Should iDempiere use RAP from Eclipse?

[red1]

If you follow not just the technology trail but also the money, you will notice that 'commercializing' is creeping into FOSS projects. One such project is ZK Ajax where their latest ZK5 has licensing issues for us to use in iDempiere. After some discussion with Low Heng Sin, the master of our ZK Ajax UI, he advised to thread carefully as we can be sued for infringing ZK's copyright by owners of Compiere, since we are a fork from it. Meaning ZK can sue Compiere and then Compiere can sue ADempiere (e.V.). Heng Sin also indicated that in future we may look at alternative frameworks. Well the future is always here.

Thus if we do not research about this, someone else will. I am looking at something:

The Rich Ajax Platform lets you build rich, Ajax-enabled Web applications by using the Eclipse development model, plug-ins with the well known Eclipse workbench extension points and a widget toolkit with SWT API.

That is what the site says.

What do you think if we look at this as an alternative UI for iDempiere? RAP is native in Eclipse and built in the Equniox OSGi framework. And IBM behind Eclipse has a good history not known to sell off or commercialize or cannibalize but a very daring community approach. Again, WDYT?

[red1]

It seems that Eclipse utilises SWT before and they did this Rich Client Platform (RCP) before evolving to RAP. Here seems to be good info on incorporating Swing into SWT first http://www.eclipse.org/articles/article ... index.html

Then the technology gets OSGized as http://www.vogella.de/articles/EclipseRCP/article.html

and eventually Ajaxized as http://www.vogella.de/articles/EclipseRAP/article.html

[hengsin]

Clarification on the legal risk with Zk5EE ZOL license:

The legal risk is NOT Zk can sue iDempiere or Compiere but rather Compiere can terminate Compiere's GPL license to iDempiere due to our linking and distribution of iDempiere with non-free, binary only library (Zk5 EE). Also, please note that there isn't any legal risk with Zk5 CE as Zk5 CE is LGPL license.

Regards,
Low

[hengsin]

It seems that Eclipse utilises SWT before and they did this Rich Client Platform (RCP) before evolving to RAP. Here seems to be good info on incorporating Swing into SWT first http://www.eclipse.org/articles/article ... index.html

Then the technology gets OSGized as http://www.vogella.de/articles/EclipseRCP/article.html

and eventually Ajaxized as http://www.vogella.de/articles/EclipseRAP/article.html

One of the major benefit of eclipse RAP is the possibilities to support both desktop and web client with single source, i.e Eclipse RCP and Eclipse RAP.

[red1]

Heng Sin,
Is there any clear advantage for upgrading iDempiere to ZK5? What do we lose if we stick to ZK3++?

[hengsin]

One thing we lose here is new stuff from Potix like zk calendar, zk spreadsheet, ztl, etc will be compatible with zk5 only. Having say that, zk3 have been serving us well and that's part of the reason why there isn't a working zk5 port yet - there wasn't a great urgency or need to upgrade, at least not now that is.

[red1]

I have asked another Dominik (code guru) in Dominik's office in Landshut, and he told me I shouldn't like RAP/RCP as the SWT platform is troublesome to migrate to. I should instead look at JSF or HTML5 as the more open and future way to go. WDYT?

[hengsin]

There is a difference between building new application and migrating existing one. Migrating from Zk to Eclipse RAP could be easier as there are some similarities in architecture and also because iDempiere is already using many Eclipse technology.