Open Sourcing Domino Templates - Part 1
Thomas Hampel
8 January 2024HCL just open sourced a number of Domino templates!
HCL just open sourced a number of Domino templates! This initiative of HCL was announced by Richard Jefts to support a more open and vibrant developer community.
Main purpose is to allow developers and partners to extend, modify and tweak the product templates, reuse parts of the code in own solutions and allowing those modified versions to be redistributed.
Now with the the Apache 2.0 license this will be possible. Also it is now possible to update these templates outside of product releases in a more consistent way if necessary.
Especially interesting is the (long awaited) Domino Design Guide, containing icons, color schemes, and more for helping developers to build better looking applications.
All the templates are provided in the same versions as shipping in HCL Notes/Domino 14 with the only differences that they are made available under the Apache 2.0 license and signed with the HCL OpenSource Signing ID.
The Git repository contains the source code of the English version of the templates, but all internationalized versions are also contained as downloadable *.ntf in there:
| Title | Source | Latest Version | Documentation |
| Discussion | |||
| Domino CompareDBs | |||
| Lotus SmartSuite Document Library | |||
| Document Library | |||
| MS Office Document Library | |||
| Notebook | |||
| RSS Feed Generator | |||
| Domino Design Guide | |||
| Teamroom | |||
| Password Reset Sample |
All the source code above is using the new Yaml based OnDiskProjects in Domino Designer.
More templates, such as the Domino Configurtion Tuner and the Domino Blog template will be released soon. (@ Martin Ortega please stay tuned and watch this repo )
Who is owning them?
HCL still remains the owner of the original/unmodified version of the templates and will control which updates or changes will get merged into the main branch.
While contributions (pull requests) are technically allowed, HCL does not guarantuee that they will accept or merge them.
However, HCL as well as anyone else, has the right to take community contributions back to use them in future releases.
How about support?
HCL provides support only for the original, unmodified version of the template shipping with the HCL Domino product. Forks or any modified versions of the code are not officially supported. Users who choose to fork the code or make modifications do so at their own risk and are responsible for any resulting issues or changes. HCL cannot guarantee assistance or troubleshooting for forked versions, and users are encouraged to refer to the official documentation for guidance on customization and modification. Defect tracking and support questions for the unchanged templates are preferred to be handled via the normal support process.
PS: Special greetings to Niklas Heidloff, who might remember his OpenNTF blog post from a decade ago.
Tagged with: Template