About the ONO Perl Framework
The ONO Perl Framework is a collection of Perl modules, scripts, CSS and JS files, as well as other files and resources. ONO allows to rapidly build websites, from simple homepages to complex, collaborative community platforms. Furthermore, you may use ONO modules in scripts that are not web related.
For more details, check out the "Features", "Documentation" and "Examples" pages.
Philosophy
ONO has been designed to allow a single developer (or a small team) to create an maintain highly complex web projects and other software solutions. ONO software modules can be used as building blocks that help you to "get things done" in a reliable way, no more, no less.
ONO is not object oriented, and while allows to create appealing user interfaces, it doesn't intend to be "modern" or "sexy" behind the scenes in any way.
Requirements
ONO should work fine on all Linux distributions and on most other UNIX-like operating systems. It also runs on Apple macOS, although some advanced features may require third-party software packages that may be hard to install. Windows has not been tested, although connecting to a remote Microsoft SQL Server DB should work fine.
ONO is been tested using Perl 5.22 and newer versions, although older versions should work fine too, at least down to Perl 5.18.
ONO will run on the Apache webserver, it's being tested on Apache 2.4.x and newer versions, it will probably also run on older versions. Server side includes (SSI) and .htaccess support is required, so make sure they're enabled. Production systems that are open to the public should use mod_perl for performance reasons, so please make sure that either mod_prefork (good) or mod_worker (better) are available.
For production systems, we recommend at least a quad core CPU @ 3 GHz, 16 GB RAM, as well as an solid state (SSD) hard drive.
Free Open Source Software
The ONO Perl Framework is free software, it is available under the Artistic License (full license text, info on Wikipedia), an open-source license that is also used for Perl itself, and for most CPAN modules. You may download, use and modify the software without limitations, but you cannot distribute modified versions without making the changes available to the copyright holder. The copyright holder is Jos Kirps, the project is managed and distributed by The Joopita Project.
Development
As for now, ONO is a "one man project", created and developed by Jos Kirps in Luxembourg, Europe. If you'd like to contribute or to make changes to the software, please write to jos@kirps.com.
What about the name?
ONO is a recursive acronym for "ONO's Not OLEFA!", chosen because ONO has been developed as a successor to a prior software project named OLEFA, while ONO doesn't contain any OLEFA code and doesn't intend to be compatible with it. See the "History" section below for further details. The naming scheme has been inspired by the GNU project, where GNU stands for "GNU's Not UNIX!
History
by ONO creator Jos Kirps
OLEFA
The history of ONO goes back to January 2001, when I first published a CMS written in Perl named OLEFA. The CMS was first licensed to a local marketing agency in Luxembourg, Europe. In mid 2001 I published the OLEFA Education Manifesto, and added a library management system as well as a Wiki, turning the CMS into a collaborative platform for schools. First used on the elementary school of Roeser's website, the platform quickly started to gain the interest of other schools in Luxembourg.
In 2002, I was co-founder of a local company called EducDesign, which then took over the distribution of the software. Within the following years, OLEFA became the most popular web software in Luxembourg's elementary education, and in some domains its popularity even surpassed that of the Ministry of Education's own platform named mySchool! Unforntunately, disagreements on the management level of the company slowed down the development of the software, and my plans for a new version named OLEFA NG (for "New Generation" or "Next Generation") were dismissed. Frustrated with the situation back then, I left the company in 2008.
CorneliOS, CIOS and Galaxiki
In 2006, I had already started work on CorneliOS, an exerimental WebOS (or "web-based operating system") written in Perl. CorneliOS was released under the terms of the GPL, but gained only little attention, even if it was mentioned in a number of blogs and publications.
In 2007, I launched the Galaxiki platform, a community driven science fiction platform based on an editable virtual galaxy. The platform was based on CorneliOS an won a number of awards, it was "website of the day" on both Yahoo.com and About.com, and "website of the week" in the US Linux Journal.
Additional code written for Galaxiki, including the social media layer, was repackaged as a software framework called CIOS (closed source), thus making it reusable. Around the same time, I was planning to create a replacement for OLEFA. The project was called OLEFA XR, and I even developed an OLEFA-like layer named OLMO on top of CorneliOS/CIOS, but this idea was dropped while still being in the prototype stage.
Oli.lu, Oli.education.lu and ONO
Based on the CorneliOS/CIOS combo I launched a new educational platform called Oli.lu in 2011. Oli.lu quickly became highly popular in Luxembourg's education market, and in 2015 the Ministry of Education decided to replace its own outdated mySchool! platform by a new portal that would now be based on Oli.lu's code, and thus on CorneliOS/CIOS.
In 2017, I started work on ONO, a Perl framework that would replace both CorneliOS and CIOS, and integrate the best ideas originally developed for the defunct OLEFA XR project. In January 2018 all CornelOS and CIOS code had been migrated, so that ONO has since been my sole software project, regrouping all features developed since 2006, powering all of my websites and platforms, including the Ministry of Education's Oli.education.lu portal.