actually works is difficult. In my opinion the author has captured with his words a universal truth regarding open source projects. Try replacing Joomla in the above excerpt with Wordpress, Drupal, Radiant, e107, mojoPortal, or another favorite open source project and you'll see what I mean.  Some experiences in open source are universal.