Hi Dick,
I share some of your concerns, but I worry less about the outcome. I am
concerned that Vassil is the only one committing right now (and
naturally, I am a bit guilty on that score), but David has made it clear
that he can contribute nothing right now, and I have only the occasional
Sunday to spare. In an open-source project like this, such ebb and flow
is entirely natural, but is accentuated in a team like ours where there
are so few developers. Of course, that is one of our reasons for coming
to Apache - to gain greater visibility and grow the team. But, let's not
forget that we have only been here for a few short months.
I agree largely with Vassil on this one - I think we will see growth
over the year. The decision to use Scala and Lift as the basis for ESME
was always a long term one - this will be the winning architecture, I am
sure. But, we are in the very early days of Scala, Lift, ESME and
microblogging. We should look to our roots in the SAP world here: SAP is
rarely first to market in any given sector, and its first release often
lags behind the competition. However, by the third major release of any
of its software, SAP is usually a market leader. I think we will follow
that pattern.
I think the current problem may be more of a commercial one for Pearl
and Siemens SIS, in that there are commercial interests at stake. It may
be worth examining the strategies at play here, though. From a
development point of view, commercial involvement in open source works
best when the OSS product is "almost there" and the commercial entity is
willing to fund the development to close the gap. I'm not sure that's
the case with ESME - I think that Siemens SIS and Pearl are perhaps
looking at where they wish ESME would be, and looking to fund the gap
from that point. This is a risky strategy, precisely because you cannot
depend on the pace of voluntary development resources.
I think that this year will be slow, but will pick up a lot of momentum
over the summer. We have the conference season coming up, which will
raise awareness. I am sure that David will be mentioning ESME during his
various presentations, and there are bound to be people with extra time
over the summer who will be looking to learn Scala and Lift, and there
is no better way to do that than with involvement in an active project.
We represent a compelling proposition for those developers: we are an
Apache-based project, and the principal behind Lift is on board - what
better place to learn the ropes?
So, right now and for the next few months, things will be slow. This
needs to be factored into any commercial plans. Later in the year, I am
sure things will pick up. In the meantime, let's not worry too much
about our "competition" - I use quotation marks, because I think we are
offering something different to, and much richer than, those we view as
competition.
Cheers,
Darren
