Forum OpenACS Development: a UBL package?

1: a UBL package?

Posted by Benjamin Brink on 01/02/17 04:59 AM

Hi devs,

Is UBL currently implemented in OpenACS? If so, how is it configured?

If not, is there any interest in a UBL package for OpenACS?

If so, any recommendations on how to approach it for increased use and support in OpenACS?

new year cheers,

Ben

2: Re: a UBL package? (response to 1)

Posted by Brian Fenton on 01/03/17 10:08 AM

Hi Ben

assuming you mean Universal Business Language, the guys over at Project Open claim that PO "supports a subset of UBL 1.0". http://www.project-open.com/en/list-integration-links

hope that is of some help
Brian

3: Re: a UBL package? (response to 2)

Posted by Benjamin Brink on 01/03/17 06:05 PM

Thank you, Brian.

You're right. Universal Business Language as a subset of ebXML http://ubl.xml.org/ebXML

I appreciate fully respect Project Open's approach to solutions. However PO hasn't met significant requirements in the problem domains I've been working on. For example, the apparent incompatibility of their license with Gnu GPL2 projects: http://www.project-open.com/en/project-open-license-free

It will be a couple of months before I dedicate serious time to this.

Current plan is to integrate Naviserver's xml services with the OpenACS 4.5 ecommerce's payment-gateway paradigm once ledger123 is significantly ported.

cheers,
Ben

4: Re: a UBL package? (response to 3)

Posted by Frank Bergmann on 01/09/17 06:37 PM

Hi Ben,

The UBL package is licensed with a closed-source license, because it would be interesting for customers as part of our "enterprise open-source" strategy.

However, there was really nobody interested, apart from one customer...

incompatibility

The package is distributed and installed separately, so it doesn't need to be GPL V2. That's how for example the Oracle DB can work on top of Linux.

However, as I said, there wasn't much interest in the package. Just drop us a note at mailto:info@project-open.com and I can provide you with the source code. There may be dependencies on the rest of ]project-open[, but I believe the structure is quite straight-forward, so that you could adapt it easily. Also, it's only a limited number of UBL messages and only one direction.

Cheers,
Frank

5: Re: a UBL package? (response to 4)

Posted by Benjamin Brink on 01/09/17 08:50 PM

Thank you for the offer, Frank.

By incompatibility, I mean that the code cannot be included in an OpenACS repository. Even GNU GPL v3 licensed packages are questionable for inclusion in a GPL v2 OpenACS repository. It depends on how the definition of a software program is interpreted.

I had planned to release packages under GPL license version 3, which I thought was compatible with version 2; However, it is not, so have licensed some packages under less restrictive version 2. There may be value in having a separate GNU GPL v3 repository at some point.

I'll send email shortly.
cheers,
Ben