Greetings,
I think the growth of Jakarta and other umbrella projects is a sign of
success. Having too much is a nicer problem than having too little or being
plain ignored. I am a newcomer to the ASF and do not know very much about
the Apache organization. What I know is that Apache has an excellent
reputation. However, reputation is an asset that melts faster than snow on
a hot day. When log4j joined the Jakarta umbrella many hesitant users
decided to adopt log4j as their logging library. Having log4j under Apache
basically make the following statement: "there are many logging libraries
but this one is Apache." Clearly our project benefited from this Apache
endorsement.
I dare to hope that the inverse is also true. When good projects join
Apache the reputation of the organization is strengthened. When
jakarta-log4j was announced, one user wrote that "the best projects
eventually became Apache projects." I can hardly imagine a better seal of
approval. Inviting good projects to join our umbrella should be viewed as a
win-win situation.
Coming back to the issue at hand, no one should underestimate the dangers
of overstretching. I think that by letting the project commiters make most
of the project related decisions the dangers of centralization and
overstretching are alleviated. At the same time we need more cohesion.
Guideline documents suggesting a project decision making process, a common
project directory structure, a common project web look-and-feel, and
solution to other commonly encountered problems could increase the cohesion
between the different projects. I am beginning to realize that some of
these guidelines are already there and other are being written. Hey, an
hour ago I did not even know that this jakarta-general list existed. :-)
I feel that by being part of Jakarta I am part of a larger family of
developers. As part of that family, I will use the tools produced by other
members not because I have to but because I can. What I like most about OSS
is the free exchange of ideas. Being part of the Apache community makes it
easier to share ideas and that makes it worth the effort.
Changing the scope of the Jakarta project alone will not have any tangible
effect. (Here, I am assuming that the intend is to extend the scope not
restrict it.) Defining the Jakarta scope is just one step in the right
direction. The scope is a bit like a constitution. We also need a body of
supporting guideline documents (legislation).
Before sending flames, notice that I used the word guidelines and not
rules. The last thing we need are more hard rules. Just my two centimes. Ceki
At 13:52 31.01.2001 +1100, you wrote:
Sam,
> I'll take the liberty of excerpting another statement from Roy Fielding:
>
> So, in case anyone is wondering why these "umbrella projects" aren't
> working the way we'd like, I'd say it is because they exceeded their
> mandate. I think they did so with extremely good intentions, and the
> board was kept
> somewhat informed along the way, but it certainly wasn't by design.
I guess I don't have the full context here. When Roy says, "these projects
aren't working", I have to ask to what he is referring. How and for whom are
these projects not working? Is this coming from the project committers, from
the PMC itself, from users?
In the end I guess we are going to need to understand the role of the PMC.
When the guidelines say the PMC "is responsible for setting overall project
direction", what does that really mean in practice? How does it do carry out
that role?
>
> What I am trying to do now is determine if there is, in fact a "Jakarta
> community". People working together towards common goals. It was my
> assertion that there was, but I must say that at the moment I'm a bit
> underwhelmed by the number of responses to this query.
If there is a Jakarta community, what are its common goals? If we say
something broad like Server side Java, then there are other candidate
technologies where there is little activity such as JMS, EJB, etc. When this
has come up, it has often been stated that there is no need for Jakarta to
pursue such technologies since there are other good OSS solutions for these.
That is certainly a reasonable statement but if this is true, then what is
to be Jakarta's charter?
Conor
----
Ceki Gülcü
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