Frequently Asked Questions
Are Enhydra.org projects "free" ?
Definitely YES ! All Enhydra.org projects are licensed under LGPL and are "Free as Freedom" as defined by gnu.org: "Free software"' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of "free'' as in "free speech,'' not as in "free beer''.
The Enhydra.org community is fully commited to keep the projects open sourced and all Enhydra projects including this homepage are hosted at the ObjectWeb infrastructure, a truly independent and reliable consortium having its home in INRIA next to W3C and others.
LGPL licensing allows the use of Enhydra projects in commercial software development but grants freedom to the open sources.
What kind of non-commercial support is provided ?
There are several mailing lists which are open to anyone who wishes to join. Enhydra.org developers and users are answering questions on a best effort basis. Latest sources and improvements are (in conformance with LGPL licensing) always provided in the projects CVS repositories. Binary versions of Beta releases and new major releases are also available for public download.
What kind of commercial support is provided ?
Support services and latest maintenance binary releases (including bug fixes, add-ons and improvements) with corresponding labeled sources and automated source build procedures are available from Together Teamlösungen, the main contributor to most of the Enhydra.org projects development and other Commercial Vendors. Sources of relevant parts of commercial releases that fall under LGPL will of course be available in the public CVS repositories of the corresponding projects.
Are all parts of commercial binaries Open Source ?
The answer depends on the relevant commercial vendor of products based on Enhydra.org projects. Of course all vendors have to fulfill the requirements defined in the LGPL license for all parts that are based on Enhydra.org projects source code but every vendor is able to bundle additional parts that are licensed differently. As long as LGPL is not violated, "linked" extensions like plug-ins or add-ons might be closed source or even owned by specific customers. But mostly it is also desirable to give them back to the Open Source project to gain the benefits of a community.
How to file bug reports and feature requests ?
The best way is to present them to the corresponding mailing list with a fix :-) or contract Together Teamlösungen or one of the other Commercial Vendors to help you and provide you improvements, extensions and bugfix binary releases based on a support contract.
What is "Open Source" ?
There are many ways to describe Open Source, but we'll use this recommended one liner from www.opensource.org:
"Open source promotes software reliability and quality by supporting independent peer review and rapid evolution of source code."
Why should I use an open source Application Server
Open source software is often superior to closed source, being more robust, feature rich, and adaptable. For example, most of the software infrastructure used to run the Internet is developed using an Open Source model, including Linux, Apache, SendMail, TCP/IP, HTTP, and Perl.
What is an Application Server?
The term "Application Server" has been used with respect to so many diverse software products that the term can seem confusing. One way to understand an application server is to think about it as an application that provides services for other applications. For example, virtually every web application needs to accept HTTP requests, maintain session state, and pool database connections. Instead of rewriting these services for every application, you can run your application on top of an application server that already provides these services.
What is Enhydra Server ?
Enhydra Server is an Open Source Java/XML application and webservice server that facilitates the rapid development and deployment of Java and XML based applications, including e-Commerce, business to business, business to client, and Intranet applications for the wired and wireless web. A flexible development environment, Enhydra Server supports complete separation of interface design, business logic, and data logic, creating highly maintainable applications with very flexible deployment scenarios.
What is Enhydra Shark and JaWE ?
Enhydra Shark and JaWE are two projects of the Enhydra.org Workflow plattform. They are independent of the Enhydra application servers but can of course be used with them :-) as with any otherJava application server or envronment. Enhydra Shark uses Enhydra.org technologies like the relational-object-mapper Enhydra DODS.
What are Enhydra Tools and Technologies ?
Enhydra Tools and Technologies are the base projects for Enhydra Application Servers and the Enhydra Workflow Plattform. Of course some of these technologies can also be used just by themselves, like EAF, XMLC, DODS, Octopus and even Director for Tomcat or Jetty.
What are Enhydra Applications ?
Enhydra Applications are Demos including sources and even ready to use building blocks like the FOP applet or the Enhydra Snapper fulltext search engine.
What is Enhydra.org ?
Enhydra.org is an organization sponsored by Together Teamlösungen and the ObjectWeb Consortium as a non-commercial vehicle for making Enhydra projects available to be the Open Source community. Enhydra.org is making every effort to adhere to the spirit of the Open Source movement and accepted guidelines such as those published by opensource.org at www.opensource.org/osd.html.
How do I contact Enhydra.org ?
The best way is using the Enhydra mailing list, enhydra@enhydra.org or any other project specific mailing list. They are used widely by the Enhydra.org community.
Can I use and ship Enhydra code with my products ?
Yes, as long as the simple LGPL license requirements are followed.
Can I ship the Enhydra source code too ?
Yes, as long as the simple LGPL license requirements are followed.
Can I ship commercial releases with my product ?
This depends on the license you get from the Commercial Vendor. All parts of commercial releases that are based on Enhydra.org LGPL source code can always be distributed freely, no matter which commercial distribution you use since these parts MUST be licensed under LGPL. Vendor specific add-ons can be licensed differently of course.
Some code refers to Lutris Technologies ?
Lutris was the originator of Enhydra Server, Enhydra.org and the Open Source community, thus still the copyright reference in some sources. All "EPL" licensed code was changed to LGPL and donated to the community by Together Teamlösungen based on a copyright and trademark transfer contract and with permission from all contributors !
(C) 2007 Together Teamlösungen EDV-Dienstleistungen GmbH. - All rights reserved