PFC-OS The open source project for PowerBuilder Foundation Class Libraries

What is PFC?  PowerBuilder Foundation Class Libraries were introduced with PB5  Bug fixes and support for new controls have appeared in all subsequent releases  Major functionality was added in PB6  Has been available only with Professional and Enterprise only

What does making PFC an open source project mean to me?  Empowerment to the PowerBuilder community  Active effort to enhance and expand the PFC will occur in the hands of the PowerBuilder community  Meritocracy  Community members rise in privileges based on quantity and quality of their contributions  License terms  Doesn’t mean source code needs to be distributed  PFC needs to be acknowledged  Link needs to be provided to PFC

Levels of Participation – User  Requires registration in CodeXchange  Download ZIP of PBLs, help files, etc…

Levels of Participation – Contributor  Previous level, plus…  Register for Observer role in the PFC project on CodeXchange  Project Leaders approve  Enter bug reports and enhancement proposals  Vote on bug reports and enhancement proposals  Submit patches  Need to be approved by Project Leaders  Read-only access to version control repository  “Suggest” files  “Suggestions” need to be approved by Project Leaders before they become public  “Suggest” news items  Sign up for mailing list  Receive news of releases and other updates

Levels of Participation – Developer  Previous level, plus…  Collaborative Developer role in the PFC project on CodeXchange is assigned by Project Leaders  Check in/out code  Check out any version

Levels of Participation – Project Leaders  Previous level, plus…  Assigned by Project Leaders  Status change and close issues  Finalize release goals and contents  Maintain project web site  Approve role requests  Approve/create news items

PFC-OS Start Up Project Leaders  Alex Whitney  Originator and former manager of the PFC development team at Sybase  Boris Gasin  Authors of the McGraw-Hill book: "PowerBuilder Foundation Class Professional Reference“  Web-master for the PFCGuide.com web site  Bruce Armstrong  Senior editor for the PowerBuilder Developer's Journal  Co-editor and contributing author for "PowerBuilder 9: Advanced Client/Server Development" by SAMS  Web-master of the teamsybase.com and teamsybase.net sites  Terry Voth  Author of PBL Peeper  web-master of the Techo-Kitten.com web site

PFC-OS Roadmap  Poll the community to get list of potential new features or expansion of existing features  Get current open bug list from Sybase  Possibilities  Adopting new PowerBuilder features  Compatibility of other PowerBuilder technologies  Bridge to using non-PowerBuilder technologies  Looser coupling (string-based class reference)  Messaging service (publish and subscribe on the client)  Wrapper to implement server push (JMS messaging) between PowerBuilder app and EAServer components

What is available today?  PFC that came with PB10 for today  Back versions  PB8 and PB9’s PFC are available in an up to date form (with respect to bug fixes) with their respective latest maintenance release from Sybase  Developers are free under the license to back migrate PFC-OS themselves  Back migrations are not expected to be an easy process  Features and functions may be introduced that are incompatible with previous versions 