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Midgard (software)

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For other uses, see Midgard (disambiguation).
Midgard
Developer(s)The Midgard Community
Stable release
12.09.1[1] / September 26, 2012 (2012-09-26)
Operating systemLinux, Unix and Mac OS X
TypeContent Management Framework
LicenseLGPL
Websitewww.midgard-project.org

Midgard is an open source persistent storage framework. It provides an object-oriented and replicated environment for building data-intensive applications.[2]

Midgard also ships with MidCOM content management system (CMS) built on the Midgard framework.[3][4] MidCOM's features include web-based authoring WYSIWYG interfaces and a component interface for installing additional web functionalities,[5] including wikis[6] and blogs.[7]

Midgard is built on the GNOME stack of libraries like GLib and libgda, and has language bindings for C, Python, Objective-C and PHP.[8][9] Communications between applications written in the different languages happen over D-Bus.[10] The CMS functionalities run on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) platform.[11] Midgard can also be used with PHPCR, the PHP implementation of the Java Content Repository standard.[12][13] In early 2000s (decade) there was also a pure-PHP implementation of the Midgard API called Midgard Lite that has since been re-implemented as the midgard-portable project.[14][15]

The project follows the synchronized, 6 month release cycle that is implemented by several major open source projects like Ubuntu and GNOME.[16][17] Because of this, the version numbering reflects the year and month of a release. The version 8.09 Ragnaroek has been designated as a "Long Term Support" release.[18]

Especially the templating and page composition features of Midgard have received praise, earning honorary mentions in several CMS Watch surveys.[19][20][21][22] It also got score of 42 out of 45 in the Celebrity CMS Deathmatch of 2009[23]

Etymology

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The name Midgard comes from Nordic mythology, meaning Middle earth, the world of humans. Most of the Midgard developer community comes from the Baltic region,[24][25] and the project has been referred by CMS Watch as the Hanseatic League of Content Management.[26]

History

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Midgard Project was started in early 1998 by Jukka Zitting and Henri Bergius for a Finnish historical reenactment organization —Harmaasudet— as a system for them to publish their material online.[27][28]

Since the organization didn't have resources to maintain a large development project by itself, the open source model was chosen for creating a community of contributors to the system.[29] The version 1.0 of Midgard was released to the public on May 8, 1999.[30] It attracted a steady stream of users, and the development project flourished despite quite primitive early user interfaces.[31][32]

Commercial services for the platform started to appear in early 2000. One of the first adopters was Envida, a Dutch company that realized the potential of Midgard for Web hosting purposes. First proprietary application for the platform was Hong Kong Linux Center (HKLC) Nadmin Studio content management system.[33][34]

In early 2000s (decade), Midgard developers participated actively in OSCOM,[35] the collaborative organization for open source content management systems. This included development of shared content editing clients like Twingle[36][37][38] and tutorials in various conferences.[39] Midgard also featured in F.U.D., the Wyona Pictures documentary about OSCOM.[40]

First application not connected with content management was Nemein.Net, a Professional Services Automation application released in 2002 by Nemein, a Finnish Midgard company.[41] In May 2004 the Nemein.Net suite was renamed to OpenPSA and released under Open Source licensing.[42]

By 2009, some social web services, like Qaiku have also adopted Midgard as their content management platform.[43] It also runs in organizations like Helsinki University of Technology[44] and Maemo.[45] e-commerce implementations with Midgard include the Movie-TV online video rental service. It has been used by New Zealand government for running the country's eGovernment portal.[46]

Midgard has seen some non-Web use also, including providing synchronization with the Tomboy note-taking application for Linux desktop.[47]

In addition to regular content management, Midgard is seeing use in special web application scenarios like Lufthansa's system for managing global marketing budgets and HP's client documentation system.[citation needed]

The Midgard content repository library entered the Debian distribution in November 2010.[48] Some parts of the history of Midgard are recounted in the book Open Advice.[49]

Licensing

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The Midgard core libraries and the MidCOM CMS are distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), a license which permits the software to be freely used so long as it is dynamically linked or the user can relink it to new versions of the libraries. This is the same license used by the GNU C Library. This licensing scheme qualifies Midgard as free software developed with an open source model.

Official documentation is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License which supports the free usage principles defined by the GPL for code.

Applications developed using the Midgard application programming interfaces (API) can be copyrighted and licensed under any terms by their authors, enabling creation of commercial products and services based on the platform.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Midgard2 12.09.1 "Gjallarhorn" released" (Press release). The Midgard Project. Archived from the original on 2012-10-15.
  2. ^ Jepson, Brian (April 2000). "Data-Drive Sites with Midgard". Web Techniques.
  3. ^ Gottlieb, Seth (2006-01-23), Content Management Problems and Open Source Solutions, Optaros
  4. ^ "MidCOM". The Midgard Project. Retrieved 2009-05-14.
  5. ^ "MidCOM components". The Midgard Project. Archived from the original on 2009-05-10. Retrieved 2009-05-14.
  6. ^ "Midgard Wiki". Wiki Matrix. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  7. ^ Simmons, Brent (2004-09-23). "Using Weblog Editors with Midgard CMS".
  8. ^ Bergius, Henri (2008-06-02). "Midgard 2: more than just PHP, more than just CMS". Retrieved 2009-05-14.
  9. ^ Kostrzewa, Michael (2009-03-26). "Midgard ObjectiveC bindings". Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  10. ^ Bergius, Henri (2008-04-08). "Interprocess communications in Midgard: D-Bus comes to the Web". Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  11. ^ Christense, James; Gottlie, Martin (2001-10-10). "Midgard Lights An Open-Source LAMP". CMS Watch. Retrieved 2009-05-14.
  12. ^ "PHPCR". Retrieved 2012-02-13.
  13. ^ Bergius, Henri (2011-12-23). "Midgard2 PHPCR provider hits 1.0".
  14. ^ "The midgard-portable project". GitHub.
  15. ^ "The Big One".
  16. ^ "Synchronized Releases and Greg Kroah-Hartman". Coccinella. 2008-11-03. Archived from the original on 2009-12-15. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  17. ^ Bergius, Henri (2008-07-31). "Midgard and synchronized releases". Retrieved 2009-05-14.
  18. ^ Bergius, Henri (2008-10-13). "Ragnaroek LTS" (Press release). Retrieved 2009-05-14.
  19. ^ Byrne, Tony (2002-12-31). "The Ideal CMS -- 2002". CMS Watch. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  20. ^ Byrne, Tony (2003-12-12). "The Ideal CMS -- Circa 2004". CMS Watch. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  21. ^ Byrne, Tony (2005-09-08). "Vendor Kudos and Shortcomings, Circa 2005". CMS Watch. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  22. ^ Byrne, Tony (2007-06-11). "WCM Marketplace Web CMS Kudos and Shortcomings, Circa 2007". CMS Watch. Archived from the original on 2009-09-25. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  23. ^ Marks, Jon (2009-03-25). "Celebrity CMS Deathmatch – The Aftermath". Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  24. ^ Byrne, Tony (2006-06-21). "Midgard keeps chugging along". CMS Watch. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  25. ^ "Midgard: Developer locations". Archived from the original on 2008-11-22. Retrieved 2009-04-25.
  26. ^ Byrne, Tony. "Web Content Management Marketplace Circa 2005". CMS Watch. Retrieved 2009-05-14.
  27. ^ Zitting, Jukka. "Midgard: Where it all began". Retrieved 2009-05-14.
  28. ^ Hyppänen, Heikki (2008-10-29). "Greywolves.org goes back to roots". Archived from the original on 2008-10-31. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  29. ^ "DevShed Interviews the Developers of Project Midgard". DevShed. 1999-09-30. Archived from the original on 2001-02-15. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  30. ^ "Midgard 1.0.0 released" (Press release). Linux Today. 1999-05-08. Retrieved 2009-05-14.
  31. ^ Seager, David (2001-01-29). "DeveloperWorks: Getting to know Midgard". IBM. Archived from the original on 2008-06-25. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  32. ^ McGrath, John (2002-11-15). "Open-source CMS: On the rise". ZDnet. Archived from the original on 2009-07-19. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  33. ^ "3rd Evolution: Midgard und Mandrake". 2002-08-26. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  34. ^ Bergius, Henri (2001-08-07). "The State of Midgard - August 2001" (Press release). Linux Weekly News. Retrieved 2009-05-14.
  35. ^ Everitt, Paul (2003-03-01). "Trip Report, OSCOM Sprint Zurich". Zea Partners. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  36. ^ Byrne, Tony (2003-12-08). "Hack Your Clients". CMS Watch. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  37. ^ "MozDev: Twingle project". Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  38. ^ Fletcher, David (2003-03-17). "Twingling at OSCOM". Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  39. ^ "OSCOM Berkeley 2002". Plone. 2002-07-22. Archived from the original on 2011-06-03. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  40. ^ F.U.D. (documentary). Wyona Pictures. 2004. Archived from the original on 2021-12-21.
  41. ^ "Nemein.Net 1.8 brings enhanced project tracking for consulting companies" (Press release). Linux Weekly News. Retrieved 2009-05-14.
  42. ^ "OpenPSA 1.9.0 Released - Open Source Management Software for Consultancies" (Press release). Archived from the original on 2011-07-22. Retrieved 2009-05-14.
  43. ^ "Nemein participates in Qaiku development" (Press release). COSS. 2009-03-17. Archived from the original on 2009-06-29. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  44. ^ Stjärnstedt, Juha (2008-01-03). "New Web Pages for Helsinki University of Technology" (Press release). Helsinki University of Technology. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  45. ^ Kuosmanen, Tuomas (2006-10-27). "Maemo.org webdesign and free tools". Archived from the original on 2011-07-17. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  46. ^ Langhoff, Martin (2002-11-25). "Case study: Midgard framework in action". CWA New Media. Archived from the original on 2002-11-26.
  47. ^ Paul, Ryan (2009-06-02). "Tomboy note app gains Web sync, showcases power of open Web". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2009-10-26.
  48. ^ "Midgard2 in Debian unstable". 2010-11-10.
  49. ^ Pintscher, Lydia (2 February 2012). Open Advice. ISBN 978-1-105-51493-7.
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