Should Open Source Content Management Interoperate?

bergie writes "Advogato is running a thought-provoking article on whether open source content management systems should interoperate. This is a big question involving social issues inside the projects, but also promising huge benefits to developers deploying open source CMSs and to desktop projects like Mozilla, OpenOffice and Xopus wishing to connect with a collaborative backend. This discussion will also be a major topic on the upcoming OSCOM conference."

Comments

No

[rppp01]

I don't think they should have too, but think about this: The reason people use MS Exchange, is because it interoperates with MS Office, SQL Server and MS Windows seemlessly (I know I know, so they say).

If Open Source wants to continue to be seen as valid, then I think they should move in that direction. Don't force anyone, and don't prevent anyone from taking a different direction. Who knows, the Exchange Killer might start out as a simple stand alone app that Just Does The Job- and then someone adds on the components to make it play with everyone else.

Good idea, but try getting people to go along

[brunes69]

It is a great concept.. have a common API for posting / retrieving content, for posting comments, etc. But getting people to impliment it would be like pulling teeth. Everyone would think that the way they are currently doing it is the best way. This is one downfall of Open Source, the "ego factor".

The "ego factor" is the same reason we have 5 different office products all working on seperate import / export filters for MS Office, when the effort should be combined.

stuff of nonsense

[perfessor multigeek]

I massively disagree. This article is the stuff of frustration. And I agree with them. As an old corporate guy I've been watching the various open source content management systems for years and to me they *all* look like muck.
Specifically, they look like the work of a bunch of programmers who have never for a moment on their lives run or even worked in an actual content creation environment. They program in the features that are "cool" to implement instead of what an actual publisher could use.
So they're finally talking about how poorly an aspect of this whole movement functions in the real "I need to make a living with this" world and surprise, surprise, it sucks so bad that the room is filled with (heh, heh) jabber, in which they can't even agree on what they're arguing about or what goal they're seeking.
This all looks promising to me but frankly I wrote this whole category off years ago. As far as I'm concerned the dedicated content management systems that are available or well on the way now are VisiCalc in a world where most of us need Excel. I. e., this is all very nice but I'll wait until they've putzed around for a few more years, have worked out the most egregious mistakes, and start over from scratch.
BTW, if any of you ever want to check out a *real* content management system, you know, one that complex pubs (like the New York Times, Time Magazine, JCrew, etc.) actually *use*, then study the feature list, UI, etc. of QPS. Now almost a decade old and in the hands of a succession of commerce-impaired clueless corporations, it's still more usable, easier to administer, and more powerful than anything I've seen. Now if only *that* would get open sourced (a la PostGres) we'ld be getting somewhere.
Until then I'm placing my bets on well-customized SQL-compliant systems based on rigorous adherence to rich XML schemas.
Happy days,
Rustin

Re:stuff of nonsense

[Gerry Gleason]

I can't disagree with this comment more. I can't immagine that you have really looked at enough of the open source project to comment. The bigger issue is finding the solution that fits your problem.

Also comparisons to commercial projects that are in use by large organizations, publishing or otherwise isn't really useful. Frankly, I far prefer sites that don't try to mix a lot of fancy formatting and inserts with the content, and I think you are more likely to find this with the generally cleaner pages from free/open projects.

A good first step: exclusive use for files

[Animats]

One of the big weaknesses of Unix/Linux is that file systems don't have reliable exclusive use. Some versions of UNIX don't have mandatory exclusive use at all. On Linux it's a mount-time option. Unix has traditionally had lousy locking primitives, and NFS made it even worse. "Advisory locking" is sometimes available in various flavors, ranging from bad to worse. Lock files are still used, even though they're unreliable under NFS and orphaned lock files often lock up programs. Overall, it's a mess.

By comparison, all current Windows OSs have exclusive use for files, and it's widely used. So programs tend not to stomp on each other's files. This helps interoperability. Programs need only be compatible at the file level; they don't have to actively cooperate to maintain file integrity.

I'd like to see "always-on" exclusive use for Linux. If you ask for an open with exclusive use, you should be able to expect it to be available.

Re:Content Creation and Managment System

[Phoukka]

Let me reformulate your question a bit. You wrote:

As an author take a template and fill in the bits of information to create an html page. Then have that data propagated to a similar template for a pdf, word doc, etc.

What you really want is not a template, fill in the bits to make an html page. What you really want is to do the exact same thing, but substitute XML for HTML. Once you are using a dialect of XML as your source, you can use XSL to transform the source into other formats, including HTML, PDF, and RTF. Take a look at the Apache XML project for technologies that will help you. Apache FOP will generate PDF for you, and Cocoon will give you a framework in which to do all this XML manipulation. You can use Xindice as your XML data store. But buy a couple of really good books on XML before you start...