Activiti Modeler's future

[mikrobe1]

Now that Alfresco Activiti Enterprise has been launched with a new web based modeling tool, what's the future of the current Activiti Modeler based on Signavio core components? Will it be abandoned in favor of the pay-per-use version?

[trademak]

Hi,

Good question. We are currently investigating if we can make the BPMN modeling in the Alfresco Activiti Editor available for free. If we make that Editor available for free, it makes sense to stop the development of the Activiti Modeler. Otherwise we would have to maintain 2 similar code bases. Do you think that would be a direction that would suit your requirements? We welcome any feedback.

Best regards,

[mikrobe1]

Hi Tijs,
well, even though Signavio is a very well written piece of code, its UI is quite outdated. A refresh is very welcome.
I briefly tried Alfresco Activiti Editor and I must say I like it a lot (except for the properties panel that I think is less readable than the Signavio's one).
I hope that Alfresco Activiti Editor keeps the same flexibility of Signavio for what concerns extensible stencilsets and plugin, that allows to extend it with further functionalities by third parties.
Since we are now offering a solution that integrates and extends the current Activiti Modeler, I would be immensely happy if we could replace it with an open source version (Apache license) of Alfresco Activiti Editor.

Cheers
Mike

[trademak]

Hi Mike,

We will launch a new piece of functionality regarding stencil sets soon. So yes, that's an important part of the Alfresco Activiti Editor. When I was referring to making the Editor available for free, I meant the usage, not to open source it. What kind of offering do you currently have around the Activiti Modeler?

Best regards,

[mikrobe1]

Ouch! I misunderstood. That's bad because if you stop the development of Activiti Modeler it means that the Oryx Editor project and Signavio core component project will be dead for good. Activiti Modeler is the only one still alive.
We have developed several stencilsets to be used with Activiti Modeler and we store stencilsets and diagrams into a graph db. I cannot disclose more though.
Anyway I plead you for considering to keep an editor open source along with Activiti Engine. It would be a great loss otherwise.

[trademak]

Thanks for your feedback Mike. We will definitely consider your feedback when deciding on the future of the Modeler open source project. I Would be interested to hear feedback from other Activiti users as well. If we would make the Alfresco Activiti Editor offering available for free I can imagine that this works for a lot of people as well.

Are you also willing to invest time in the Activiti Modeler open source project and make some contributions to the code?

Best regards,

[mikrobe1]

I would be happy to give my contribution to the open source project, but I don't know if I'd be good enough.
Regarding things I'm doing for my company, I'm not in charge of deciding the licensing strategy. Anyway Activiti engine will become a very important part of our offer and once we'll be ready to hit the market we'll probably give back to community part of our work.
I just read that Alfresco Activiti has been added with a stencilset editor: would it be a possible option for you to offer an opensource community edition that covers the current Activiti Modeler functionalities and an enterprise edition with advanced functionalities?

Kind Regards
Mike

[trademak]

Ok thanks. If the Activiti Engine is a very important part of your offering, it might make sense to do an OEM with Alfresco to get all the functionality you are looking for. You have to take into account that we have to get some return of our investment in the new Alfresco Activiti Editor as well. The Activiti Engine is and will be open source, so we have to generate the revenue from surrounding tools like the Alfresco Activiti Editor.

Best regards,

[mikrobe1]

Hi Tijs,
I don't want to push this discussion further since your position is very clear.
Anyway let me clarify a couple of things about my previous statements:
We firstly customized Oryx and then seamlessly applied our implementation to Signavio Core Components and Activiti Modeler (since they are based on the same core code), we changed the UI style and we are happy with that. We don't need anything more than that.
My main interest was not to steal other's work but, because I consider Oryx (and its forks) a powerful modeler, I would be very happy to see it grow rather than dead.
Our solution can couple with _any_ process engine and we don't distribute Activiti Engine. I personally have a crush on Activiti because its code is very well written so if a customer will ask a recommendation, I would suggest to pick up Activiti but it is not integrated in our software.
I know everybody needs to have revenue to survive so I won't discuss this issue any longer.

Best,
Mike

[trademak]

Hi Mike,

Yes fully understood. The investment we did with the Activiti Modeler will remain open source of course. But right now there are no plans to enhance it other than from community pull requests.

Regards,