ABAP_to_the_Future

13
SAPUI5
OpenUI5 and Open Source
OpenUI5 is often described as “open source ,” but many people would say that’s not
quite true. The product is open source in that it’s free to download and you can use it
any way you want without having to pay anybody a license, but that’s only half of the
open-source story.
With real open-source products, not only can you view the source code, you are actively
encouraged to fix bugs and make enhancements and to send those changes to the project
so that the whole world can benefit. SAP is not quite willing to go that far yet, but
SAP claims that it will make this a proper open-source product eventually.
Thanks to OpenUI5, there is an absolutely stunning online resource to help you
start adding all sorts of exotic features in no time at all, available at http://
sap.github.io/openui5/index.html (Figure 13.38). This will really come in handy in
real life—because, let’s face it, your user s are going to want the moon on a stick
when it comes to the look and feel of their applications.
Figure 13.38 OpenUI5 Launch Page
If you click the Download link shown in Figure 13.38, you can get the latest version
of OpenUI5 (a new version comes out every few weeks), and more importantly
for the purpose at hand there’s a link to the developer guide. (When you
open the developer guide, it seems like al references to “open” UI5 are gone, and
the logo and description at the top of the screen refer to SAPUI5, as seen in Figure
13.39. However, you’re really still in the OpenUI5 developer guide.)
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