EspoCRM added to Bitnami Library!

EspoCRM is the latest winner of the Bitnami monthly packaging contest and we are happy to announce that it is now available as part of the Bitnami library.


EspoCRM is an open source web application that allows you to see, enter and evaluate all your company relationships regardless of the type. It can assess people, companies, projects or opportunities, all in an easy, intuitive and fast interface. It is accessible on all devices, from smartphones and tablets to large screen desktops.

Thanks to their efforts in encouraging their community to vote during the Bitnami contest, EspoCRM is now ready to install in a few clicks with the Bitnami EspoCRM installers (available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X), Virtual Machine images (VMs), cloud images for the Amazon EC2 and Azure cloud platforms.

We also had the opportunity to interview Alex Avramenko, one of the lead developers of the project,  who was kind enough to answer some of our questions:

How was the EspoCRM project started? What are the origins of this project?

There are no Open Source CRM products that have been implemented with the latest web technologies. That's why we created the Single Page Application, which gives us an advantage in the speed of our CRM.

What is the main goal for EspoCRM?

We have created a CRM that relies on speed, a lightweight user interface, and easy customization. How effective it is will be seen in the near future.

What are some of the features of EspoCRM?

There is still a lot of work ahead. We plan to integrate with Google services, create a report builder, and focus on the analytical information.

Which projects or organizations are using EspoCRM currently? What kind of projects do they use it for?

EspoCRM is a relatively young CRM system, but we have had many companies showing interest in it. The areas of usage vary greatly: medicine, insurance, trade and others. We have customers from all over the world, from North America to Asia.

What do you expect will be the main benefits of having Bitnami packages available for EspoCRM?

We believe that more companies will be interested in EspoCRM  if it is able to be quickly and easily installed. It will increase the quality of our services. This is very important to us.


Would you like your favorite app to be part of Bitnami? Be sure to suggest and vote for it in our monthly contest!

MODX Revolution added to Bitnami Library!

It's been another month, and another application has been added to Bitnami Library!

MODX Revolution is an easy-to-use content management system (CMS) and application framework rolled into one. Despite the limitless possibilities that MODX affords you, we think you’ll find it refreshingly intuitive to work with. At every step, MODX strives to deliver creative freedom.

Thanks to the very passionate MODX community votes, the Bitnami MODX Revolution installers are your easiest onramp to MODX Revolution. To get started, download free, ready-to-run installers for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X, virtual machine images (VMs) and cloud images for the Amazon EC2 and Azure clouds.

MODX Dashboard

If you just want to check out MODX Revolution, you can launch a free cloud demo server in minutes with the Bitnami Cloud Launchpad by clicking the button below. The default admin user is "user" and the password is "bitnami".

Jay Gilmore, Director of Digital Strategy at MODX, was kind enough to answer some questions for those of you who may not be familiar with the project. 

1. What is the goal of the MODX application?

MODX is an Open Source CMS that was borne of the idea that the CMS should never—ever—get in the way of design. It is for people who care deeply about what goes in and, more so, comes out, a blank canvas on which to freely exact your vision. Basic sites don't require knowledge of PHP but for more advanced sites, developers can choose from hundreds of add-ons or write their own, using the object oriented PHP API. Further, it is engineered to be easily customized, extended, and integrated, meaning developers likewise get the creative freedom to make it fit their needs precisely. For end users, the MODX Manager can be completely tailored to the site and even for specific user types, making training and adoption a breeze.

2. What are some of the features of MODX?

• Total Creative Freedom - 100% control of all output. Not just HTML but whatever you need.
• Unparalleled Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - since output controlled, SEO is up to the site owner.
• Install the core outside of web root and with custom folder names, support multiple MODX websites from a single set of files.
• Install and update add-ons, themes and more from inside the MODX Manager
• Customizable Manager interface provides tailored experience for site managers and content editors
• Robust and fine-grained access control and user permissions for Manager and Web users
• Available SLA-driven commerical support
• International network of MODX Professionals
• One of the open source world's most welcoming and helpful communities
• Built to be extended without core-hacks or upgrade blocking
• Built-in caching, capable of server and CDN caching for fast page delivery

3. Which projects or organizations are using MODX currently? What kind of projects do they use it for?

There are hundreds of thousands of organizations large and small using MODX for a variety of uses including Websites, Intranets and e-Learning. Some high-profile organizations using MODX include Pearl Drums, Hamilton Beach,The Green Party UK, Complex.com, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mississippi, Genworth Financial (Intranet), Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and many more.

4. What do you expect will be the main benefits of having Bitnami packages available for MODX?

Bitnami packages will give people an opportunity to test MODX quickly and easily, on their own computer, without having to know how to install a webserver. In addition, it will allow Bitnami users to learn about MODX and evaluate it along with the other tools they use on a regular basis.

Would you like your favorite app to be part of Bitnami? Be sure to suggest and vote for it in our monthly contest!

CiviCRM now part of the BitNami Library

We are happy to announce the latest addition to the BitNami Library, CiviCRM, winner of the BitNami contest. CiviCRM is a web-based, open source, Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) software geared toward meeting the needs of non-profit and other civic-sector organizations.

CiviCRM can be integrated with Drupal, Joomla! and WordPress content management systems giving you the tools to connect, communicate and activate your supporters and constituents. Now, in the BitNami Library, you can find BitNami CiviCRM, an easy to deploy package of CiviCRM integrated with Drupal. We will add support for WordPress and Joomla! integrations if there is demand. You can download free, ready to run native installers for Windows, OS X and Linux, virtual machines and Azure and Amazon EC2 cloud images

As we usually do for our contest winners, we contacted the CiviCRM team to learn more about their project. Dave Greenberg, one of the CiviCRM core team members, was kind enough to answer our questions and tell us more about the project.

What is the goal of the CiviCRM application?

CiviCRM is a web-based, open source, Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) software geared toward meeting the needs of non-profit and other civic-sector organizations. Using CiviCRM's robust feature set, organizations can further their mission through contact management, fundraising, event management, member management, mass e-mail marketing, peer-to-peer campaigns, case management, and much more. CiviCRM is localized in over 20 languages including: Chinese (Taiwan, China), Dutch, English (Australia, Canada, U.S., UK), French (France, Canada), German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Swedish.

What are some of the features of CiviCRM?

CiviCRM's fundraising features make it easy for organizations to create contribution forms for multiple fundraising appeals - recording pledges, one-time donations, recurring donations, tribute donations and more.
 
CiviCRM offers a complete suite of communications tools allowing you to build subscriber lists and create effective mass mailings.
CiviCRM integrates seamlessly with public websites built using Drupal, Joomla! or WordPress.
 
CiviCRM helps you create and manage event registration - recording constituent attendance directly in their activity record.
 
CiviCRM provides flexible membership management for organizations including convenient online sign-up and renewal. 

Which projects or organizations are using CiviCRM currently? What kind of projects do they use it for?

CiviCRM is used by thousands of organizations globally - ranging from large charities (Leaukaemia & Lymphoma Research) and global advocacy organizations (Amnesty International) to foundations (Wikimedia Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Software Foundation ... ) to local community, faith-based and grassroots organizations (Education Outside, Bay Area Children's Theater, Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra), and government entities (New York State Senate). 

Uses range from constituent case management to fundraising and event management to issues advocacy.
 

What do you expect will be the main benefits of having BitNami packages available for CiviCRM?

Bitnami cloud-based 1 click installations will provide an easy on-ramp for more organizations to implement CiviCRM in a cost-effective and secure environment.  

If you would like to see CiviCRM in action, launch a free cloud demo server with the BitNami Cloud Launchpad for Azure by clicking the launch button below.

Artifactory: Binary repository manager now part of BitNami

We are happy to announce that Artifactory is now available as part of the the BitNami library. Artifactory is a binary repository manager for Maven, Ivy and Gradle modules among others. This solution is already used by a large number of popular open source projects and is now available in BitNami as native installers for  Windows, OS X and Linux, virtual machines and Azure and Amazon EC2 cloud images.

Baruch Sadogursky, Developer Advocate at JFrog, the company behind Artifactory, tells us more about this project.

What is the goal of the Artifactory application?

Artifactory is a Binary Repository. It is intended to solve all the binary storage-related needs in an organization, being it organizational Maven/Gradle proxies, in-house YUM repositories, NuGet galleries, Ruby Gems hosting, or an operations department repository with VM images.

What are some of the features of Artifactory?

The most prominent features of Artifactory are the smart checksum once-and-only-once content storage, exceptional integration with all the most popular build tools and CI servers, the schema-less binaries metadata and the automation features, like REST-API and user plugins.

Which projects or organizations are using Artifactory currently?  What kind of projects do they use it for?

We have several hundred thousands of open source users and thousands of paying customers. More and more are joining every day. The usage varies from simple Maven proxies to very complicated enterprise-wide cross-continent setups with sophisticated promotion scenarios. You can find some of our paying customers listed on this page. Large and popular open source projects, like SpringSource, Jenkins, Grails, Gradle, Typesafe etc. are releasing and distributing their software from the Artifactory cloud servers.

What do you expect will be the main benefits of having BitNami packages available for Artifactory?

Having native installers for hosted servers are indeed a powerful enabler, but having cloud installers in our cloud-oriented world is priceless. Thanks for the cloud installers, we expect even more adoption of Artifactory.

Of course, the best way of getting an idea of what Artifactory has to offer is to take a look at it yourself. Launch a free cloud demo server with the BitNami Cloud Launchpad by clicking the launch button below. 

If you are interested in having your own Artifactory server running you can get any of our free, ready to run deployment offers: native installers for  Windows, OS X and Linux, virtual machines and Azure and Amazon EC2 cloud images.

Artifactory, Dolibarr and updates to the BitNami weekly contest

Two weeks ago...

Artifactory won the bi-weekly BitNami contest two weeks ago and we will add it to the the BitNami Library soon. Artifactory is a binary repository manager for Maven, Ivy and Gradle modules among others. It will be the first application in this category for which BitNami will provide one-click deployment options.

Today...

Today, we are glad to announce a new winner: Dolibarr. This application is an ERP and CRM system for small and medium companies. It will be great addition to the BitNami Library which already provides OpenERP, PhpCompta, SugarCRM and X2CRM in similar categories.

In two weeks...

Which application we should add next depends on you. Starting today, a new contest will be running for two weeks, with a new feature: every like, share or tweet will count as an additional vote. To encourage sharing, these likes and tweets will be maintained and count for the next application contest, in case the application is not a winner. Vote for your favorite application now!

Google Reader alternative with BitNami and Tiny Tiny RSS

We are happy to announce a new member of the BitNami family: Tiny Tiny RSS. Tiny Tiny RSS is an open source web-based news feed (RSS/Atom) reader and aggregator, designed to allow you to read news from any location, while feeling as close to a real desktop application as possible.

Thanks to the community votes, Tiny Tiny RSS was the winner of our latest bi-weekly contest, and we just added it to our BitNami Library. You can now download free, ready to run native installers for Windows, OS X and Linux, virtual machines and Amazon EC2 images. All of them include Tiny Tiny RSS pre-configured with all of its required dependencies, including web server, database, etc.

As you probably know, Google Reader will be stopping its service in less than one month, on July 1st. The rest of this post shows you how easy it is to migrate your RSS feed at Google Reader to a new BitNami Tiny Tiny RSS instance in the cloud.

You can follow these steps to completely migrate your data from Google Reader to a BitNami Tiny Tiny RSS AMI:

  - Launch a BitNami Tiny Tiny RSS AMI. You can use one of our 1 hour test instances or you can launch a permanent server via BitNami Cloud Hosting

  - Go to Google Reader. Navigate to Settings -> Import/Export -> Export your information and press on "Download your data through Takeout".

Exporting data from Google Reader

NOTE: If you only interested in exporting feeds (and no metadata) you can use this URL: https://www.google.com/reader/subscriptions/export?hl=en

 - On Google Takeout, press on the red button named "Create archive". A ZIP file will be downloaded to your computer. Extract it.

  - Go to your BitNami Tiny Tiny RSS AMI, log in with user/bitnami as user/password. Go to Actions... -> Preferences... -> Feeds -> OMPL and press on "Choose file". Then, select the subscriptions.xml file inside the content of the ZIP file downloaded from Google Takeout and click on "Import my OPML".

Importing data to Tiny Tiny RSS

You did it! Now you have started your own alternative to Google Reader on the cloud thanks to BitNami and Tiny Tiny RSS. If you combine it with the AWS free tier and the free developer plan at BitNami Cloud Hosting you can have your own, private RSS reader, completely for free. Best of all, you have complete control over the server, so you do not depend on Google randomly the plug on the service.

We are glad Tiny Tiny RSS is now part of BitNami. Would you like your favorite app to be part of BitNami? Be sure to suggest and vote for it in our contest! 

RoundCube: The Latest BitNami Contest Winner

Congrats to the RoundCube team! The RoudCube application is the new winner of the bi-weekly packaging contest. It has been chosen by our users to be added to the BitNami library.

RoundCube is like having your own private GMail: a browser-based multilingual IMAP client with an application-like user interface. It provides full functionality you expect from an e-mail client, including MIME support, address book, folder manipulation, message searching and spell checking.

RoundCube Webmail

As with all BitNami apps, we will provide free RoundCube installers, virtual machines and cloud images for the Amazon and Windows Azure clouds. 

Thanks to the community votes, we also recently released Horde Groupware Webmail in BitNami. Horde is a browser-based communication suite, where users can read, send and organize email messages and manage and share calendars, contacts, tasks and notes. If you are interested in a Webmail platform you can try Horde easily downloading the Horde Groupware Webmail installers, virtual machines or you can instantly launch a free cloud demo server.

Would you like to have your favorite app as part of BitNami? Make sure to suggest and vote for it in our contest!

BitNami Contest Update

A month ago GitLab, a free project and repository management application, was added to the BitNami Library after winning our bi-weekly contest. Last week the application chosen by our users was GitLab CI, an open-source continuous integration server closely integrated with GitLab. We are already working on it and we will soon provide you with free installers, VMs and cloud images for Amazon and Windows Azure. Congratulations to the GitLab team!

In this current contest round, which will be running until next Monday, several interesting projects are up for potential BitNami packaging. Currently, the top apps are:

 RoundCube: "I'm a super-cool webmail!" is how RoundCube describes itself be in their Twitter account. It is a PHP based multilingual IMAP client with an application-like user interface. 

 OpenScholar: Built on the open-source framework Drupal, OpenScholar makes it possible to create academic web sites in a matter of seconds. Harvard University, University of California, Princeton University, State University of New York, University of California and more are already using it.

 Octopress: A blogging framework for hackers. You manage your site’s content from a git repository. Octopress is a framework designed by Brandon Mathis for Jekyll. 



If you would like one of the above to win, be sure to vote for it! You can also vote for other projects or nominate new ones not yet on our list. Don't forget to ask others to vote for your favorite project to increase its chances of winning!

New BitNami Contest winner: Horde Groupware Webmail Edition

Horde Groupware Webmail just won our last bi-weekly contest and we are already working on adding it to the BitNami Library. Installers for Linux, OS X and Windows, virtual machines and cloud images for both Windows Azure and AWS cloud will be available soon.

Horde Groupware Webmail Edition is a free, enterprise ready, browser based communication suite. Users can read, send and organize email messages and manage and share calendars, contacts, tasks and notes with the standards compliant components from the Horde Project.

Now our bi-weekly contest has been reset and you have two weeks for voting or suggesting other projects. Don't forget to ask others to vote for your favorite project to win!

More on GitLab, Meet the Project

Last week, we announced GitLab as part of the BitNami Library.  GitLab is an open source application for git repository management through a web interface.

Nice diff views, merge requests, issues with attachments, project wall, wiki, code snippets, branches, network graph, different permission levels, protected branches are just a few of its many features. Of course, the best way of getting an idea of what GitLab has to offer is to take a look at it yourself. Visit the GitLab demo server  or launch a free cloud demo server with the BitNami Cloud Launchpad by clicking the launch button below. The first will show you a running application with demo data, while the second will allow you to check how easy it is to administer your projects and users through the GitLab web interface. You can also take a look at the screenshots, but it will not be the same :)

Note that some of functionality is deactivated because it requires further configuration in the machine which hosts the application. You still can take a further look with the free BitNami installers, virtual machines or cloud images and have full access to the application.

We have contacted the GitLab team and Dmitriy Zaporozhets, co-author and lead developer of GitLab, was so kind of answering us a few questions:

> What is the goal of the GitLab application?

Give people a freedom of code hosting :)

> What are some of the features of GitLab?

Repository management, code review, issue tracker and Merge Requests

> Which projects or organizations are using GitLab currently?  What kind of projects do they use it for?

Thomson Reuters, Brightbox, Phusion etc. You can view a longer list at http://gitlab.org/

> What do you expect will be the main benefits of having BitNami packages available for GitLab?

Users who want to use GitLab but find setup a bit complicated can use it now with BitNami packages

BitNami is great for running GitLab behind your firewall. If you are looking for hosted repositories, you should sign up with GitLab at GitLab.com, where you can also purchase support, consulting, training and other services from Dmitriy and his team.



 

Discourse: Meet the last BitNami contest winner

We recently released OpenERP on BitNami and are working on GitLab and XOOPS. Now our users have selected to add Discourse to the BitNami Library as a part of our bi-weekly contest.

Discourse is a recently released open source project that aims to reinvent internet forums and it is "an attempt to reimagine what a modern, sustainable, fully open-source Internet discussion platform should be today".

The project has created some buzz since it was released, in part because Jeff Atwood, co-founder of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange is one of the main developers behind Discourse. While Stack Exchange focused on providing users with a quick answer to their questions, avoiding discussions, Discourse tries to solve the opposite problem. For that, hey have added social and real-time twists to forums:

• Conversations, not pages
• Get notifications when you are mentioned
• Simple, but with context
• Remembers your place
• Reply while you read
• Reply as a linked topic
• Real time updates
• And more...

While using Discourse is simple, installing it is not straight forward. We want to change this by simplifying Discourse deployment for everyone, providing free, ready to run, native installers, virtual machines and cloud images. Also as soon as we release Discourse, we will at it to our BitNami Launchpad platform so you can quickly try it out in the cloud with one click.

Discourse, welcome to BitNami!

New BitNami contest winner: XOOPS

We are happy to announce the latest winner of the bi-weekly BitNami contest: XOOPS!

XOOPS is an acronym for eXtensible Object Oriented Portal System. Its object orientation makes it an ideal tool for developing small or large community websites, intra company and corporate portals, weblogs and much more.

We are working now to release stack installers for Linux, OS X and Windows, virtual machines already configured with XOOPS, Windows Azure cloud images and AWS cloud images. Stay tunned!

You can also vote for other projects or nominate another project that isn't yet on our list. Don't forget to ask others to vote for your favorite project so that it wins!

GitLab Coming Soon - Which Project Will be Next?

For several weeks, GitLab, a free project and repository management application, was close to winning our bi-weekly contest. This time, it won and GitLab will be soon added to the BitNami Library. As with all BitNami apps, we will provide free installers, VMs and cloud images for the Amazon and Windows Azure clouds. Congratulations to the GitLab team!

Since we started our bi-weekly contest last December, we have added a wide variety of apps to the library based on your votes:
- TestLink, a test management application
- phpCompta, an accounting application
- Chyrp, a blog software
- Tiki a Wiki/CMS/Groupware application
- ResourceSpace, a digital asset management system
- Zurmo, a CRM (we plan to release it tomorrow!)
- OpenERP, an ERP system in which we continue working on

In this current contest round, which will be running for another week, several interesting projects are up for potential BitNami packaging. Currently, the top apps are:

- XOOPS a PHP based Content Management System for developing websites, intra company portals, corporate portals, and weblogs.

- eFront is a PHP based flexible eLearning 2.0 system.

- Discourse a Ruby on Rails based open source discussion platform created by the Stack Exchange (stackoverflow, serverfault, etc) guys.

If you prefer one of these, be sure to vote for it! You can also vote for other projects or nominate another project that isn't yet on our list. Don't forget to ask others to vote for your favorite project so that it wins!

You have decided! OpenERP to be added to the BitNami library.

It seems that our users are interested in accounting applications. First PhpCompta won our bi-weekly packaging contest a few weeks ago, now OpenERP has been chosen by our users to be added to the BitNami library.

You ask, we execute. As all other winner applications OpenERP will get free native installers, virtual machines and Amazon Cloud Images. But that is not all, since now also Windows Azure Cloud images will be available for each project that win our contest.


OpenERP is a comprehensive suite of business applications including Sales, CRM, Project management, Warehouse management, Manufacturing, Financial management and Human Resources just to name a few.

OpenERP's modular approach allows you to start with one application and add other modules later.

 We continue working on previous winner applications like Chryp, Tiki and ResourceSpace. We are in contact with their developers and they will be released soon in BitNami.


Would you like your favorite app to be part of BitNami? Be sure to suggest and vote for it in our contest!  Once you have voted, remember to share via the Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus buttons to encourage your friends to do the same to help your app climb to the top of the list.

Tiki Wiki now part of BitNami

We have a new BitNami packaging contest winner: Welcome Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware to the BitNami family! Tiki Wiki is an open source wiki-based content management system and online office suite written primarily in PHP.

As with all BitNami-packaged applications, it will soon be available in a complete, ready-to-run package that you can download as a free native installer, virtual appliance and cloud template for the Amazon cloud. 

Would you like your favorite app to be part of BitNami? Be sure to propose and vote for it in our online contest! Every two weeks the content is restarted and one app is selected. Previous winners were the TestLink and PhpCompta applications. Your vote can make a difference!

PhpCompta is now available on BitNami

PhpCompta is the second winner of the BitNami bi-weekly packaging contest. PhpCompta is a web-based accounting application adapted to the Belgium and French legislations, were it is very popular. You can now download free, ready to run native installers for  Windows, OS X and Linux, virtual machines and Amazon EC2 images for PhpCompta.

Please see below for a brief Q&A with Dany De Bontridder, the founder of the PhpCompta project, where he shares some details about it.

1. What is the goal of the PhpCompta application? 

The project was started 10 years ago because I needed an accounting program running on Linux. I chose to develop it in PHP because it was easier to create the interface, and it turned out to be a good choice :-)  

The goal of PhpCompta is to have a reliable accounting application. Over time, new features were added thanks to the ideas of users. Today you can use to fill up the forms for the tax administration, to follow up with customers and much more.

2. What are some of the main features of PhpCompta? 

PhpCompta is really flexible, all the menu items are in a database, you can reorganize the menu and change completely the look and feel. Otherwise, the features are related to the accounting functionality, which follows the laws of Belgium and France, generation of documents (invoice, order, feenotes...).

3. Which projects or organizations are using PhpCompta currently? 

There are many users for phpCompta, ranging from non-profit to small business to union organizations, some of them with up to 100 simultaneous users. Geographically, we have users in Belgium, France, Switzerland... 

We also cooperate with other projects. For example, we have developed a plugin for Dolibarr (an open source ERP application). This plugin converts some actions (invoice...) and put them in PhpCompta. We did this because Dolibarr is missing a serious plugin for accounting. Each application is specialized in a different field.

4. What do you expect will be the main benefits of having BitNami packages available for PhpCompta? 

The biggest issue we have is with Windows users. It is difficult for them to install PhpCompta on Windows, so thanks to BitNami it will be easier for them to install and use it.

Would you like your favorite app to be part of BitNami? Be sure to suggest and vote for it in our contest!

BitNami Contest now open to Ruby and Python apps

We are holding a bi-weekly contest for deciding which apps we should be adding to the BitNami library.  Initially, it was restricted to PHP-based web applications. The first winners were TestLink and PhpCompta (still in the process of being packaged). We are happy to announce that you can now also vote for Ruby and Python web applications.

Each selected project will get free native installers, virtual machines and Amazon Cloud Images that will be kept up to date periodically. They will also get access to the hundreds of thousands of end users and developers that visit our site every month. An streamlined installation process and the extra exposure from BitNami tends to significantly raise the awareness of the winning project.

Take a minute to decide which PHP, Ruby or Python web application is packaged next by visiting our contest page.  Once you have voted, remember to share via the Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus buttons to encourage your friends to do the same. Good luck!

TestLink now available in BitNami

TestLink is the first winner of the BitNami bi-weekly packaging contest. TestLink is a web-based test management application that helps you to manage the QA process. It offers support for test cases, test suites, test plans, test projects, user management and reporting.

Thanks to the community votes, TestLink was selected to be packaged as part of the BitNami Library. You can now download free, ready to run native installers for Windows, OS X and Linux, virtual machines and Amazon EC2 images. We hope this will help spread the adoption of TestLink.

Francisco Mancardi, one of the lead TestLink developers was kind enough to answer some questions for those of you who may not be familiar with the project.

1. What is the goal of the TestLink application?

In an ideal world, testing would be a pretty straightforward process. A test team takes the product requirements, writes a test specification document, reviews the tests, and then runs them all for each version of the product. The team is composed of full-time staff, and everyone knows exactly what is expected of them. In practice few organisations have that luxury. 

TestLink is a test management application, aimed to simplify the life of QA people. Its goal is to offer features present on commercial-grade applications, while remaining open source. 

The purpose of TestLink is to answer questions such as:

- For which requirements do we still need to write or update test cases?

- Which tests do you want me to run for this version?

- How much progress have we made on testing this release?

- Which test cases are currently failing, and what are the errors?

- On which version was this group of test cases last run, and is it time we ran them again?

- And ultimately: is this version of the product fit for release?

2. What are some of the features of TestLink?

Test Case Management, including versioning, Test Case Reuse, Test Step Reuse Requirement Management, with revisions and versions. Bug Tracker System integration (Bugzilla, Mantis, Redmine, Jira, Trac, YouTrack, FogBugz, ...) Test case results can be recorded via XML-RPC API Reports & Charts.

3. Which projects or organizations are using TestLink currently?  What kind of projects do they use it for?

Some organization have publicly announced on www.teamst.org, that they use TestLink, while for others we only know due to mails. The list include: 

Philips Lighting (Eindhoven, The Netherlands)
Jetminds
Mobotix
Gruppo Tesi
Acronis
General Motors Europe
Dolby Laboratories
Samsung India Software Operations
Talend
Texas Instruments Inc
Tata Consulting Services
Openbravo

4. What do you expect will be the main benefits of having BitNami packages available for TestLink?

I hope new users will find it easier to get started, mainly through the use of the virtual machine. In addition I hope the visibility TestLink will get, will make its use wider on the Software Development Community.

We are glad TestLink is now part of BitNami. Would you like your favorite app to be part of BitNami? Be sure to suggest and vote for it in our contest! 

TestLink Wins the First BitNami Contest - Will Your App Be Next?

Congratulations to the first winner of the BitNami packaging contest, TestLink! TestLink is a web-based test management application that helps you to manage the QA process. It offers support for test cases, test suites, test plans, test projects, user management and reporting.

TestLink received the most votes in the first iteration of the BitNami packaging contest and it will become the next application to join the BitNami family. As with all BitNami-packaged applications, it will soon be available in a complete, ready-to-run package that you can download as a free native installer, virtual appliance and cloud template for the Amazon cloud.

Would you like your favorite app to be part of BitNami? Be sure to vote for it! Now that the first contest period is over, all of the vote counters will be reset and the contest will run again for another two weeks. Will the next app be ResourceSpace, PrestaShop or OrangeHRM, all of which were also in the running in the last contest? Or will it be some other another app? Your vote can help decide!