Where do the eZ Components go?

Like Toby wrote in his blog, he and me left eZ Systems last month, to focus on out diploma thesis and for some new challenges. But where does that leave eZ Components?

With Toby and me leaving eZ Systems the two last core developers of the eZ Components team left eZ Systems, since Derick and Sebastian already left eZ Systems earlier this year. We all want to continue working on this great components library, so we sought for a solution on this together with eZ Systems, who sponsored the project for the last years.

Luckily we quickly agreed to continue eZ Components as a full Open Source project, which won't be driven by a company any more, but will be developed on its own, by the existing community of developers. To ensure a consistent IP and since several products are and will be based on eZ Components we were looking for ways to provide a solid legal background for the project - this is where we thought of the Apache foundation. Therefore we started the incubating process today.

To reflect this change we decided to rename the components to Zeta Components. We, of course, want to keep the core development paradigms, like test-driven-development and full backwards compatibility. Switching to the "new" components will therefor be a no-brainer for you.

This means we will now try to become an Apache project, with all its benefits, like a very solid legal background and future-proof licensing options for the components. eZ Systems offered to transfer the code property to the Apache foundation, which we are very thankful for, and we will contact all our external contributors during the incubating process. Clearing up the IP situation is part of the incubating process, so follow the mailing list, if you are interested.

If all goes well eZ Components will be an Apache project in the future and we can continue to improve the components and use them in our software projects.

eZ Systems will continue to use the components in their products, but will not provide any direct commercial support for them in the future. This is where a new company will step in. Toby, Manuel and me are currently in the progress of founding a company together, which will become alive this summer. This company will provide consulting on the full quality lifecycle of PHP software. Commercial support for the eZ Components will be one part of that. Details will follow in our blogs and twitter streams - so stay tuned.

Further reading:

• Tobys announcement

• eZ Systems announcement on share.ez.no

• Twitter streams: Manuel, Toby, Kore

• Blogs: Manuel, Toby, Kore