For this kind of issue, Jon's traditional answer is: - Are you volunteering?
The problem is that this is a volunteer organization. One can not just appoint someone to do something - the person that does it must want to do it. So, if you want something to be fixed, you must be willing to do it. I know better than the average the complete range of components available at Jakarta projects and even in Cocoon, but I do not have the patience to do the systematic and boring job of comparing them and write down the conclusions... and that is the reason why I do not ask someone else to do it. What I try to do is to tell someone that is reinventing the wheel where he can find the code for former wheels. The only solution I see for this issue is to rule that a project duplicating functionality existing on a previously existing project should only be approved if it documents the differences and the older project should cross link to that document. Of course that this is not so simple and that the older project should have the opportunity to review and push changes to that document and so on. Still, this kind of rule would force awareness of similar projects and possibly improve cross-pollination. Costin already wrote a very interesting mail on this thread about the reasons and positive effects of duplication. Of course that for several of those effects to work it helps that there is some dialog going on between the members of those "duplicated" projects. One possible example of such positive effects might be Avalon's Excalibur project. They recently made an impressive reorganization of their code and web pages and, IMHO, that raises the bar in terms of their competition with the Commons. This can only be good: - It is now easier for a the user to pick an isolated Excalibur component; - That former difficulty was one of the reasons for duplicating or even just not looking at those components. So, Excalibur improved due to the pressure of the Commons. Now it is even possible that some components will be merged or some duplication will die (although I am not betting on it). But more important is that Excalibur now starts looking much better organized than the commons - which is a positive point favoring the use of their components - because: - More homogeneous organization of each component code; - Better average/minimum documentation. Maybe now the Commons will improve those aspects! (At least I can hope...) =;o) Have fun, Paulo Gaspar > -----Original Message----- > From: Henri Yandell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Sunday, April 28, 2002 6:11 AM > To: Jakarta Commons Developers List; [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: [PROPOSAL] Commons-API (was Re: [pool] PROPOSAL: add > collecting of statistics to pool implementations) > > > > On Sat, 27 Apr 2002, Paulo Gaspar wrote: > > > And I don't give a shit about how it looks to the outside > > because: > > - This is not a commercial organization; > > > > - If we have a specific target audience, it is a technical one > > that makes a well informed choice... or they would be > > flocking toward organizations with a more corporate look and > > culture. > > Given two projects which are duplicating effort, such as Commons/Excalibur > or all the DBCP-style components, or a project such as mod_webapp/jk where > the older version is still in development, I think it is important for > there to be documentation concerning the difference. > > To be saying to developers/users of the code that these things do the same > and you should probably just look at the functionalities to see which you > think is best, read the archives to see which you think is still worked > on, most stable, has the best direction, is a pretty poor service. > > Jakarta has long maintained two Regexp engines, and when you read the > documentation there is a part (I'm not sure if both have it) which > explains why there are two, which is better for which situation, and which > is still being improved. > > This documentation is difficult to make, who is sitting in the middle > enough to write a good view, but is sorely needed. When I went looking for > the latest mod_jk and discovered mod_webapp it was very hard to discern > what their roles were. I believe because jk had just had a release. > > Hen > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
