> I had no idea so many businesses were supportive of and had chosen tapestry > as their technology basis. Does that mean you guys are all going to pool > together to help fund the development of a T4->T5 extension library which > I've already said I'll be working on? > > Or....Do you guys only pool together when it comes to telling us what/how we > should do our free work?
Oh *please* my company is supportive of Open Source software in general and the ASF in particular, I'm not telling you what or how you should do your "free work", that isn't how open source works and well you know it. What I am doing is expressing my opinion in a public forum. I am entiled to do that. Whether or not you choose to listen to the opinions of your users is up to you, but I would encourage you not to start slagging them off, it could backfire on you. If you want to encourage these users to collaborate on resolving the issues we're concerned about then I would humbly suggest that you do so in a less antagonistic manner. If Howard was a little more diplomatic in his pronouncements then this whole nonsense could have been resolved before it started, please don't make it worse by making statements like the things you just said. Tapestry, as a project, can choose to alienate some or all of its users if you want it to. I would hope that you guys would be mature enough to choose to encourage and support a self-sustaining community to grow around Tapestry, not raze it to the ground every time you choose to make a revolutionary change to the product. Revolution vs Evolution is an old debate, and Jakarta (I know you're not part of it any longer) has seen notable successes and notable failures of both approaches since I was first involved, and I'm certainly not saying that revolution is the wrong way for Tapestry. What I am saying is that I believe that it is in the interest of the project to understand, and at least consider, the needs of larger less-flexible users, the pay back may be less tangible and take longer to achieve but case studies and testimonials from respected government and blue chip users can translate into currency in the marketplace which no amount of free PR could buy you, there is no better advert for your product than happy users, and once we have built our internal expertise we could probably, between us, contribute code to tapestry at a rate that might even approach Howard's. My message is simple; If you guys make me feel that your project is not _too_ risky a choice for my company I *will*, in return, publicise the sucesses we've had. And if you slow down the rate of revolution we *will* be able to start to feed back relevant issues, patches, and hopefully more significant contributions. We have written our own implementations of some core interfaces to resolve issues, but there doesn't seem to be much point in contributing them when 3 isn't even in subversion, and the dev list is already hard at work on completely incompatible version 5. The main reason we can't do more right now is that we are faced with a future where we are looking at planning, scheduling and getting funds for upgrading (Because of our own timetable of work, which is planned a year in advance, we're only now ready to consider the move from 3 to 4 never mind to five) and once we do upgrade we have to start our teams on a new learning curve, that results in lower productivity which we *can* put a cost on, and it erodes some of the benefits we hoped to gain from Tapestry at the start, this in turn makes our bosses question the wisdom of the choice making it harder still to justify investing in Tapestry. We want to be experts and we want to help move Tapestry forward to better meet our needs and the needs of those like us in the ways we know (as geeks) that it can, but we won't manage it unless you consider makeing it easier for us to catch up and keep up with you. d. ******************************************************************************************************* The information in this e-mail is confidential and for use by the addressee(s) only. If you are not the intended recipient please delete the message from your computer. You may not copy or forward it or use or disclose its contents to any other person. As Internet communications are capable of data corruption Student Loans Company Limited does not accept any responsibility for changes made to this message after it was sent. For this reason it may be inappropriate to rely on advice or opinions contained in an e-mail without obtaining written confirmation of it. Neither Student Loans Company Limited or the sender accepts any liability or responsibility for viruses as it is your responsibility to scan attachments (if any). Opinions and views expressed in this e-mail are those of the sender and may not reflect the opinions and views of The Student Loans Company Limited. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept for the presence of computer viruses. ******************************************************************************************************** --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
