Sending somethign to SD Magazine pronto seems a no-brainer as we have a chance of getting them to change it before they goto print with their June issue, though I may be being stupid there, June's issue might be hitting the stands next week for all I know.
I'll work on sending something to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (as listed on the pdf) asap. As it's obviously a mistake on their part, I'll take a very informal, though official, approach in the email.
I'm going to leave the JBoss parts of the issue to further discussion.
Hen
On Sat, 19 Mar 2005, Jim Jagielski wrote:
I've thought about this for a long time, and this is where I stand.
As many people know, this has been a somewhat recurring issue, with JBoss blurring and obscuring the facts regarding Apache Tomcat, in such a way that it appears that they, JBoss, control and direct the development of Tomcat. Now the first handfull of times you could caulk it up to over-eager PR, etc, but the fact is that they have been sluggish in doing anything to clearly define what is reality... Tomcat is a JBoss Project? I think not. Yet, that is still what is prominently displayed. After too many times of this happening, and very, very limited response to our requests, one's normal reaction is to associate it with malicious intent. In other words, after awhile, one tends to feel that they are doing it on purpose. That may not be the case, but human nature being the way it is, people do get suspicious :)
It's gotten to the point where there is real confusion among the general population, and even within some segments of the developer community, over whether Tomcat is an ASF project or a JBoss project.
When it's strong enough to result in such misstatements such as this article headline, then the ASF needs to be rigorous in its protection of its brand and product. Same as if, for some reason, Sun were to start shipping Sun JEMS, we would reasonably expect JBoss to ask and demand Sun stop doing that.
JBoss does hire a lot of developers, Tomcat and otherwise, and they should be warmly and honestly honored for doing that. Same as other companies such as Google, IBM, Covalent, Gluecode, etc should be. But the simple fact is that JBoss, as an entity, is not a contributor, leading or otherwise. All code committed is from the individual contributor, whether they are employed by JBoss or whoever. The fact that JBoss, or whoever, pays someone's salary and they contribute code to an ASF project, does NOT make the salary-payer a contributor, not in the normal definition. Contributions are from the individual, and they state that the code that they contribute is theirs to contribute.
This is not to diminish in any way the real, valued fact that paying someone's salary allows them to develop more code. But it does not make that corporation a contributor. At the very least, a step in the right general direction would be a Corporate CLA. But again, the ASF recognizes contributions (code) from individuals, and code donations from corporations. So JBoss, as an entity, is not a contributor.
And it goes without saying that the concept of "leading contributor" again flies against the grain of what the ASF is all about. When such basic tenets of the ASF and "the Apache way" are either willfully disregarded, or ignored out of ignorance, it makes one question how much a person or entity really understands and supports the ASF. Any entity that would describe itself as a leading contributor to an ASF project, really doesn't deserve the title since it displays a supreme lack of knowledge of how the ASF works. The adjectives such as "leading" or "core" or "main" when associated with the noun "developer" is never allowed in ASF project.
Finally, there is the question of how this might damage the community. ASF projects are not one-man (or one-entity) shows; They are not opportunities for people or entities to jump up on a soapbox and grab the spotlight. Doing so causes extreme harm to the development community, again, something which anyone who claims to understand the ASF should know.
No, JBoss is not unique with respect to any of these issues; we've all had things miss-quoted, or over-eager marketing people trying to "cash in" on our association and involvement with the ASF. But it is our job to do what we can to keep the story and the record straight. IMO, the Software Developer "Jolt" award information should be changed to remove the "leading contributor JBoss" tagline. Furthermore, it would be interesting to see if CMP ever bothered to contact the ASF regarding the award, for our feedback or comment, and how they determined the "leading contributor" assessment.
PS: Much has been said about how we continue to refer to Tomcat as Tomcat, and not Apache Tomcat all the time. People point to our website and say, "You do it, why can't we?" Well, one reason why is because Tomcat is ours, we are referring to it on our website so if people associate Tomcat with the ASF, then that's fine. However, when it is used to confuse or dilute the fact that Tomcat is an ASF project, then it becomes an issue. I think it is clear that someone viewing the JBoss site would come away with the clear impression that Tomcat is developed by JBoss and is a JBoss project, not an ASF one. When that happens, it becomes our responsibility to remove that confusion and request (or demand, as the case may be) that Tomcat be referred to as Apache Tomcat.
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