I have decided to bid Axis farewell since I am in the process of changing
jobs and will no longer be working on SOAP. I've learned a lot by being
involved in Axis and have enjoyed the stimulation of working with some
talented people, non-IBMers as well as IBMers. I have been particularly
inspired by the way Sam Ruby and Davanum Srinivas operate within the
project, quite apart from their strong technical skills. This was my first
open source project and I've really enjoyed the people and the open source
approach and tools.
I got involved with Axis as a way of learning about SOAP and understanding
the properties of the handler architecture since it was strikingly similar
to an architecture I had been considering for another SOAP implementation.
The other implementation is coming along nicely and bears only a
superficial resemblance to Axis, but I can't say more as it is still to be
shipped.
I regret failing to get better user documentation written. I didn't invest
enough time in learning how to use Axis, so I wasn't able to come at the
documentation from the external viewpoint. Others were interested in
writing the documentation, but didn't find sufficient support in the
mailing lists to get out of the chicken-and-egg situation of naive users
trying to get to grips with Axis. The partial architecture guide was, I
hope, some use to developers.
That said, I wish you all well for the future and hope our paths will cross
again.
A couple of bits of administrivia: I have closed defect 13134 as
unreproducible ("WORKSFORME") as I am revamping the Linux environment that
shows it. Also, I've moved my name to the list of dormant committers.
Glyn
