As we are about to enter a brand new year I would like to send my regards to all participants in the EPiServer blogosphere!

It has been just little over 12 months since the technical EPiServer blogging went crazy and there are now close to 500 articles for developers!

In 2009 we will try to repeat this success, but in a slightly different area… The Board of Directors at EPiServer have now approved our new strategy for adding Open Source Projects on top of EPiServer CMS and EPiServer Community: Therefore, I herby declares 2009 to be The Year of Open Source!

We will continue to sell commercial and supported licenses just as before, but instead of just letting many projects stay abandoned due to lack of resources we will make them available as Open Source. (In the end, we believe we can cover our paychecks by selling more CMS and Community licenses!)

As many of you know, taking a prototype into a full fledged commercial product is a very time consuming task, involving everything from localization, documentation, testing, installation to training materials. Open Source projects does not have the same requirements since we can make the source code available.

This way, we believe we can provide the EPiServer customers with even more value for money and that our partners will be able to deliver more projects.

To support all EPiServer based  Open Source projects out there, we are going to launch a new “EPiServer add-on catalog” in January. Developers will be able to register their Open Source project in the catalog, regardless of its download location. For our own projects, we are primarily going to use Coderesort (https://www.coderesort.com/p/epicode ).

We have discovered that Open Source is somewhat of a legal minefield with zillions of license types and that all licenses are not compatible with each other… Also, you can get severe (legal) infections by using the wrong license agreement or using code that was supposed to be clean..
Therefore, we have made 4 (actually just really 3) internal levels of Open Source projects, just to make things a little bit clearer for ourselves;

Level 1:
Small hacks made one rainy evening that might be useful for someone else.
License:”As is” ( MS Permissive License (MSPL) or LGPL).
Distribution: Inside blogs or on world.episerver.com or labs.episerver.com

Level 2:
Code that is of broader interest, or where we do not need to have absolute control of releases.
License: “Contribute” (EPiCode Community Source License (ECSL).
Distribution: CodeResort.

Level 3:
Code projects that we want to keep control of.
License:  LGPL agreement. No contribution requirements.
Distribution: CodeResort or Codeplex
Comment: In some cases we need to be able to control what to be included in releases and when the releases are to be made. Developers are welcome to donate code but that is not a requirement.
Example: Content migration tool, template sets etc

Level 4:
Modules with source code, free for all EPiServer customers.
NOTE: These projects are not classified as Open Source due to the legal ties to the EPiServer platform.
License: Requires a valid commercial EPiServer license.
Distribution: On a case by case basis, primarily on world.episerver.com
Example: EPiTrace

No EPiServer AB project is allowed to be published without a describing blog post.

As for naming conventions, most Open Source projects from EPiServer will be named with an X at the end. We have just released WikiX and TranslationX. In the beginning of 2009 we will make  EventX (our in-house developed system for managing our public events) available soon to be followed by many more small and large projects.

We have been slow to pick up on Open Source but we will make up the lost time, I promise. After all, skunkworks projects are fun, aren't they?

Credits to all the hard working EPiServer pioneers out there who has already contributed with projects and code donations!

Merry Christmas and an Open New Year!

/Mikael Runhem, Founder & CTO, EPiServer AB

PS: As for a little game:
Please post a comment to this blog and state how many EPiServer Open Source Projects (in total, level 1 to 4 plus everything else non-commercial and not just from EPiServer AB) that you think will be available by the end of 2009. Real projects, no creative vaporware just to win this prize…
The one that comes nearest will win the hottest gadget on the market. I will be the gadget judge and select the gadget.  (This year it would probably have been something like an iPhone or a Google Android phone but I will be open for suggestions by the end of 2009:-)
Be sure to use some kind of identification so that you can claim the prize! You must place your bet before 15 January 2009.DS