The open source portal space has been heating up in recent years and we’re seeing many of the content management and blogging platforms offer portal-like services. Here I am talking about portals as if we’re on the same page. It’s difficult to find a definition of ‘portal’ that people are in agreement with, and implementations vary. Open source portal packages such as Liferay Portal, JBoss Portal and Metadot, are placing pressure on the commercial portal leaders - BEA (especially with its acquisition on Plumtree), Vignette, and ATG (although ATG no longer seems to be using the term ‘portal’ to describe any of its products).

This topic came to mind because Liferay, an open source software company, announced the 4.0 release of its Java-based portal product today (see the press release). Enhancements to the 4.0 release include improved security, enterprise taxonomy, support for Velocity templates, private pages, theme enhancements, JSP-170 compliance, and more thorough documentation.

I don’t know much about Liferay Portal, but the users I have spoken with have been big fans. One enterprise end user I met at the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) in Boston last year said it was his organization’s most valued open source software package. That’s quite an endorsement, considering the variety of packages to choose from.