The Lino vision¶
Collaboration principles¶
Our dream is an ideal situation where users and developers adhere to the following principles:
developing a software application is the common work of both the users and the developers
when discussing about how to distribute effort and benefit, both users and the developers should have equal voices.
both want their common work to remain usable also for future users and developers
both want to share the fruit of their work with others, and benefit from the work of other people
Lino’s design goals¶
Applications made with Lino:
are intuitive to understand for the end user because the developers and the users communicate efficiently.
are quick to develop because Lino encourages agile programming, rapid prototyping and short release cycles.
are flexible to maintain because Lino uses modern technologies for testing and deployment.
are stable as rock once they satisfy your needs because there is no commercial pressure forcing you to upgrade.
are easy to share because Lino encourages a modular approach with libraries of highly reusable code.
do not try to be sexy because they are optimized for people who will use them for their everyday work. With Lino it takes a few hours before an end user starts loving it, but that love will be deeper and last longer.
Our ultimate vision¶
Our ultimate vision is that
Lino is a standard part of every public IT education programme.
Lino is a library of common knowledge about how business is being done efficiently
a majority of application developers uses the Lino framework
vendor lock-in is legally impossible: the provider isn’t tempted by it, and the user is not afraid of it
Our creed¶
We are motivated by a common belief:
The free world has already an operating system, an office suite, several good frameworks for developing web and desktop applications, and many other projects that are steadily gaining users.
But until now there is no sustainably free solution for developing customized database applications. The market for this business is dominated by a few proprietary giants.
We believe that the Lino framework has the potential of becoming a solution for this problem.
How Lino is different¶
Primary target users of Lino applications are organizations who need a customized database application and do not have their own in-house developer. Such organisations are traditionally doomed to agree to some level of vendor lock-in. Lino applications avoid vendor lock-in because both the source code and documentation are published as Sustainably Free Software.
The major advantage of Lino versus other frameworks is that it combines the advantages of do-it-yourself with those of outsourcing. Most parts of your development project become a natural part of your life.
Lino applications are “more reliable than MS-Access for cheaper than SAP”.