Thanks, Keith, for taking time to answer my question, and answer it in a very concise and complete way. After having read and digested your reply, I think that you are right in that the license will not be an obstacle in (potentially) reshaping the way Castor as an open source project will be maintained in the future.
Personally, I am overwhelmed by the amount of traffic generated under this very subject, and to me this is a very clear sign that there's an active community for Castor JDO and, provided that some things as discussed in this very thread are put into place, Castor JDO will have a future. I've made a comment to one of my colleagues here along the lies of 'isn't it ironic that Castor JDO get's a lot of coverage right now, e.g. in the JavaWorld article last week, whilst at the same time development for the product (as good as it is) has almost stopped'. Reading all the emails in the past 24 hours (and ignoring some of the more personal comments I've seen ... and I am the last one not to be found guilty in this area ... -;-)), I am very confident that we as a community will find a way to work together to resolve outstanding issues and help/assist Thomas in realizing his vision towards refactoring the product. I do share the opinion of many others in that you guys should make *all* documentation available in one way or the other. That includes any bug reports (incl. these not on Bugzilla yet), any suggested patches, design documents for refactoring Castor, the famous <grin> to-do list, etc. It's all about transparency, and I think that by making things available for everybody, some argumenst will naturally come to and end, and people will be able to refocus their energy on working on the product. Thanks Werner Keith Visco wrote: > Werner Guttmann wrote: > > > > Keith, > > > > > [lots of content snipped] > > > > > Yes and no. Exolab/Intalio certainly started the project, and the Castor > > > JDO project leader is from Intalio, but the rest of the JDO > > > committers/contributors are not from Intalio. I really believe the > > > community can control for the most part the direction of Castor JDO. > > > > Can you please give one or two examples where you think the community can *not* > > control the direction of Castor ? > > That's a very difficult question to answer. To be direct, the current > committers are the only ones with actual CVS write access. So in the > end, patches and enhancements must be commited by those with write > access. So the committers must agree that the changes are actually > beneficial to the community in general before committing them. > > If the many users really want a feature and someone is willing to write > and test the feature, then I see no reason why it would not be accepted. > > On the other hand if one person writes a patch and the patch is highly > specific to the individuals case, it might not be accepted. The patch > can be made available to the public via the list or any other means the > user may have at his or her disposal however. > > However, in both of these cases the community is really controlling the > direction, because user-demand or user-non-demand can cause features to > be accepted or rejected. > > In the end however, the decision will ultimately come from the > committers. A reason will always be given for not accepting a patch and > the community can comment about whether they agree or disagree. > > > > > I think that most of the people here on the list willing to contribute will have > > a need to understand what the limitations are, and > > whether any (substantial) progress can be made without being 'overruled' by >Intalio. > > This is a common misconception. If you look at the committers list you > will notice many non-Intalio committers. Intalio doesn't control Castor. > Intalio can control what Thomas, Arnaud, and I work on during work > hours, but they don't control Castor. Many of my contributions come > after hours...as you can see it's 4:00am as I write this e-mail! > > Also if you look at the contributors list you will find far more > non-Intalio contributors than Intalio ones. > > I think any reasonable patch that is well tested will be checked into > the CVS. > > > I think it all comes down to what license Castor JDO currently has and will have in > > the future. > > The license won't change. It's very liberal. It's a BSD style license > that has very few restrictions and nothing that prevents Commercial or > private use. > > The license is available with the source code, binary distributions as > well as on the website: > > http://castor.exolab.org/license.html > > --Keith > > ----------------------------------------------------------- > If you wish to unsubscribe from this mailing, send mail to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of: > unsubscribe castor-dev ----------------------------------------------------------- If you wish to unsubscribe from this mailing, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of: unsubscribe castor-dev
