We have not had a clear policy for versions, branches, releases and revisions, for much of the development life of OpenLabyrinth. We intend to remedy this soon, with a more thoroughly documented approach.
In the meantime, in practical terms, you will find that our demo server at
is generally running the latest release. You can request an account on that server if you want to try out the newest, scariest features.
Our production server at
is generally running an older, more stable version of OpenLabyrinth.
Ever since we went to version 3 of OpenLabyrinth, we have placed the source code in GitHub at
https://github.com/olab/Open-Labyrinth
This version uses the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) approach in its web server. The codebase is fully open-source and we welcome contributors to our code. Please contact us if you wish to contribute in some way.
So far, much of the code has been managed by ITRex, an outsourced development team based in Minsk, Belarus, with issue management being handled on their Jira server – this Jira forum is not open to the public and only a few key personnel within the OpenLabyrinth Development Consortium have access to it.
Overall design decisions and the bulk of development work are directed by members of the Consortium. However, we have had several groups make significant independent contributions already, many of which have been merged into the main release branches.
The source code to version 3 is licensed under a GNU-GPL v3 licence. You may not resell the code or create a commercial version of the platform.
However, this does not restrict what you do with your case content. So far, we have encouraged our case authors to make their case content and materials openly available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA) licence, which has strongly benefited the virtual patient community. But we recognize that some organizations will need to keep some of their case materials private, such as for summative exams. We do not restrict what you can do with your case content or how you license it.
Previously in version 2 of OpenLabyrinth, it was also open-source, hosted on SourceForge. This version was developed by Dr Rachel Ellaway, who has now joined us in Calgary. This version was written in Microsoft ASP, and used IIS for the web server, along with MS SQL for the database. We became increasingly frustrated with coding quirks generated by the ASP libraries, which was the chief reason for switching over to a more open LAMP platform. However, there are still some OpenLabyrinth servers running version 2.
Notable versions
- Version 3.3.1 – reasonably stable, most of latest features
- Version 3.1 – most stable, but missing some interesting features
- Version 2.6.2 – tweaked version with improved MVP export
- Version 2.6.1 – last major release for version 2 (ASP based)
- Version 2.08 – early, stable release still used on some older servers
A better way of documenting the versions, releases and what they include will be forthcoming soon.