[resending to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ... I didn't spot
[EMAIL PROTECTED] cc'd on the original. Also, I'm
seeing Alex's post now, expressing his interest to make a commitment,
which is excellent.]
Hi, Cees,
JDBM certainly looks interesting!
One clarification about process is the project would still enter
incubation, but sponsored by Apache DB. On graduation, it would then
join Apache DB as a subproject -- or possibly even as its own top level
project. (For example, Apache Derby and JDO were sponsored by Apache DB,
and graduated as DB subprojects. Apache Cayenne was sponsored by Apache
DB, but graduated as a TLP. ) Exact destination gets determined at
graduation time -- but talk of graduation is leaping way too far ahead
for this discussion. :-)
The Incubator proposal template will help guide discussion on this list:
http://incubator.apache.org/guides/proposal.html#proposal-template
You can add a JDBM proposal to the Incubator wiki:
http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/
I'd especially like to hear more about your thoughts regarding this
comment:
There have been some concerns about the continuity of the package,
although the original contributors are still active.
Apache is about community -- and no project graduates from the Incubator
without demonstrating that it has a community diverse and strong enough
to manage that code base moving forward. You stated a commitment to keep
JDBM alive -- how about the other contributors? --I'm keying in on this
risk mentioned in the template:
http://incubator.apache.org/guides/proposal.html#template-orphaned-products
I sincerely hope the Apache DB project will consider adoption of the
code base.
Again, Apache is about communities. We just need to make sure that
everyone understands that.
Since I pulled out a couple comments, possibly without adequate context,
I'm including your entire original post down below.
I look forward to hearing more about JDBM.
regards,
-jean
Cees de Groot wrote:
(Currently: http://jdbm.sourceforge.net/)
JDBM is an 8-year old open source library currently under a custom
(original-BSD-style) license created by me in 2000 as the result of
some chat with folks from Intalio and extended by a number of persons
since then, most notably Alex Boisvert. It mainly aims to give similar
functionality as GDBM but it adds transactions and btrees/htrees. As
its goals were (and are) simplicity and robustness, after an initial
flurry of development the package has been mostly stable and is in
use/has been used by a number of high profile projects
(http://jdbm.sourceforge.net/JDBM-Powered.html).
There have been some concerns about the continuity of the package,
although the original contributors are still active. ApacheDS already
includes a (temprary) fork in the code base, and the main question the
mailing list receives is along the line "does it still work?" (answer:
yes, it does - that fact that the stable release is 3 years old means
that we haven't received any serious bug reports since then, I figure
;-)).
While we were discussing the future of JDBM on SourceForge (people
want to move to Codehaus because of the better tools), Emmanuel
Lecharny (ApacheDS) suggested that we'd consider Apache DB as a new
home, and I think it is an extremely good idea for obvious reasons
(continuity, exposure, peace of mind for Apache DS and other users).
JDBM still fills a good niche, IMO, and would be a worthwhile addition
to the Apache DB project. At the moment, I'm busy modernizing JDBM:
- Move from Ant to Maven (mostly done);
- Move from Junit3 to Junit4;
- Move to JDK1.5+, most notably by adding generics.
- Move from jdbm.* to a package name that is in accordance with the
rules of ibiblio et al. for release.
- Re-license under ASL/MIT/BSD ("something in that particular corner
of the open source licensing jungle").
The first three points are underway, the package rename depends
partially on its new home, and re-licensing requires some discussion
and a vote but the contributors so far are quite relaxed on licensing
(how refreshing!).
Personally, as OC, I am very much committed to keeping JDBM alive. I
have a bit over 2 decades of experience with working in Free
Software/Open Source Software environments (starting with an fast
ANSI.SYS replacement, distributed over Fidonet, in the '80s :)), among
others I contributed to early Linux kernels, helped with the port of
Java to Linux as a member of the Blackdown team, ran the
Linuxdoc/SGMLtools projects and I have been active in various
Smalltak-related communities, most notably the Squeak community
(squeak.org). So I hope I qualify the "open source experience"
requirement. As to the other main contributors, I leave it to them to
chime in.
I sincerely hope the Apache DB project will consider adoption of the code base.
Regards,
Cees
