Vision
Just over three years ago, on 12 February 2008, and only a month after we released Joomla 1.5 I started working on Nooku Framework.
My personal vision for Joomla always has been to move away from CMS and towards a web application framework. The work I did in 1.5, building the Joomla Framework, was a first step towards that goal. Unfortunately, we never fully succeeded separating CMS from framework in 1.5.
At the end of the development cycle of 1.5 I was convinced that the better approach was to build a new framework from ground up instead of trying to refactor it top down. That’s how Nooku Framework got started.
Project
For the first year I did most of the work on code myself. Today, Nooku is a growing innovative open-source web platform made by a community of passionate developers from all over the world.
We have an active team of 12 people, 20 contributors who signed our Contributor Agreement and nearly 400 subscribers in the developer’s discussion group. That’s a lot of bright and creative people.
Platform
On the 4th of February 2011, nearly 3 years after I made that first commit. I had the pleausre of attending the first ever Joomlanight in Stockholm, Sweden to talk about all the great innovation going on in Nooku and to introduce the Nooku Platform.
We are moving to a world dominated by web apps, instead of web sites. It’s clear that the mobile web is becoming mainstream in a big way. On top of that, the iPad and tablets and other mobile devices are changing our world and the way we build web applications.
Future
Exciting challenges lie ahead. Seperating CMS from framework is not enough anymore. We need to build a platform that allows developers to quickly build ‘native web apps’ that can run on many different devices.
Equipping Nooku for this challenge will be key. Our RESTful Nooku Framework architecture is first step in that direction and with Nooku Server we are adding a powerful web platform to easily deploy your web solutions.
We are not there yet. Great progress is being made. Focus and collaboration will be key in the coming months. However with a growing community of developers I’m confident that we are well underway to make good things happen !
