In this time of money-hungry megacorporations, there still exists at least one philosophy that ultimately benefits the little guy-Open Source.
Since January of last year, Santa Cruz, Calif.-based Lutris Technologies Inc. has offered its Enhydra software up for public trial and error, and so far more than 4,500 developers have responded. Enhydra is Lutris’ Open Source application server. It allows developers to create and deliver various Java and Extensible Markup Language-based applications, including those for wireless devices.
“The promise (with Open Source) is there is a wide community of people … by using it they will add new functionality and make that product better,” said Keith Bigelow, director of product management for Lutris. “The community is not waiting for a vendor to ship a feature. … Because they have the source code for the product, they can add that feature themselves.”
Developers can either access Enhydra from the Internet or buy the recently released professional version for $500, dramatically less than what Sun Microsystems Inc. charges for similar software. Lutris Enhydra Professional is licensed and its users get support and training from Lutris, whereas users of the Internet version are on their own.
“There were a fair number of Java application servers on the marketplace. When we were ready and considering the overall marketplace we thought, `We could be approximately one of 40 vendors in the space, or we can offer this code as Open Source and continue to use it in our consulting space,'” Bigelow said.
Through the Open Source process, Internet consultant DigitalSesame modified Enhydra to support Wireless Markup Language. Online newspaper FormosaToday commissioned DigitalSesame to construct a Web application to enable the distribution of news content to multiple devices, ranging from browsers to mobile phones and personal digital assistants. DigitalSesame used Enhydra and the Enhydra XML compiler to build a content management system called Avalokit.
Essentially DigitalSesame was the first company to write code into Enhydra, giving the program the ability to strip Web content of its HTML code and repackage the content in WML, Lutris said.
Shortly thereafter, AnywhereYouGo.com added build rules for creating wireless Internet applications, and these and other reference information became Lateral Software’s tutorial contribution, said Lutris.
Around the time Lutris released its professional version of Enhydra in June, the company also distributed a wireless developer kit. The kit introduced Java technology developers to the wireless space and showed them how to build wireless Internet applications.
The kit, given out free of charge mostly to attendees of the Javaone Conference and Exhibition in San Francisco, included Sun Microsystems’s Forte for Java Community Edition 1.0 software; a wireless development tutorial including a sample Internet address book application from AnywhereYouGo.com; the YoSpace cell phone emulator, which allows a developer to see what the content will look like on a wireless device; the WAPtor WML editor; the Enhydra Java/XML Open Source application server; and InstantDB, a Java-based Open Source relational database.
Although Java-based applications using Open Source or any other technology currently are not available in the wireless market, Bigelow believes there will be a meaningful place-especially in business-for Java-enabled devices in the next few years.
“There are zero phones capable of running Java now. Let’s look forward two years to where Japan is today where they’re running all sorts of applications on their phone,” said Bigelow. He noted that Java ultimately will give the wireless user better control.
“One of the huge failures is the capacity for the end user to enter data efficiently,” Bigelow noted. “Java can remedy that.”
