OLEFA NG

This page describes the software concepts I developed in 2005 and 2006, which never made it to the OLEFA software, but were implemented as part of CorneliOS and CIOS later on.

In 2005 I started working on completely new concepts, as the original OLEFA design was already 5 years old. I called this new design "OLEFA NG", where NG stood for "New Generation" or "Next Generation". The term "OLEFA NG" was never officially used by EducDesign however.

Like most of the concepts found in OLEFA today, I created the main concepts during my free time at my home in Ehlerange, Luxembourg, although some elementary concepts were also created during my holidays in Belgium and the Netherlands, mainly the agile software development techniques.

OLEFA NG was much more than just a technological design, it came up with entirely new concepts and philosophies:

- focused on communities, social network features & web2.0
- agile software development methods (KISS, YAGNI, Extreme Programming, ...)
- client side: new user interface paradigms, making everything easier to use
- server side: a new OLEFA System API (OSA2), much faster and easier to maintain
- open source, open APIs & allowing users to create their own OLEFA apps
- new marketing, sales and management strategies, allowing to sell OLEFA on worldwide markets

Unfortunately these concepts never made it to the official OLEFA distribution.

Official OLEFA announcements related to some of the NG concepts

In mid 2006 we (EducDesign) announced ORCA along with OLEFA 6, ORCA should have been the "OLEFA Runtime for Custom Applications" and it would have allowed users to build their own OLEFA apps. OLEFA 6 also introduced AFELO, which was announced to be released under the GPL. An Open Souce version of OLEFA was announced on olefa.com. Both announcements were pulled shortly after.

OLEFA 7 included an optional UI layer in the administration tools that offered some user interface refinements originally planned for OLEFA NG. These elements were also pulled later on, although they were used on some sites using the label OLEFA 7i.

There was a lot more in the pipeline, although I can't disclose anything here as this internal information is, of course, confidential.

The end of OLEFA NG

I designed the ideas behind OLEFA NG in 2005 and 2006, but during the second half of 2006 it became clear that the other members of the EducDesign management would never accept these new concepts and strategies. By the end of 2006 the OLEFA NG project was declared dead.

CorneliOS

I strongly believed in my new ideas while I realized that OLEFA NG would never become reality, so I finally started creating a new software platform called CorneliOS as a private project. A running prototype was ready in August 2006, CORA (the "CorneliOS Runtime for Applications") was running in October, the installer was added in November and the software was finally released under the GPL in December that year, although it was still an early prototype.

In 2007 I was able to migrate my own websites from OLEFA to CorneliOS, as CorneliOS already offered a working CMS.

In mid 2007 I launched Galaxiki, the first CorneliOS powered community website. Galaxiki won several awards, it was 2nd in the games & entertainment category of the Web2.0 awards, it was featured in many news articles and on many blogs, and it was even website of the day on Yahoo.com, About.com and several other major sites.

By the end of 2007, CorneliOS and CorneliOS powered solutions had become more popular on an international scale than OLEFA (probably) will ever be.

In early 2008 I decided to re-launch my own recording studio (which had been retired in 2002) and to start new music projects. This and the recent lack of innovation at EducDesign led to my decision to leave the company, which I did in mid 2008.

CorneliOS 1.0 has been released in January 2011, offering all features originally planned for OLEFA NG, plus a lot more.

(c)2009-2012 Jos Kirps | This website is not related to EducDesign s.a. | Powered by CorneliOS