I can't believe it's 5 years already, time seems to fly! Well,
congratulations to the whole OpenLaszlo team for 5 years of a very
successful open source project! As far as I know, OpenLaszlo was the
first open sourced RIA framework in the market as a product, which
previously has been closed source. And it has definitely influenced
the RIA community on a global scale (as I could tell from my visit in
South Korea in 2007, where people new applications like Pandora,
Gliffy, Laszlo Mail, LzPix, ...).
My first post in the OpenLaszlo forums was on January 20th 2005, but
my first experience with coding LZX happened before the open sourcing
of the LPS. The forums have been a fun place, and there were so many
helpful people providing hints and code when I got into troubles
coding LZX.
http://forum.openlaszlo.org/showthread.php?t=1902
In the following months and years I was involved with a number of
community activities, like
* founding the first Laszlo User Group outside the US, in Berlin
(February 2005)
* several articles on OpenLaszlo in German publications
* presentation at conferences in Europe, at Barcamps, Web Mondays
and other events
* founding a company specialized in RIA and OpenLaszlo development
in 2005
* working with Laszlo Studios on projects in 2006
* working for Laszlo as community manager in 2007
* working on improving some parts of the platform in 2008/2009
The most enjoyable experience around OpenLaszlo was - next to the
elegance of the LZX langage - to be in contact with the Laszlo and
OpenLaszlo team and the community members, meeting great people from 5
continents coding LZX! With the Open Web initiative, and Flash 10
being established as a real cross-device/cross-platform technology
(OpenScreen Project), I believe that OpenLaszlo will be one of the
technically most powerful RIA techonlogies in the next years.
Thanks to everyone involved with this project - including the sponsors
of the project (Laszlo, g.ho.st and IBM) - for the joint effort in
creating this exciting technology! The best of all, OpenLaszlo has
brought me a bunch of friends around the world, something I'm very
thankful for. And I've definitely learned more than I thought I would
from the creators of the technology, some of them still with the
project and Laszlo, some have already left the company. Thank you all
so much!
Currently I'm working on a Webtop project in Germany, and it looks
like there will be a lot more OpenLaszlo/Webtop adoption in Europe in
the near future. Good for Laszlo, good for OpenLaszlo and everyone
using the technology.
It's Octoberfest season, I'll drink a beer or two tonight in memory of
5 exciting years, expecting even more excitement in 2010!!!
Cheers,
Raju
