you should make this a blog post so that I can link to it :) On Nov 30, 2011, at November 30, 20119:43 AM, Jan Lehnardt wrote:
> Apache CouchDB is Alive and Kicking > > “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” — Mark Twain > > > In the past days at the end of November 2011, a few news items hit the > tech scene that suggested that the Apache CouchDB project is done for. > > We, the Apache CouchDB team, are writing to you today: do not worry, > the project is alive and well. > > > Canonical and Ubuntu One > > In 2009 Canonical decided to base the data sync feature of their Ubuntu > One project on Apache CouchDB. Its goal was to allow seamless synchro- > nisation of personal data between different computers and devices and their > cloud hosting service. A use-case that seemed perfect for > CouchDB at the time, and we consider that still to be the case. > > Individuals from the CouchDB team have worked closely with the dev-elopers at > Canonical to help making Ubuntu One a success. At some > point in the past, these individuals developed patches to adapt CouchDB > to certain Ubuntu One use cases. These patches diverged from the main > CouchDB code base. > > Over time, it became harder and harder to reconcile these changes with > the main CouchDB code base, so fixing bugs and rolling out new features > from more recent CouchDB release took a lot more time and energy. > > At some point in the near past, we presume, Canonical decided to not > pursue this any further. And we respect that decision and we wish them > best with their development of their new U1DB, which is a database- > agnostic API that takes after CouchDB's API, but is tied closer > to their particular feature set. > > We'd like to thank Canonical for officially endorsing this part of the > message. > > > “The company behind CouchDB” > > During the development of Ubuntu One, Cannonical worked with Couchbase, > who happen to employ some of CouchDB's committers. In a recent an- > nouncement, they erroneously described Couchbase as the company behind > CouchDB. We'd like the set the record straight by saying that this isn't > the case. CouchDB is an Apache Software Foundation project and has no > corporate sponsor. > > We are fortunate enough to have a number of companies who employ our > committers or sponsor individual people to work on the project. These > people, however, contribute to the project as individuals, regardless of > their involvement with Cloudant, Couchbase, Enki Multimedia, Iris Couch, > or any other corporate entity. > > > The Future > > Apache CouchDB will continue to build great database technology and > release stable, mature and trustworthy releases for our developers to > build great applications on. > > We want to thank everybody for their support and look forward to a great > future! > > On behalf of the The Apache CouchDB Project Management Committee, > > Jan Lehnardt, > Chairman > -- >
