Officially moving to (at least) Java 5

Unofficially most of the utilities here still worked with Java 1.4, but particularly in GUI mode some of the screens would break. Now, officially, any subsequent releases will require Java 5. In addition to compiling with 5 as my target I’m going to switch to using J5isms like generics where possible. Oracle is likely going to make getting sunset versions of Java harder than Sun did, so most users probably won’t have a problem with this. I’ll avoid J6isms for now (6 didn’t add much for app designers, in my opinion), but I would encourage you to run any of this software against Java 6. It’s all tested against 6 these days, and performance improvements are likely on most platforms.

New HL7 Comm coming soon.

A user spotted a problem where HL7 Comm could arbitrarily hang. I tracked it down to an exception in the GUI, and plan to release a new version in coming days. I’m also looking at a library update for HL7 Browser.

nule.org updates

nule.org is now getting all social and stuff. Look for nule.org on facebook or follow nule_org on twitter.

At the moment I’m still waiting for my new employer (IBM has purchased the company that purchased my company) to permit me to continue working on my open source software. I expect that will happen with due time, but I also understand that large corporations need to take some time to evaluate these things. In the meantime, I’m not able to make some updates that I’d like to to HL7 Browser nor really do anything at all of consequence to the software here. If there are bugs found I would certainly fix them and ask permission later. The requirement is mainly on documenting intellectual property rather than saying I can’t work on stuff I want to work on in my free time.

Updating licenses

It recently came to my attention that some of the licenses used for the libraries available here weren’t very “corporate friendly”. As a result I’ll be adding a second license to any library or program here that’s covered by the GPL or LGPL. At your option you’ll also be able to use the code here under the terms of the Apache License ( http://opensource.org/licenses/apache2.0.php ). I’ll make new builds of the libraries starting with the Light HL7 Library first and include the new license soon. Contact me if you’re in a hurry for this license and I’ll do what I can to help you.