Final Words on PrimeFaces Fork
We have given an interview to InfoQ about the IceFaces forking PrimeFaces code lately and we would like to make one final announcement regarding this;
The link of the interview is;
http://www.infoq.com/news/2012/02/primefaces-icefaces-copy
As stated in the interview, our point never has been legal, PrimeFaces has Apache license which permits this, we have just wanted to spread the word that a competitor has based their code on PrimeFaces without giving enough attribution to the original work. After the first announcement IceFaces has added these two faq pages;
http://www.icesoft.org/projects/ICEfaces/components.jsf
States the list of PrimeFaces components forked, we’ve looked in detail again and slider, dateTimeEntry and core framework aka core.js is also PrimeFaces powered.
http://www.icesoft.org/projects/ICEfaces/ace-primefaces-faq.jsf
The page above includes a couple of statements we disagree, most important one is;
PrimeFaces was advised of our decision to fork the library and the rational behind it in June of 2011.
We haven’t been advised at all, if it was true do you think our initial reaction would be like this? IceSoft’s claim that 100% forked components are enhanced is also wrong, we’ve seen that most of the time just the package names are changed and code is same. It seems IceSoft has started lying to get out of the mess they are in.
Conclusion
IceSoft has added appropriate public information as faqs which satisfies us and we’ve added them to our whouses page, so we would like to move on, leave all these behind and focus on future PrimeFaces Development now. In general we see this as a good thing in the end, even our competitors are powered by PrimeFaces. This is yet another reason why we have this motto;
“Always bet on, Prime”
Even our competitors do it.
Mehdi Heidarzadeh
17 February 2012 at 11:11“Leave all these behind and focus on future PrimeFaces Development”
“Even our competitors are powered by PrimeFaces”
Excellent Optimus Prime.
I will always bet on, Prime. 😉
prem
17 February 2012 at 12:44Why did Icefaces did not come up with any source (just a word about it) pointing to Primefaces from the beginning itself. Now they are doing all the things to cover it up their mistake by creating a new FAQ page, Interviews etc. ( only after Primefaces and community found this issue !! ) ?
bala
17 February 2012 at 16:05Nice punch in the end of conclusion. Let’s move on. Spring-Roo project chooses PrimeFaces as it’s JSF add-on implementation. It’s latest release updated to PrimeFaces 3.1 (http://blog.springsource.org/2012/02/10/spring-roo-1-2-1-release-available/) good job Guys.
httpeter
17 February 2012 at 16:49Very nice article!
Look at it positively: This can be regarded to be a useful study on open source projects. Apparently the power of a community supporting a technology is bigger than that of the technology itself. In this case, the three traditional ways of gaining a competitive advantage(cost leadership, differentiation or niche-market) do not seem to apply since both projects are open source. However, if PF would also use the partially-open model as SugarCRM(Vtiger) Orbeon Forms and indeed Icefaces does, the differentiation strategy could apply for this technology by simply dividing the market in cooperation with IF. Being aware of the fact that that would not be the ‘totally open’ way, it might be the fastest route to innovation and improvement.
However, the immense loyalty of the PF community might render such a licensing model obsolete.
Good luck PF, you have my vote!
Dhrubo
19 February 2012 at 13:58We will continue to use PF. I do not want to repeat but its the best simply the best no argument accepted. I regret that I was the technical reviewer for a book on Icefaces couple of years back published from Packtpub. I will continue to promote PF on my blog more. PF simply rocks!
Yamil
23 February 2012 at 20:55hope now that a year later, they don’t say they did a fork of PF 3.
Santiago Mosquera
1 March 2012 at 21:53Excelent Optimus Prime …. Prime Faces is the best!!! http://www.clearminds-it.com