What is WebLOAD.org?

WebLOAD.org is a community site for professional performance testing of internet applications, hosting the WebLOAD free open source project. This project is based on twelve years of code development invested in the previously proprietary WebLOAD, the award winning commercial performance testing solution for internet applications from Radview Software . WebLOAD is a great starting point for this project, with a community of more than 1,600 customers and a track record established on the merits of its robust functionality, efficient architecture, extensibility, support, quality and its ease of use.

WebLOAD.org Mission

This project seeks to develop a vibrant open source community to continually enhance WebLOAD and share performance testing knowledge. In support of these goals, the website offers community resources such as product downloads, forums, script libraries, a developer wiki, FAQs, how to docs and more. These resources enable users to share their experiences and gain insights for more efficient use of WebLOAD. WebLOAD.org encourages users to sign up as members, become contributors and eventually committers, taking an active part in the development of WebLOAD. With its open source approach, WebLOAD.org aims to facilitate a significant increase in the implementation of performance testing procedures earlier in the development lifecycle, particularly in the programming phase. Ultimately, this will have the effect of introducing internet applications of higher quality to the benefit of all users.

Commercial Sponsorship

RadView is a commercial company that is strategically committed to open source development as the best way to develop, market and sell software products and services. By fully sponsoring WebLOAD.org and offering WebLOAD as its basis, RadView has spawned an open source community developing the project under the GNU General Public License (GPL). WebLOAD Open Source offers free access to users and developers and includes all the latest community additions to the code. Complementing the open source editions, RadView Software offers commercial support services for WebLOAD as well as premium add-ons and solutions to meet the specific needs of enterprise development environments. For more information regarding RadView offerings and solutions please refer to www.RadView.com.

Project Status

In April 2007, Radview adopted the open source development and delivery model and made a large part of the WebLOAD source code available to the open source community. At that time, WebLOAD was the result of 250-man years of 'proprietary' development.

The process of converting a 'closed source' application to an open source application is not as simple as publishing its code on the web. Among other things, it requires substituting other vendor components that are not available under a GPL license with open source components, or re-developing them. In order to speed up the process, RadView decided to release the WebLOAD source code in stages, making a critical portion of the application (the load engine) available to the community much sooner than it would otherwise be. Even though the UI parts are still 'closed source', they are free to the community until the full migration is completed and they too become available under GPL license.