> Besides developers and their own itches, there is another group whose
> interests ought to be considered - USERS of Tomcat. If you don't have
> any, then it becomes a much less interesting project to work on. And
> we've done a pretty good job at confusing people about what the Tomcat
> road map is. If the user community were to abandon Tomcat, it wouldn't
> matter much what we do on the development side.
Why are USERS that different from developers in this case?
This is Open Source. The developers are USERS trying to scratch their
own itches.
For each USER that becomes a developer to scratch his own itch there are
several other USERS with the same itches just waiting for the scratching
solution to be ready. (*)
One thing I had to learn while starting to use Open Source software (and
that was recently - during 2000) was:
1) There is usually no fancy wrapped product with manual and you really
have to get involved, subscribe the mailing lists and dive into the
source code to understand some of the stuff you use;
2) You still have (much) faster answers for your problems, even having
the option of participating in their solution.
Whomever is aware of 2) is motivated to do 1).
Whomever does 1) here, understands the 4.x versus 3.3 pros and cons and
is able to make the best choice for his own case.
Corporations need to have a black on white clear statement, hiding or
killing/loosing the advantages of Open Source's 'Software Darwinism'
(which seems to me to have a good profits/cost balance). But this is
not Sun's Tomcat Project, it is Apache's Jakarta Tomcat Project.
The others will always be the (prey) customers of the more traditional
commercial software or are better paying loads of money to have some
consultant thinking for them. (And the consultant might still be an
Open Source adept.)
> There isn't any compelling benefit (to the user community) to have two
> active development branches, once the "next generation" branch
> matures. The 4.0 container code is pretty stable (letting us focus now on
> performance improvements and feature adds).
You seem to imply that 4.0 is the final solution for everybody. But it
sure is not for me and for many others. (Keep in mind that I do NOT
think that 3.3 is the final solution for everybody either.)
I am new here, but didn't Catalina start a bit against the flow?
> performance improvements and feature adds). We could have had mod_jk
> ported a long time ago if someone wanted to work on it then (as they are
> apparently willing to now).
Hey! Wasn't Tomcat 4.x betting on mod_webapp???
You should be happy that a few 3.x USERS/Developers kept working on
mod_jk.
Craig, I admire your work a lot. But I find it hard to understand why
such a brilliant person chooses a confrontational tone at the moment
he is collecting such benefits from cooperation.
Remember: most 3.3 people were not that motivated to work on Catalina,
and because they worked (and keep working) on stuff for 3.3 that has
common usefulness, 4.x now can benefit form it.
If it was not for 3.3, maybe they were working on something else. Are
you sure they would be converted to 4.x?
And many USERS (like me) could be now investing on some other tool.
Staying around because of 3.3, maybe they can be converted to 4.x
AFTER 4.x proves its value.
Have fun,
Paulo Gaspar
(*) - Most of them much more silent and even less participative than
myself. =;o)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Craig R. McClanahan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, May 07, 2001 6:37 PM
>
> ...
>
> Besides developers and their own itches, there is another group whose
> interests ought to be considered - USERS of Tomcat. If you don't have
> any, then it becomes a much less interesting project to work on. And
> we've done a pretty good job at confusing people about what the Tomcat
> road map is. If the user community were to abandon Tomcat, it wouldn't
> matter much what we do on the development side.
>
> There isn't any compelling benefit (to the user community) to have two
> active development branches, once the "next generation" branch
> matures. The 4.0 container code is pretty stable (letting us focus now on
> performance improvements and feature adds). We could have had mod_jk
> ported a long time ago if someone wanted to work on it then (as they are
> apparently willing to now).
>
> > >In due time, the usual survival rules will tend to favor the
> > >solution that proves to be the best and everybody will work together
> > >again... until the next revolution.
> >
> > A sort of 'Software Darwinism' and species adaptability.
> >
> >
>
> Craig
>
>
