On 1/18/2012 9:05 AM, Greg Reddin wrote:
On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 10:55 AM, Doug McCune<d...@dougmccune.com> wrote:
Unless I'm mis-remembering the talks from the Flex Summit (which may very
well be the case), I thought Apache would only accept donations to Apache
as a whole and not to specific projects? So for example, if I wanted to
give a bunch of cash that would fund the creation of Flex t-shirts, or that
would pay stipends to speakers at a Flex-only conference, can Apache play a
role in that? Pretty sure this exact question was brought up around Apache
sponsorships and the answer was that giving money to Apache meant giving
money to Apache (and not to help any specific project).
I think it's true that Apache does not accept targeted donations.
That's where an org like Spoon could help - targeting material and
monetary contributions related to the Flex project. Of course, since
it's a separate org we will have to work out the details about use of
the marks, etc. It's not something I want to get into right now
because I don't know enough to have a coherent discussion about it :-)
Greg
I think the circumstances and lack of visibility of Spoon over the past
year can be interpreted in a negative way but from personal involvement
(one of Adobe's Flex ecosystem coordinators) as a facilitator of the
relationship between Adobe and Spoon in that period I can say a LOT was
happening to get things rolling. Unfortunately, as things were getting
rolling Adobe's strategic direction changed and took everyone by
surprise. During that tense period many of the leaders of Spoon spent
days and nights lobbying behind closed doors for things that, as a
result, have come to pass. If it had not been for their efforts we may
not have ever had this conversation.
I would encourage people to look at Hadoop, Cloudera, ... this is an
open source project that took years to build from an idea in to an
industry. Apache Flex has the luxury and challenge of being created as a
significant open source codebase in the middle of a mature and thriving
community, customer-base and industry. What Apache Flex doesn't have is
the luxury of time as interest and perception of Flash/Flex is not good
and faith/trust needs to be restored quickly or Flex may forever be
relegated to the status of a hobby project that people and enterprise
customers gradually walk away from.
An organization like Spoon can be many things for the community:
- represent the collective community - developers and invested customers
- community coordinator
- ecosystem coordinator (there are a ton of existing libraries, tools
and services for Flex that may disappear)
- enterprise credibility - enterprises adopt open source where it is
supported by commercially viable entities
- business facilitator - have a look at successful open source project -
they all have commercial off-shoots
- mid-to-long term roadmap investor - where Apache Flex can facilitate
the party here and now, Spoon can be the custodian and coordinator of a
longer term roadmap, investment strategy, and coordinator of donations
into efforts that contribute to Apache Flex and related projects
Their intent has always been to be open, and now is the time, for
everyone to get involved and get on with build the organization,
processes and people needed to keep all this going in the right direction.
