WebObjects Now Free With Tiger 296
Reverberant writes "Macworld reports that has Apple released WebObjects as a free application. From $50,000 to free, the software used to build the iTunes Music Store and Dell's original online store is now available for free to Tiger users via Xcode 2.1." From the article: " The software has historical importance to Apple-watchers: it was originally released in March 1996 - but not by Apple. In fact, WebObjects was developed by NeXT Computer and became Apple's software only when that company acquired Steve Jobs' second computer company later that year. While not software on the tip of every Mac users tongue, WebObjects sits behind several significant implementations - the most famous current example being Apple's iTunes Music Store."
link to Apple's page (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Apple learns fast? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Deployment license, development license, or bot (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Database (Score:3, Informative)
Well, the short answer is yes.
It uses JDBC database connectivity and OS X Server ships with MySQL installed.
Re:Maybe there's a reason it's free. (Score:5, Informative)
EOF -- an object relational mapper, providing isolation from the database and from the database model -- in particular is very, very nice. Not the final answer to everything, but still quite cool :-)
The sad thing with Apple's current WebObjects is that it's only java (it's even a J2EE environment), while originally (at NeXT) it was Objective-C based (plus WebScript, an ObjC-like script language). They dropped the Objective-C bit with WebObjects 5, sadly (4.5 had ObjC and Java). Well, ok, beeing a J2EE env has its own advantages, but still...
The documentation of WO 4.5 is here [apple.com], the documentation for the current WO is here [apple.com].
There is a free software implementation of WebObjects 4.5 from the GNUstep project [gnustep.org], GNUstepWeb [gnustepweb.org], which work well. OpenGroupware.org [opengroupware.org] also has its own WO 4.5 implementation, NGObjWeb, which works very well too (it's the foundation of SOPE [opengroupware.org]). I wrote an article [roard.com] showing how to do simple (html) components, but it's in french ;-)
Though, if you want to discover a really interesting project, have a look to Seaside [seaside.st]. It's inspired by WebObjects, with an excellent component model, but is even better (support of continuations, etc). And it's completely dynamic, letting you change things at runtime easily (Smalltalk rulez ;-). It's one of the best thing I know :-)
Re:free as in ??? (Parent is mis-modded) (Score:1, Informative)
The parent is absolutely right, WebObjects is not "free" in any sence of the word. It is not free as in freedom (i.e. not open), is not free as in no money. I haven't checked the license, but I guess it probably will not be free as in "free to do what you want with it."
However it is "free" as in you paid for a developers' tool kit [apple.com] and we are including this in with it. A better suited term would be "included at no extra charge" but that doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it? Mind you, I have no problem with them charging for the package, or at least charging for the tool kit, just with the refering to it as "free."
Re:Deployment license, development license, or bot (Score:5, Informative)
The news seems to boil down to this:
a) WebObjects Development (not deployment) is included in XCode and therefore free.
b) WebObjects Deployment is included for free with Tiger Server.
c) Other licences aren't available any longer. So that means, that you'll have to buy MacOS Tiger Server to get a valid licence. Deployment on all other platforms isn't supported any longer (it should work, cause it's java only, but there's no guarantee).
If Apple doen't change its mind on point c, this news is not good news
Bye egghat.
Re:free as in ??? (Parent is mis-modded) (Score:3, Informative)
As of now WebObjects developer is free. Your can develop with only a copy of Apples free dev tools. Now Deploying requires a License of 10.4 Server which will put you back $499 ($299 if your educational). This dev kit you talk about was the Tiger quick start kit, to allow developers to get tiger early. Apple's Dev Tool have been free from the start. Stop spreading FUD.
In other new the rumblings around WWDC was that Apple is planning on open sourcing WebObjects, which would then make it free. More on that here [appleinsider.com].
Re:dell's website now runs .Net (Score:3, Informative)
Most Likely because WebObjects now only runs in OS X. Dell probably hasn't used WebObjects for about 7 years now, right about the time Apple bought Next. It was there original store that was coded in WebObjects.
Re:Hmmmm (Score:2, Informative)
It's also what runs the
WebObjects is Awesome (Score:4, Informative)
Nice introduction to WebObjects (Score:4, Informative)
Disney and TIAA-CREF (Score:5, Informative)
http://dlr.reservations.disney.go.com/cgi-bin/Web
TIAA-CREF, an institutional and individual investment house has over 200+ WebObjects applications still in productcion. Here's another live URL:
https://ais2.tiaa-cref.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects.exe
Those are just a few of the "small" companies using WebObjects
I've been developing in J2EE for over 3 years now (WebObjects before that) and I can say that nothing beats EOF. Entity EJBs are still way too slow of a technology to get up and running. The change notification and delegation that is present in the EOF framework stack is so powerful and the level of caching that's given to the developer are way too easy. Hibernate, CMP EJBs and JDO don't compare. Note that Apple was actually on the JDO specification board. I'm not sure if they voted for or against JDO but it was interesting to see they were on the board. Maybe there were thoughts creating a specification around EOF? HAHAHA!
Re:Free if you buy a MacOS X Server! (Score:2, Informative)
Some of you are confused - it's not "just Java" (Score:5, Informative)
IIRC, the USPS uses WebObjects for a number of systems. I sure love their new "automated postal systems."
Re:What is it? (Score:4, Informative)
JBoss has been used as the container since Panther shipped, or shortly thereafter.
WebObjects was one of the leading Application Servers (along with NetDynamics and Kiva) 3 or 4 years before J2EE even existed. Since the price went from $50K to free, it saw a fairly significant drop in market share. Sorta strange what a big price drop and drop in marketing will do... now BEA can plunder peoples pocketbooks instead.
Re:Maybe there's a reason it's free. (Score:1, Informative)
From an article at Twin Forces [twinforces.com]:
David Neumann at Apple had some comments on my numbers for implementing the original Dell online store:
The first store was built in WO 1.0. I built the demo core in 4 calendar weeks. Not all that times was spent on Dell. I still had SE duties. But April, May, and 1/2 of June went by before they deployed it. I spent a week and a half each month after April just tweaking when it became obvious they were going to actually deploy the demo app. I was the only developer. there was an HTML guy and DBA guy and a manager guy. So it's hard to quantify but 6 weeks seems accurate. You can see that no more than 2.5 calendar months went by between start and deployment. Starting on Halloween night we rewrote the app in WO 3.0/EOF 2.0. That deployed on December 7th (a month and a week later). This time a developer, Kevin Koym also worked on it. I did the Configurator, Shopping Cart, speed tuning, and reporting pages; Kevin did the check out pages. But there were 2 people that time working for those 38 days. Kevin stayed on and added further stuff such as multiple store fronts for different customers and performance enhancements in the leak dept. About $750million went through that store from June96 to November97 when they finally pulled the plug./
Re:Prelude to OpenSource? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:dell's website now runs .Net (Score:5, Informative)
I was at the WWDC WO sessions (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Apple learns fast? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:WebObjects is Awesome (Score:1, Informative)
I think you're referring to Paul Graham (paulgraham.com). If memory serves, he put together a Lisp-based system that Yahoo! bought out for their Yahoo! Stores offerings. He's got an article or two about it at his website.
Erik
Parent post is WRONG ! (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the truth: the article should read "Apple gives away $699 software package with every copy of OS X Server!"
You can buy WebObjects from the Apple store [apple.com] just like always, and
just as it's been for some time. The only new thing is that the developer tools are free ( for OS X ) and the entire package is free ( for new OS X Server purchases ). Now it only costs money ( exluding developer time, of course ) to develop and deploy WebObjects if you want to do so entirely on Windows 2000, or if you want to avoid buying an XServe. This is actually a brilliant move by Apple, although it is one likely triggered in part by low sales due to increased competition from J2EE, LAMP, andNote to parent: do your research before jumping to conclusions and making false claims, it helps prevent you from looking silly. I know. I've learned this the hard way myself...
very good news (Score:1, Informative)
For those who wonder why webobjects used to cost 50k it's because WebObjects was basically the first application server - Next pretty much invented the idea. And through 5 generations webobjects has been refined, until now it can do pretty much anything you want with ease. The simplicity of EOF for instance, is wonderful, and nothing compares (except perhaps Hibernate). Those who describe WO sites as being slow just really don't know what they're talking about, or they've been looking at some pretty badly coded sites that I haven't seen. Most of Apples sites run using WebObjects. The BBC news website used to run on webobjects (they used WO to generate static pages which were then cached and served on demand), etc. etc.
The problem in recent history has been that Apple just haven't bothered to promote it much, and all their WebObject developers have been working on internal Apple applications (Like iTunes,
Parent post is RIGHT (Score:1, Informative)
You're about to learn it again. While there is no statement from an Apple employee or press release concerning this, Apple was very clear at WWDC: WebObjects is a Mac OS X-only technology as of 5.3. As you point out, 5.2 is still for sale, for now.
This is being discussed by other WWDC attendees on the WebObjects deployment mailing list:
http://lists.apple.com/archives/Webobjects-deploy
http://lists.apple.com/archives/Webobjects-deploy
http://lists.apple.com/archives/Webobjects-deploy
Now it's true that 5.3 can still technically be deployed on other platforms. You can still create a
I realize I'm just a lowly "Anonymous Coward," but I don't trade in rumors or misinformation, if I can help it. My original grandparent post was correct, and parent is incorrect. Moderators, please mod parent down and consider modding up the original grandparent. This is a VERY IMPORTANT issue for all WebObjects developers and they should be aware of it.
Developers, developers, developers, developers. (Score:3, Informative)
Developers create the killer apps that drive OS sales. It's great to see that Apple is working to actively court developers as this investment (which costs them little) may yield an increase in demand for both their hardware and software as more and more applications become available.
The parent post's mention of Dell's switch to
This is an intelligent move by Apple and I wish them success with it.
Re:license risk (Score:3, Informative)
However, they are looking to clarify their licensing policy and legalese, and I feel confident they'll provide some sort of path for the non-Tiger user.