2002-03-05-DCL-GNUE Free Software Foundation Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110, USA Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Boston, MA, USA Tuesday, March, 05, 2002 Double Choco Latte (DCL), a work order and help desk management system, today announced that it will be merging into GNU Enterprise (GNUe), a GNU Package. These two projects give individual and corporate users software freedom for enterprise applications through the GNU General Public License, which grants and defends users' freedoms to copy, share, modify, and redistribute software. "DCL has always had a vision of creating an integrated set of applications," said Michael Dean, Lead Developer of Double Choco Latte, "The merging of these two projects will accelerate the process of making that vision a reality. Additionally, the GNUe tools will provide a very robust and customizable framework on which to build, integrate, and extend DCL in ways that would have required significantly more development effort. GNUe and DCL together will help create solutions that meet the requirements of an organization's ERP or CRM needs." By putting DCL under the GNUe umbrella, additional resources will be immediately devoted to it. DCL and its existing PHP interfaces will quickly be available under the GNUe Application Framework. DCL will be better modularized. Stronger customer management and billing/invoicing by project/work order will be the first of many new features. DCL will become the project management package of GNUe and will use GNUe modules for many of its components. "From my first experience with DCL I had a feeling that there was a lot to be gained by combining our projects," said Derek Neighbors, co-maintainer of GNU Enterprise,"and after many late nights with the DCL team, we all realized it just makes sense to work together. The DCL team was filling a lot of gaps in the GNUe vision that we just hadn't had the time to focus on, and we were able to offer a lot of immediate input into DCL to help make it more rounded." The combining of talent from both of these free software projects should only help accelerate the development of much needed free software enterprise applications. By increasing the breadth of enterprise applications that are under a free software license, users are given options to proprietary software that adversely restrict them and their businesses. Adding the additional talent and visions to both projects only helps expand the offerrings of integrated, yet modular, solutions for small to mid size enterprises. GNU Enterprise (GNUe) is a suite of tools and applications for solving the specific needs of the enterprise. From human resources, accounting, customer relationship management and project management to supply chain or e-commerce, GNUe can handle the needs of any business, large or small. Beyond applications, GNUe is a development framework that enables enterprise information technology professionals to customize applications for their businesses. The GNUe platform boasts an open architecture and easy maintenance. It gives users a modular system and freedom from being stuck with a single-source vendor. Plus, users get consistency and the ability to tap into a network of best practices from other enterprises, saving valuable development time. Additional information can be found at http://www.gnue.org GNU Enterprise Derek Neighbors derek@gnue.org +1-480-216-2668 http://www.gnu.org/projects/gnue/ Double Choco Latte is a package that provides basic project management capabilities, time tracking on tasks, call tracking, email notifications, online documents, statistical reports, a report engine, and more features are either working or being developed/planned. It is licensed under the GPL (GNU Public License), which means it is free to study, distribute, modify, and use. Additional information can be found at http://dcl.sourceforge.net Double Choco Latte Michael Dean mdean@users.sourceforge.net http://dcl.sourceforge.net GNU/Linux is the integrated combination of the GNU operating system with the kernel, Linux, written by Linus Torvalds in 1991. The various versions of GNU/Linux have an estimated 20 million users. Some people call the GNU/Linux system "Linux", but this misnomer leads to confusion (people cannot tell whether you mean the whole system or the kernel, one part), and spreads an inaccurate picture of how, when and where the system was developed. Making a consistent distinction between GNU/Linux, the whole operating system, and Linux, the kernel, is the best way to clear up the confusion. See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html for more explanation. Free Software Foundation Bradley M. Kuhn pr@gnu.org +1-617-542-5942 http://www.fsf.org