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Apache Shindig: where does the portal end and the social application start?

20-Dec-2007

Tags: Portals and Content Integration, Marketplace at Large,

Last month, Apache member Brian McAllister proposed a new incubation project called Shindig, which would create an open source implementation of OpenSocial. OpenSocial is Google & Co's much hyped response to Facebook, offering a new common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites.

To quote the interesting Shindig proposal:

    A social application, in this context, is an application run by a third party provider and embedded in a web page, or web application, which consumes services provided by the container and by the application host. This is very similar to Portal/Portlet technology, but is based on client-side compositing, rather than server.

Perhaps as a surprise to some, in particular outsiders to Apache, Shindig and Jetspeed (the official Apache Portal Project) are not connected in any way. For Apache this is the usual way of working: innovative, but often disconnected projects sometimes overlap or supercede each other. As another example, Jetspeed does not use Lenya, the Apache open source content management system. Rather Jetspeed works closely with Hippo, a Dutch open source Web CMS vendor.

Shindig could end up as the open source reference implementation for OpenSocial, but it is still very early days. Jetspeed has certainly not been as universally adopted as the famous Apache webserver. As an open source adherent, you should not assume a coordinated master plan among Apache projects and definitely not count automatic universal adoption for any tool that has the Apache moniker. At the same time, let's recognize that Shindig looks quite interesting, at the very least.

Thanks for Navaneeth over on The Portal Zone for picking up the story.

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