Really Quick Bullets for all those with questions: * Spoon was conceived during Max 2010 by 4 of us at that moment, James Ward, Simeon Bateman, Jon Rose and myself.
* It was presented to Adobe a months or so later * Over the next 11 months I had at least 3 meetings each and every month, including a dozen or more trips to California on my own dime, working to show Adobe that the community could handle Flex * In that time, there were many who wanted to just fork Flex and be done with the seemingly endless hurdles Adobe had in place for us to move this into an open development model * I personally that, for Flex to work, there must not be a rift in the community. Therefore I agreed to Adobe's ridiculously slow timelines and keeping things quiet while they worked out the legal and organization details. So, if it seems it was going slow and you weren't being updated, you can blame me; it is my fault. * As some of you noted, we managed to get Adobe agree to some things and present at 360, which was a challenge, but there were more hurdles after that. * We finally had traction and were moving forward when Adobe made a series of decisions we are now all familiar with in November * We worked with Adobe, quite literally day and night while decisions about Spoon and Apache were being tossed around in November * We threw our support, and mine personally (which includes not only community but a lot of corporate clients) behind Apache because we all believe that a unified community is the way forward * We abandoned separate pursuits when Apache became viable and instead tried to analyze the gaps between how Adobe supported Flex and what might happen in a community driven version * If it seems like we didn't have our act together, then blame me. I made the decision to wait on Adobe and frankly, it may have been the wrong one. We may have been farther along as a community had I not believed it could have all worked out. * Now we are -all- here at Apache together. We are all doing our best to make it move forward and, I promise you, there is nothing any of us are doing in secret. Our only goal is to keep the community at large, as many developers, and as many companies interested in the project as possible and to show all involved that there is a way forward. * We know many apache projects have emergent communities and we want that too. We also think that, at this critical time, someone needs to help fill the vacuum that will be created as Adobe community funding dollars disappear. We are hoping to make that vacuum less empty and keep as much of the existing eco-system together as possible. So, summary, it's my fault. The really dedicated people who have made up Spoon with many hours of their own time and their own money are looking for ways to ensure that Flex continues. We are just thinking that, code is but one of the many things Adobe used to do that now need to be done. Sorry, Mike -----Original Message----- From: Keith Sutton [mailto:ke...@spoon.as] Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 12:31 PM To: flex-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Spoon Community Call Feb 2nd 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. 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