In my love affair to always be a bit verbose it seems like some key points (no Java requirement in the final version for example) were made clear enough. So here is a short summary:

• all key infrastructure pieces exist now but still need some polish and tuning
• the goal for the final solution is to be considerably easier to create a custom CMS solution on top of the CMF than using Doctrine ORM/ODM straight
• the final solution will have no non PHP dependencies, aka most likely we will even support just storing the data in the file system. oh and no PHP extension will be required either
• for now Java is needed to work on the front and middle layers, but it basically boils down to downloading a jar and starting it with "java -jar"
• a first easy to use solution is expected in 3-5 months time in the mean time we need developers willing to dig into things

I also want to address some non technical topics that I didn't cover before.

What is the license of JCR?
This unfortunately is more fuzzy than I would hope things to be. Day.com (now Adobe) has publicly stated JCR is available under the Apache Software License. However after poking them for a while they couldn't really produce anything concrete as proof. Now to improve the situation they have added a "Day JCR License" to the bottom of their license page. But things always sound very focused on Java. Now things will likely become very clear as David Nüschler (JCR lead, developer from Day.com now Adobe) is very keen on getting PHPCR into the JCR 2.1 (aka JSR-333), which aims to become more scripting language friendly.

Day.com was bought by Adobe, are things becoming more closed now?
There are no indications of this. The acquisition was first announced in the summer of 2010. Since then I haven't seen any changes in behavior even after things were finalized. The previously mentioned blog article was published in December for example and the additional "Day JCR License" was published earlier this year. Furthermore David Nüschler directly approached us about adding PHPCR into JSR-333 this year as well.

Update: BTW here is a link to the official acquisition FAQ

hi lukas,

what do you mean with this phrase: "for now Java is needed to work on the front and middle layers," ?
i would say its the opposite, java is only used as storage backend. as you wrote in one of the posts, its as simple as using solr. but your frontend server does not need to run java if you have separate servers.

I mean if you just want to work on the frontend and middle layers today you will need to run Jackrabbit (aka Java) to be able to work, since there is no PHP alternative backend yet.