The point I wanted to make was only about how I would try to attract more active developers and not about the usefulness of the mentioned projects.
Regards Dirk
Daniel F. Savarese wrote:
I'm trying to catch up on the loads of Apache email that have piled up over the past week, so forgive me if I'm addressing this out of context.
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Dirk Verbeeck writes:
Do you think that moving JXPath to another location will increase visibility/community? I don't think so.
Although I agree with what you say above ...
It will be just another menu item like ORO, Regexp, BCEL, ...
There are better ways to attact more users IMHO, doing more announcements (milestone/final releases), provide examples of integration possibilities with other apache projects
If the implication here is that ORO and Regexp don't have many users and are just dead weight, that's totally wrong. Both projects have many users. They just don't have many active developers, and the reasons for that for those two projects in particular, has little to do with what's being discussed. Stable/mature software does not attract new developers. In addition, feature enhancing patch submissions to jakarta-oro fell off immediately after the release of J2SE 1.4.0 with the introduction of java.util.regex. There has been more development activity in jakarta-regexp since then because the software had a considerable number of bugs that were showstoppers for users, which wasn't the case for jakarta-oro. There's also the issue that Jeffrey Friedl's book gave the packages poor performance marks in certain areas, that go contrary to end-user experience and my preliminary benchmarking (and Friedl has never made his benchmarks available for public scrutiny, so it's impossible to isolate the cases and improve the code, all the while potential new users are steered toward java.util.regex). Still, Friedl also praised the jakarta-oro API design over java.util.regex. But now I'm really digressing. Both projects could move into Jakarta Commons, but changing org.apache.oro and org.apache.regexp to org.apache.commons.oro and org.apache.commons.regexp will break all the user code out there.
Attempting to get back on topic, both jakarta-oro and jakarta-regexp should move to Apache Commons, whether they kickstart new development or continue in only in maintenance mode. I'm also +1 on Jakarta Commons, XML Commons, and DB Commons, merging into Apache Commons with all committers being on the PMC and having commit privileges to all components. Little has to change in the functioning of Jakarta Commons. I see it as a move to help the ASF function better, not as an arbitrary and unnecessary shuffling. I don't think Jakarta Commons itself needs the move, which is why I originally didn't see a point to the idea way back when it was first posited after the formation of Apache Commons, but I think Jakarta needs the move. Of course, others disagree and offer compelling reasons; and I don't see how the topic will ever reach closure without a vote.
daniel
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