Hippo News & Articles

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.

We’ve covered their previous version -- Hippo CMS 7.0 -- in some detail. It was a major release with serious changes to the content management system’s core.

This 7.1 release does not bring significant news, but does introduce some changes that Hippo CMS users should take into account.

Hippo (site, news) says the focus of this version is on stability, usability and performance.

When it comes to dancing with hippos and romancing thousands of college girls, the company that gets the job done is Bluenog (news, site). Yes, the team behind the ECM solution Bluenog ICE, which is built on Hippo open source technology and was recently announced as the management solution of choice for Wellesley College’s website, has certainly been attracting a lot of attention lately.

On the heels of their Startup 50 ranking from InformationWeek comes another award, this time from Red Herring. The media company’s editorial team announced that their list of the top 100 Technology Companies in North America contains winners drawn from a pool of 1,000.

Each year, evaluations are reportedly made on both quantitative and qualitative criteria such as financial performance, innovation, management, global strategy, and ecosystem integration.

“Of the thousands of companies that have submitted their entries we were tasked with choosing the technologies that are making the biggest impact this year,” said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. “Bluenog is one of those exceptional companies that can make open source tick in the enterprise with its advanced collaborative solution.”

The list of companies that rocked Red Herring’s boat this year included some other familiar faces as well, like Clearwell, Meebo and Acquia. To see them all, check out Red Herring’s website here.

Remember Bluenog, the new-ish Enterprise Content Management solution provider who loves to play with open source solutions? The company claimed to be the first of its kind, but we tend to keep a healthy skepticism.

Recently these new comers' ego has gained a bit of puff. InformationWeek has named Bluenog ICE -- Bluenog's flagship solution -- to its first ever Startup 50 ranking. The award recognizes value, enterprise-readiness and innovation. Let's take another look at what Bluenog is doing.

With its open source CMS -- Hippo CMS 7.0 -- recently out of the door, Hippo (news, site) has found a partner in the U.S. to help implement the revamped product. CorraTech is an open source software services and consulting shop. The two will work together to deliver web content management solutions to mid-market and enterprise customers.

Growth is almost always falls in the same equation with demand. Hippo says they are experiencing an increase in the customer base in North America. Meaning it’s time to shake hands with some system integrators. Or, as Tjeerd Brenninkmeijer, CEO of Hippo, puts it: “This move will help us deliver to our growing customer base in North America, where we are witnessing strong demand.”

CorraTech, as a provider of professional services (PS) and support for companies looking to transition to open source software, also evaluates open source vendors for enterprise adoption readiness. As part of its CorraTech’s Open Source Center of Excellence (OSCOE) evaluation process, they measure system scalability, architecture flexibility, interoperability, usability, licensing and support capabilities, as well as the commitment to the open source community.

Some of CorraTech existing partnerships include the open source usual suspects like Alfresco, Drupal, Joomla! and others.

As we’ve seen many times before, one “growing pain” to be aware of is spreading your PS resources too thin. As in the case with other European Web CMS vendors that have entered the U.S. market at some point in the past, Hippo customers should keep in mind the implications of a “partner model.” While the future may be bright, stay in the present moment and think of a possibly limited pool of implementation resources in the initial stages of market entry.

Hippo CMS 7 is available for a free-of-charge download from www.onehippo.org. Also, check out our take on the new version.

Hippo, a vendor in open source Enterprise Content Management and Portal technology, has launched version 7.0 of its Content Management System.

In the new release, Hippo CMS boasts easier categorization of content “that is not found in other open source CMS product,” in addition to a completely revamped technology core based on Apache Jackrabbit.

The Apachean Jack-of-All-Rabbits devotion sounds quite familiar, doesn’t it?

Hippo, a European content management and portal provider, is sponsoring this year’s ApacheCon USA where it will also present advice for developers.

Host Color, a Web hosting provider, has announced that it is offering hosting plans specifically for the TextPattern (TXP) Web CMS. Starting at US$ 3.99, this hosting package offers the space and bandwidth necessary to provide publishers with a concrete publishing environment.

Our dear friends at Packt Press have teamed with CIGNEX founder and CTO, Munwar Shariff, to deliver a no doubt highly practical manual for the full implementation of the Alfresco Open Source Enterprise CMS.

And Munwar is the man. He’s one we’d take CMS counsel from any day. With over 5 years of running CMS projects at CIGNEX and plenty more than that digging deep into software dev projects, Munwar brings a wealth of hands-on experience. This combined with the no-nonsense tradition at Packt Press, is sure to have produced one 356 page tome that is unlikely to waste your time.