Hi Chris, thanks for the very thoughtful email. In general I agree with what you are saying. Some more comments inline.
On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 5:54 AM Chris Spiliotopoulos < chrysanthos.spiliotopou...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi all, > > instead of becoming emotional I prefer sharing some thoughts with everyone > in this thread. Well, to be honest I think that everyone expected this to > happen at some point. Of course not due to lack of support from the dev > team - this had always been superb - but rather due to lack of awareness > regarding this (IMHO) ground-breaking technology and I'm referring to the > gadgets side of things. > > I've been using gadgets for quite a few years and I've managed to convince > people about the benefits of having a fully decoupled system with pluggable > apps either in-house or 3rd party. Of course as I have stated in the past > this had always been a steep curve as very few people are aware of this > technology but in the end everybody would buy in after seeing the results. > During these years I have managed to 'tame the beast' as resources had > always been scattered and very few and eventually was able to put it to > work for producing great dashboard apps and in the future (I hope) > marketplaces as well. > > My personal feeling is that most of the people using Shindig for a long > time now are here for its gadget rendering capabilities and the potential > it provides towards a fully decoupled architecture where app devs can work > independently from platform devs but eventually everything can work > together a a whole with minimum orchestration efforts. This has been my > personal experience so far anyways. Having said that, I've always felt > that the Shindig project had always been to large / broad in functionality > lacking clearly not dev but rather promotional & awareness efforts. > > Another factor that always helped me rest assured in a way regarding its > usefulness and future is that major companies like Google, Atlassian and > others with very popular products have also been using this technology as a > core component of their infrastructure until now. Although Google who > open-sourced the tech seems that it progressively deprecates some of their > products who had major touch points with the gadgets spec, still keeps it > alive in products like Gmail, Google apps, etc plus they have been hosting > the official Gadgets API site for a long time now. One of the puzzling > questions though is why these companies (apart from the IBM people who kept > the project running) were never openly involved with the promotion and > support of the tech in order to reach broader audiences through real-life > use cases? Correct me if I'm wrong but I've come to the conclusion that > these companies are maintaining probably ports of certain Shindig > components that have extended them in order to meet their requirements. > This is easy to speculate since reading the documentation of their products > shows clearly that there are extensions not supported by Shindig > out-of-the-box - once I had a chat with a guy working at Jive at the time > and he told me that they wrote their own security layer around their gadget > containers. > I'll have to agree with Darren that due to the robustness of the framework > most integrators are more than ok with the standard features it has to > offer and therefore this might have caused the side-effect to the > maintainers to since there are no new requests / ticket activities then > this framework has fulfilled its purpose and has become out of fashion. I > personally think that gadget tech has a future and a lot to offer when it > comes down to specific use cases - dashboards and marketplaces being a > couple for starters. After I received this mail today morning, I had a > quick search on the web to see if there are any real alternatives but I > found none. Has the plug-n-play model on the web become old fashioned > then? Are composable web apps like dashboards coming to an end? I don't > think so. > > I have not seen anything else that is as robust as gadgets so far, although I have heard some buzz around these things called "web components" that sounded like they would do something similar. I never really looked into it though. I think gadgets are still the best choice when it comes to allowing 3rd party apps to be integrated into a platform. > It would be really interesting to get in touch with the aforementioned > companies and ask them what are their plans regarding the infrastructure > they have invested on for years. Will they be switching to something new? > Are they willing to port the project and maintain it under a different > perspective? > There are certainly a number of companies that have consumed Shindig and used it in well established products that won't be going away any time soon. Some have chosen to fork the code base, others have not. And you are right most that have consumed the technology rarely promote it or drive features back into it. When I worked on the team using Shindig in IBM (I don't any longer) we made a very conscious effort to not fork the code base and drive whatever fixes and features we needed through the open source project. Hence we also spend some time promoting the open source project as well. However for the past year or so IBM has slowed down its effort in Shindig and since I no longer work on the team I can't really speak to what the future holds. > > Having said all that my personal belief is that gadget technology deserves > a better luck through proper communication and reach to broader developer > audiences. The only way I can see that happening is through a > modernization / revamp process of marketing / reference / tutorial material > and transfer to a more popular collaboration environment like GitHub. My > personal experience for doing this sort of thing last year through the > standard Apache process led to a dead-end - I have nothing against formal > processes, but when things are more about bureaucracy and old-school stuff > rather than moving forward to the present then I start to lose interest. > On the other hand, if a bunch of us decided to do something very simple as > creating a Jekyll site on GitHub with a few tutorials and a number of > ready-to-use artifacts making use of new age techs like Docker containers > to start sharing our experiences then we would have more success I guess > reaching out to younger developers and diverse audiences. Most of us are > already doing this for our companies, why not share the foundation work > with others and start building a community? > We have not officially terminated the project yet, the board will not meet until the 21st. If there is enough interest from the community Shindig can live on. However I for one would be stepping down as the PMC chair as I just dont have the time to revamp and drive the project forward anymore. If there is enough interest than the question becomes does Shindig remain an Apache project or something outside of the foundation itself. (We can move the code to GitHub by the way even as an Apache project). I guess that would be up to the people who want to keep the project going. > > Lack of development activity doesn't necessarily mean lack of interest or > potential. In Shindig's case this is a good thing because we have a stable > framework in our hands. But most of the people in the tech business > doesn't know such a thing exists. And I'm sure that this is not > irreversible. > > Kind regards, > Chris > > > > On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 12:31 AM, Raj Janorkar <raj.janor...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > Hi Ryan, > > > > This is really sad news. > > I am really thankful of your and dev team support you all helped me lot. > > > > As Darren Said Shindig is very much stable and i dont see any isues at > the > > moment. > > > > Just one thing i can see so many bug fixed since last release. So will > > there be final release Ryan? If you can that would be great and may be > your > > last favour to all of us and your loved baby Shindig. > > > > I dont see any future of apache rave either, people are so busy switching > > between millions of apps on their iphone. so no gadgets based sites are > > their interest But history repeats itself. > > > > lets see what comes next. > > > > Thank you > > > > > > On Thursday 8 October 2015, Darren Bond <db...@globalcad.com> wrote: > > > > > Dear All, > > > > > > This is very sad news indeed. Apache Shindig is at the core of several > of > > > our very popular sites - we consider it a mature product that does > > exactly > > > what it should, and does it very well indeed. Perhaps that's partly the > > > reason for the lack of user support requests! > > > > > > You, the dev team, kindly helped us resolve a number of issues back in > > > 2014 and we've never looked back since - we love Apache Shindig! > > > > > > Thank you for all your commitment, love, sweat and tears developing the > > > project - we truly value what you have created and will continue its > use > > > well into the future. > > > > > > Kind regards, > > > > > > Darren > > > > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > > From: Ryan Baxter [mailto:rbaxte...@apache.org <javascript:;>] > > > Sent: 07 October 2015 19:32 > > > To: dev@shindig.apache.org <javascript:;> > > > Subject: Fwd: Terminate the Apache Shindig Project > > > > > > Hi fellow Shindig Devs, > > > > > > I would like to let you all know that the Shindig PMC has voted to > > > terminate the Shindig project and move it to the attic. I have already > > > informed the Apache board about the termination in this months board > > report > > > (below). > > > > > > As most of you have probably noticed we have seen a decline in > > > participation in all aspects of the project over the past months and > the > > > downward trend has been happening for over a year now. This can > > certainly > > > be seen in our reports to the board [1]. > > > > > > If anyone has any questions please let me know, and I will be sure to > > keep > > > everyone up to date as we transition the project to the attic. Thanks. > > > > > > -Ryan > > > > > > [1] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/SHINDIG/Board+Reports > > > > > > ---------- Forwarded message --------- > > > From: Ryan Baxter <rbaxte...@apache.org <javascript:;>> > > > Date: Mon, Oct 5, 2015 at 9:29 PM > > > Subject: Terminate the Apache Shindig Project > > > To: bo...@apache.org <javascript:;> <bo...@apache.org <javascript:;>> > > > Cc: priv...@shindig.apache.org <javascript:;> < > > priv...@shindig.apache.org > > > <javascript:;>> > > > > > > > > > WHEREAS, the Project Management Committee of the Apache DirectMemory > > > project has chosen by vote to recommend moving the project to the > Attic; > > > and > > > > > > WHEREAS, the Board of Directors deems it no longer in the best interest > > of > > > the Foundation to continue the Apache Shindig project due to > inactivity; > > > > > > NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Apache Shindig project is > hereby > > > terminated; and be it further > > > > > > RESOLVED, that the Attic PMC be and hereby is tasked with oversight > over > > > the software developed by the Apache Shindig Project; and be it further > > > > > > RESOLVED, that the office of "Vice President, Apache Shindig" is hereby > > > terminated; and be it further > > > > > > RESOLVED, that the Apache Shindig PMC is hereby terminated. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > Chris Spiliotopoulos > > Solutions Architect | @LinkedIn > <https://www.linkedin.com/pub/chris-spiliotopoulos>| @Twitter > <https://twitter.com/chefArchitect> >
