Is the source for the Helicon Zoo module available?

[schmidt4brains Profile]

I'm looking into adding the Helicon Zoo module into our existing IIS-based .NET app, to add a Rails project to our existing product.

The Helicon Zoo module would need to be deployed to each server running our app, and Zoo provides the glue-logic between our main ASP.NET app and the Ruby environment which runs the new Rails app.

But unlike the other HeliconTech products, Zoo is not something a customer buys. So is it open source?

What contingency do my customers have if 3 years from now something goes wrong in the glue-logic of Zoo and Helicon Tech has disappeared? Am I forced to work around the bug via black-box debugging?

[Yaroslav]

Hello!

I do really hope that Helicon Tech will stay here for a wile, so you are not left alone with debugging after 3 years of user experience.

Currently Helicon Zoo is not an open source and it depends on the future project's popularity whether it will be or not. We have several monetizing strategies which depends on clients base, but selling Helicon Zoo Module is not one of them.

Since you are still planning your system I suggest you to review Helicon Zoo v. 3.0 RC now, because we are going to make it main feed within a week. Please read what's new article: http://www.helicontech.com/articles/helicon-zoo-3-0-whats-new/
Also I have rewritten "Ruby on Rails on Windows in production" article yesterday to comply with version 3.0. Please read it again as version 3 user experience differs significantly comparing to v. 2: http://www.helicontech.com/articles/ruby-on-rails-on-windows-in-production/

You mentioned you are going to install on number of servers. I will be writing an article how to prepare and use offline self-installing packages using Helicon Zoo, so you could build server instance creation solution that does not rely on the availability of Helicon Zoo feed and other online resources. Please add our articles RSS feed to your news reader stay tuned: http://www.helicontech.com/articles/feed/