MindTouch
Encyclopedia
MindTouch, Inc., an open-source
software-development
company based in San Diego, California
, USA, started in January, 2005 with offices in Saint Paul, Minnesota
and Bellevue, Washington
. It merged all its offices in San Diego in February 2007.
, the open source wiki
program used for the Wikimedia Foundation
sites. The first public software release took place at OSCON, the open-source conference in Portland, OR, July 25, 2006 at which time MindTouch also launched the MindTouch Developer Community (once named OpenGarden.org). This initial release, a MediaWiki fork called Deki Wiki "Gooseberry", differed by including a WYSIWYG editor on XHTML and providing enhanced search capabilities that also indexed files, page-level file attachments, enhanced permissioning and more. MindTouch also released a distributed REST
application management framework called MindTouch Dream in July 2006.
At DEMOFall in September 2006, MindTouch released its first commercial product, the DekiBox smart hardware appliance. In January 2006, MindTouch quickly migrated the wikis hosted at Wiki.com to "Wik.is" before the former site was taken down due to domain ownership issues.
A year after the initial MindTouch Deki Wiki product release, timed for OSCON 2007, MindTouch released a rewrite of the initial Deki Wiki product that consisted of a decoupled wiki interface to a composition of heterogeneous web-services and a web-service orchestration engine. The new platform allows users to integrate Web service
s and external applications to extend MindTouch Deki Wiki with remote application behavior and enables data and application mashup
s.
In June, 2008 MindTouch dropped the "wiki" part of the product name; thereby renaming the product to MindTouch Core (free and open source) and MindTouch Platform (commercial version). MindTouch CEO, Aaron Fulkerson, cited in the June Corporate Newsletter a motivation to more accurately communicate the capabilities of the product and the fact the wiki is only a component in the business collaboration and integration platform's overall feature set.
and PHP
, with all components available under either version 2 of the GNU General Public License
or version 2.1 of the GNU Lesser General Public License
; this makes it the first commercial open-source virtualized wiki. The DREAM framework makes it possible to extend MindTouch using any programming language compatible with web service
s. The application's logic is implemented in C# and the presentation layer in PHP
, which makes it relatively simple to modify the user interface.
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
software-development
Software development
Software development is the development of a software product...
company based in San Diego, California
San Diego, California
San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...
, USA, started in January, 2005 with offices in Saint Paul, Minnesota
Saint Paul, Minnesota
Saint Paul is the capital and second-most populous city of the U.S. state of Minnesota. The city lies mostly on the east bank of the Mississippi River in the area surrounding its point of confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Minneapolis, the state's largest city...
and Bellevue, Washington
Bellevue, Washington
Bellevue is a city in the Eastside region of King County, Washington, United States, across Lake Washington from Seattle. Long known as a suburb or satellite city of Seattle, it is now categorized as an edge city or a boomburb. The population was 122,363 at the 2010 census.Downtown Bellevue is...
. It merged all its offices in San Diego in February 2007.
History
MindTouch initially based its development work on MediaWikiMediaWiki
MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...
, the open source wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
program used for the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based...
sites. The first public software release took place at OSCON, the open-source conference in Portland, OR, July 25, 2006 at which time MindTouch also launched the MindTouch Developer Community (once named OpenGarden.org). This initial release, a MediaWiki fork called Deki Wiki "Gooseberry", differed by including a WYSIWYG editor on XHTML and providing enhanced search capabilities that also indexed files, page-level file attachments, enhanced permissioning and more. MindTouch also released a distributed REST
Rest
Rest may refer to:* Leisure* Human relaxation* SleepRest may also refer to:* Rest , a pause in a piece of music* Rest , the relation between two observers* Rest , a 2008 album by Gregor Samsa...
application management framework called MindTouch Dream in July 2006.
At DEMOFall in September 2006, MindTouch released its first commercial product, the DekiBox smart hardware appliance. In January 2006, MindTouch quickly migrated the wikis hosted at Wiki.com to "Wik.is" before the former site was taken down due to domain ownership issues.
A year after the initial MindTouch Deki Wiki product release, timed for OSCON 2007, MindTouch released a rewrite of the initial Deki Wiki product that consisted of a decoupled wiki interface to a composition of heterogeneous web-services and a web-service orchestration engine. The new platform allows users to integrate Web service
Web service
A Web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over the web.The W3C defines a "Web service" as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network". It has an interface described in a machine-processable format...
s and external applications to extend MindTouch Deki Wiki with remote application behavior and enables data and application mashup
Mashup (web application hybrid)
In Web development, a mashup is a Web page or application that uses and combines data, presentation or functionality from two or more sources to create new services...
s.
In June, 2008 MindTouch dropped the "wiki" part of the product name; thereby renaming the product to MindTouch Core (free and open source) and MindTouch Platform (commercial version). MindTouch CEO, Aaron Fulkerson, cited in the June Corporate Newsletter a motivation to more accurately communicate the capabilities of the product and the fact the wiki is only a component in the business collaboration and integration platform's overall feature set.
Technology
MindTouch Core consists of an open-source wiki developed in C# on MonoMono (software)
Mono, pronounced , is a free and open source project led by Xamarin to create an Ecma standard compliant .NET-compatible set of tools including, among others, a C# compiler and a Common Language Runtime....
and PHP
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
, with all components available under either version 2 of the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
or version 2.1 of the GNU Lesser General Public License
GNU Lesser General Public License
The GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License...
; this makes it the first commercial open-source virtualized wiki. The DREAM framework makes it possible to extend MindTouch using any programming language compatible with web service
Web service
A Web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over the web.The W3C defines a "Web service" as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network". It has an interface described in a machine-processable format...
s. The application's logic is implemented in C# and the presentation layer in PHP
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
, which makes it relatively simple to modify the user interface.
Public websites using MindTouch
- The Mozilla Development Community wiki is powered by MindTouch Platform
- http://www.topsan.org/ - "The Open Protein Structure Annotation Network” - a place to collect, share and distribute information about protein three-dimensional structures
- http://www.whorunsgov.com - A Washington Post user-editable site to profile leaderLeadershipLeadership has been described as the “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task". Other in-depth definitions of leadership have also emerged.-Theories:...
s in government - http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/ - A collaborative approach toward chemistry education
External links
- Company web site
- MindTouch developer community
- Review: MindTouch cleverly packs wiki in a virtual appliance Infoworld
- Wikis at Work The Wall Street Journal
See also
- Comparison of wiki softwareComparison of wiki softwareThe following tables compare general and technical information for a number of wiki software packages.-General information:-Target audience:-Features 1:-Features 2:-Installation:-See also:* List of wiki software* List of wikis* Wiki farm...
- List of content management systems
- List of wiki software