Hello David,
Thank you very much for sharing your history of what is now known as TomEE !
Maybe could you push it to the site in some place like "project history" ?
It would be a shame to loose this opportunity to share it : memory is
a sane way to make the future possible; please share if possible.
Note: I love the "TomTom" temporary name: it would have given an
excellent 'positioning' for the project...
But okay, copyright issues wouldn't allow it, to bad!
Thanks,
Alexandre
2018-03-22 3:04 GMT+01:00 David Blevins <[email protected]>:
>> On Mar 19, 2018, at 2:45 AM, Mark Struberg <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Let's face it TomEE is mostly an aggregator. A great one, I really love it -
>> but still.
>> [...]
>> Folks, you have to stop thinking as TomEE as being the center of the world.
>> I love TomEE and it's a great aggregator and a great community.
>
> Everyone is free to have a perspective on what this project is and it's ok
> for it not to be the same. It almost never is. It ebbs and it flows and
> that is natural. As long as we're clear when we say "TomEE is..." we are
> expressing our own opinions, we're ok.
>
> People tend to think of the project in terms of when they came in. Their
> "OpenEJB is x" or "TomEE is x" seems to reflect around the time they got
> commit.
>
> I've put together a timeline of how I've experienced the project. I think
> people should dream for more. It's the best part about open source and what
> got us even this far.
>
> If you look at this timeline you see all the growth periods are people
> deciding that this is where they wanted to work and they we're the most
> flexible on what that was. Even to the point of turning an EJB container
> into a Java EE platform.
>
> ------
> 1999-2001
>
> Project is born as an EJB library. Not quite a full EJB implementation. It
> is envisioned as an EJB Container with the EJB Server part being implemented
> by a full app server. The vision was to strategically not implement the
> server part so true app servers would integrate the project as a library.
> Resources are abundant, people are everywhere.
>
> Many people on the project want to implement the server portion and make the
> project more than it is. Myself and Richard tell them no. Speaking for
> myself, I was a newbie idiot in this phase of the project.
>
> 2001-2003
>
> Funding has dropped from the project, everyone from the original community
> but Daniel, Jacek and Alan have gone. I see it now as a full EJB
> implementation and perhaps a bit more. The Tomcat integration is born so
> Tomcat can have an EJB implementation. The embedded EJB container for
> testing is heavily pushed. The full remote protocol is created. The project
> is now bigger than its original scope, but only slightly. Generally, there
> are no resources and not many people around.
>
> 2003-2006
>
> Geronimo is launched and the project is flooded with new people excited about
> Geronimo's future. OpenEJB 1.0 is abandoned for OpenEJB 2.0 which is a total
> rewrite of EJB on the Geronimo kernel and module system. Tomcat integration
> and embedded EJB concepts are trashed. I still see this as a project that
> can live on its own and be more and something I'd love to see grow in scope.
> Everyone on Geronimo, but me, sees it as a library for Geronimo only. At one
> point I pull the remote EJB code from OpenEJB 1.0 into OpenEJB 2.0 and people
> got quietly mad for bringing "legacy" code forward. The mailing list is dead
> in these years with most discussion and decisions made on the Geronimo list.
> The project is now significantly smaller than its original scope, everyone is
> telling me to stop trying to make it more. There is a lot of fighting in
> this time frame.
>
> 2006-2010
>
> Work on OpenEJB 3.0 starts and this project regains technical freedom from
> Geronimo. Dain Sundstrom leaves Geronimo in this timeframe, wants to make up
> for killing OpenEJB 1.0 and puts his weight behind OpenEJB 3.0. OpenEJB 3.0
> is based on OpenEJB 1.0 and the work towards an embeddable EJB container and
> a Tomcat integration continue where they left off. There was some
> discomfort, skepticism and grumbling in the Geronimo community but largely
> ripping out the old EJB container and putting in the new old EJB container
> was tolerated. Enjoyed, no, tolerated, yes. It was enjoyed perhaps a bit
> later. The embeddable container is a strong feature and brings new people
> into the project.
>
> The project is bigger than any of the scopes it has had previously. Codebase
> grows 5x from roughly 50k lines of code to 250k lines of code.
>
> 2010-2014
>
> At this point "OpenEJB" is just shy of a full Java EE implementation and
> desire to push it to the next level is high. The Tomcat-OpenEJB integration
> is pushed. Momentarily called Tomtom, then finally called TomEE.
> Certification happens, the first TomEE releases are made. The project is
> renamed and the website referencing OpenEJB is changed to TomEE. The project
> enjoys amazing success. Things get busy fast. Geronimo says nothing about
> TomEE competing it its space, is supportive and begins using some additional
> TomEE/OpenEJB libraries like the jaxb tree. Xbean-finder is born originally
> created in OpenEJB/TomEE and moved to Geronimo.
>
> The project is bigger than any of the scopes it has had previously and the
> charter is updated. Codebase grows 2x from roughly 250k to 520k lines of
> code.
>
> 2014-2018
>
> User base continues to grow dramatically. Codebase growth slows and lines of
> code go from roughly 520k to 580k. Many desire to see the project get back
> to its glory state and continue growing. TomEE-Geronimo relationship appears
> to be getting complicated again with perspectives being expressed that limit
> what TomEE should be and indicate Geronimo is the proper place for those
> things to live. There is a lot of fighting.
> ------
>
> Everything is temporary. We can be anything we want tomorrow. Where we are
> now feels a little bit like the 2003-2006 range. Not exactly, but similar.
> If that's the case, fantastic, because there was some really good times
> afterwards.
>
>
> -David
>
