On 14 February 2011 10:02, Calum Shaw-Mackay <calum.shawmac...@gmail.com>wrote:
> > On 14 Feb 2011, at 05:29, MICHAEL MCGRADY wrote: > > > I think that the original vision needs to be revisited and River needs to > see if that vision has been realized or not. There might be no point in > going further. Further and further and further is not the point. The point > today is what is the point? > > I agree for the most part with this, but given that the Jini 2.1 starter > kit was released over 5 years ago, and we're now looking to 2.1.2, I believe > that without a clear roadmap, or indeed some ideas that can be explored, > Jini will be going no further anyway. So I think my version is more like > 'The point today is what has been stalling us?', and I understand the > upheaval and the like with the move from Sun to Apache stewardship, but this > alone cannot account for nearly five years of near stagnation. > Can't account for stagnation? Oh, I think it can. No evangelists, no one putting into systems (perhaps because they don't know how to), no bug fixing, no removal of rough edges, no focus on packaging, no experienced developers for the core and thus a need for training etc etc. > The development arena of 5 years ago is different from the one of today, > irrespective of the original vision, there has to be a view of how we make > Jini and River relevant today, to drive adoption and new blood, and we > cannot do this unless at least some part of the community is willing to look > outside, see where the trends and issues are, and begin to discuss where > River can augment or help with those trends and issues, and then at some > point actually do it. > > Observation: Many of the trends and issues today are related to how software is built today. The way software is built today is no different from the way it was being built upwards of a decade and a half ago. The only thing that changed was the tools and they all do the same things as has been done before just in a different way. Adoption: Why do you want to drive it? To what end? What's the big picture? We can all play around in the weeds or invent new, long, detailed roadmaps but so what? What's the big picture piece that shapes everything? Relevant: Relevant to whom? That target audience dictates the rules by which you make yourself relevant. If you want to change the world, you make yourself relevant by doing something different and convincing people. If all you want is adoption, well you make Jini/River look like everything else but then you look like any other old app server or framework. Personally, I see little point in debating the past or talking about stagnation. I'd prefer to talk about what we'd qualify as success, then we can figure out what we'll do about it and indeed who's interested in being around to do it.
