Thanks for all the replies, they made for some interesting reading.  I'd
just like to apologise if this has come across as a dig at Struts or
anyone who has given their time to the project, that was never my
intention.  I really enjoy working with Struts 2 and it has helped me
immensley.  I am nothing but grateful to all those involved.  Phil, Toby
and all the guys on the Opensymphony forums have always been extremly
helpful.  I really shouldn't have used the word failure, it is much too
strong.  I was just looking at what preconceptions developers might have
with the name. I wouldn't want them missing out on something I feel is a
very good tool, but as Frank and Don have stated I probably shouldn't be
too concerned.   The stats that Ted posted suggest that I have nothing
to worry about anyway.  Maybe we are just not as vocal about it.  I'm
assuming those stats only include direct downloads and not the central
Maven repo where many people may be pulling it from?

Martin.


----- Original message -----
From: "Ted Husted" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Struts Developers List" <dev@struts.apache.org>
Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2007 14:27:16 -0400
Subject: Re: Has the WebWork rebranding to Struts2 been a failure?

On 6/23/07, Martin Gilday <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> This is something I have been thinking about for a while, but has been
> highlighted by Wicket recently graduating from the Apache Incubator.
> When checking out blogs, newsgroups, theserverside, infoq etc it has
> become apparent to me that Struts 2 is still very much thought of as
> just Struts 1++, in a negative sense.

Thanks to Google alerts, I've been reading a lot of the blogs and such
all along. I would agree that many people perceive Struts 2 as Struts
1++. I would even say that label is a fair assessment, and even a goal
of the merger. If there's a negative sense, it's a statement about
action-based frameworks, as opposed to component-based or Ajax-based
frameworks. I wouldn't take it personally. :)

The nature of the beast is that most blogs are about some shiny new
toy, which can even include Struts 2, for example:
http://www.vitarara.org/cms/struts2cookbook


> When you see posts by people
> saying which web frameworks they have tried out because they were
> unhappy with Struts 1 then Wicket, Click, Tapestry are mentioned. Struts
> 2, however, is always seemingly dismissed without a look, as they feel
> all the problems they have with Struts 1 must still exist.

Oh, judging by the download stats, I think a few people are checking
out Struts 2 :)

In March 2007, right after the release of 2.0.6, Struts 2 had its
largest spike of downloads ever! We didn't edge out Tomcat, but we did
briefly edge out Apache HTTPD :)

And, honestly, before today, I never even thought to look :)


> Of course
> there is plently on info on the wiki detailing why they are different,
> but if they have already crossed it off the list before getting to the
> site it isn't much use in getting the message across.  I'm not really
> sure what my point is as the name is the name now.  Maybe some positive
> marketing such as some blog posting about the improvements and
> differences, or in release annoucements really strongly detailing them.

We did try to highlight the differences and improvements in the
initial announcement.

 * http://struts.apache.org/announce.html#a20070223

which many people cribbed word for word. If there are any suggestions
about what we could highlight differently, the RM is usually looking
for help with drafting the release announcement.

If we had a marketing budget, an announcement about the record
downloads for Struts 2 might be an interesting idea. But, it actually
costs money to send out a press release these days :)

I'm checking with the Apache Stats groups to make sure I'm reading the
graphs right. Then I'll at least post something to our site, which
other people might pickup. For example, InfoQ might want to do
something to promote Ian's book, and we could piggy back on that.

-Ted.

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