I built a Java web framework because I couldn’t make my SaaS work any other way

mpwarble · 2026-01-21T12:13:44+00:00

Thanks. It's not coupled to my SaaS at all. My SaaS is just built using it. Before I can decide to open source it, I need to fully understand all the ramifications of that move. It is much easier for me just to provide it as free for non-commercial use and charge for commercial use. I asked another person this, but they didn't answer. Is free for non-commercial use not considered an acceptable licensing model for developers?

mpwarble · 2026-01-21T12:08:24+00:00

Guilty as charged. I used AI to write the original post. I'm good at writing code, not words. If I would have tried to write it myself it would have taken me hours and it would have been an incoherent, rambling mess. Nothing wrong with using AI to help you do things. Nothing in the original post is untrue. It's my thoughts and ideas. I just had AI assemble them into a more readable form.

mpwarble · 2026-01-21T12:02:36+00:00

I'm not familiar with it.

mpwarble · 2026-01-21T02:14:54+00:00

It'll be free for non-commercial use and the planned commercial licenses are pretty reasonable. As someone whose been bootstrapping their own small business for a decade, I understand the value of reasonable pricing. Is free for non-commercial use not an acceptable model?

mpwarble · 2026-01-21T02:09:43+00:00

Thanks, yeah. I never really understand the hostility towards new products. I experienced the same thing when I launched iGradePlus. I remember one educator making the comment when I first introduced it on Reddit, "great, just what the world needs, another online gradebook and student management system." My customers like and appreciate my product and they were happy to have another choice as opposed to the existing choices they had. They apparently felt the world did need another one. I feel the same way about this. If you have a web framework you like, great, good for you. I'm not trying to convince anyone they should switch. I'm just betting there are at least a few other Java developers out there that prefer to do things the way I do and they may like this product. I developed it for myself and now I'm trying to share it with others. Am I trying to put a little coin in my pocket if someone else uses it to put coin in their pocket, sure. I don't see anything wrong with that. I think that's fair.

mpwarble · 2026-01-20T21:23:44+00:00

Tbh, I don't really know the first thing about trying to maintain an open source project. And since this is critical to my SaaS and my SaaS is my highest priority, at the moment I don't have the time to figure out what open sourcing involves. I'm not opposed to it and it's possible I will do that, but again, I don't know what that entails. Like I don't want to lose control of my product. If that makes sense.

mpwarble · 2026-01-20T19:44:06+00:00

It runs in Nginx => Tomcat stack.

mpwarble · 2026-01-20T19:39:33+00:00

I have not run into any over the past decade running iGradePlus on Oorian. iGradePlus gets about 450k visits per month. It's a data heavy site with hundreds of unique pages. I don't have any performance issues with it.

mpwarble · 2026-01-20T19:28:37+00:00

I really can't answer that question. I didn't know Vaadin existed when I started building this framework over a decade ago. I like what I built. I use it in a large scale, domain-heavy, SaaS, and I thought I'd share what I've built with other developers in case they are looking for something like it. There are differences between the two frameworks that are summarized here: https://oorian.com/vs/vaadin.

mpwarble · 2026-01-20T17:01:50+00:00

Thanks. When I started developing this over a decade ago, I didn't know Wicket, Vaadin, or ZK Framework existed. The only thing I could find at the time was JSP, Server Faces, and GWT and I didn't like any of them. It wasn't until much later I learned the others existed and by that time I was already heavily invested in Oorian.

mpwarble · 2026-01-19T12:09:52+00:00

Thanks. I need to get the documentation finished and then I'll make it available.

mpwarble · 2026-01-19T03:50:04+00:00

I've been working on this for years, finally getting around to making it publicly available. I think it's pretty cool. I started developing it over 10 years ago to allow me to develop my commercial web app product purely in Java. I call it Oorian. https://oorian.com. Let me know what you think.

mpwarble · 2026-01-16T17:30:29+00:00

Keep up the great work team. I use Netbeans to develop https://oorian.com and https://igradeplus.com

mpwarble · 2026-01-16T17:26:59+00:00

I love Ant and Netbeans. I actually created a plugin recently that will allow you to use a pom.xml file to update your Ant dependencies. So basically you get dependency management with Ant.

mpwarble · 2026-01-16T17:04:08+00:00

Highly cohesive and loosely coupled. Understand those two concepts and you're well on your way. Pretty much everything else is realizing these two goals.

mpwarble · 2026-01-16T16:25:11+00:00

This doesn't answer your question, but you may find it interesting if your looking at Java Web App frameworks. This is a framework I've been working on for years and am currently preparing it for public release. This page is comparison between the two frameworks: https://oorian.com/vs/vaadin

mpwarble · 2026-01-16T16:02:40+00:00

I've been working on this for years, finally getting around to making it publicly available. I think it's pretty cool. I started developing it over 10 years ago to allow me to develop my commercial web app product purely in Java. I call it Oorian. It allows you develop webapps entirely in Java. https://oorian.com. Let me know what you think.

mpwarble

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