Hi Rich,
As an ODE committer I would love to collaborate and modernize the existing ODE project. I received several direct emails from ODE users who are also interested in working on a new incarnation. Over the past few weeks I have been prototyping Ignite configurations and tasks for use in a business process management platform and I am pleased with my progress. I am fully dedicated to using this platform in a couple of internal applications I will be working on over the next year and I would eagerly like to synergize with others through the Apache Way. My current goal is to build functionality that satisfies many of the features I previously outlined so that myself and others could have something extensible to work from. As I mentioned in my previous communication process automation is big business and augmenting the mature and feature rich Ignite platform could provide a convenient low cost alternative to the other proprietary solutions in the space. With all that said it is entirely understandable that the current ODE PMC members desire to retire the ODE project to the attic and move on. I believe several of the members were part of the original ODE software contribution and incubator process 14+ years ago. Over the last few years interest in BPEL has diminished and they probably have no personal or financial incentives to remain involved with the project even if it were to be revived. If anyone else is interested in rebooting the ODE project now is the time to speak up. In any event I plan to continue to share my work on my github repo. Regards, Aaron ------------------------------------------- On Wed, 1/16/19, Rich Bowen <[email protected]> wrote: Subject: ODE, ODE 2.0, the Attic and the Incubator To: [email protected] Date: Wednesday, January 16, 2019, 3:00 PM (Oops. I mailed this to users@ rather than user@. Sorry for the crosspost, but I wanted to be sure as wide an audience as possible sees this.) Hi, ODE folks, Please forgive this intrusion by an outsider. I am aware that I lack both the history of your project, and the technical understanding of your software. However, I represent the Board of Directors, and we wanted to discuss something with you before you take your project to the Attic. In today's Board meeting, we discussed your desire to move to the Attic, while at the same time taking a new project, with the same name, and the same mission, albeit with different architecture, to the Incubator. We agreed to postpone your Attic proposal another month, in the hopes of ensuring that you're aware of all the options that are available to you. There is considerable precedent, at Apache, for projects completely reboot their code, while retaining the existing project name and community. The Apache HTTP server did this very early on. Axis also did this many years ago. The advantages of this approach are numerous: * You retain your brand equity (ie, the value that you've already established in your name) * You tell the user community that you're still solving the same problem, although you're solving it differently * You save the hassle of going through the Incubator for code that will be developed "in house" * You save the hassle of having to Attic your project * You eliminate a huge amount of user confusion. "That project is dead." "No, it's not, look over here." "Wait, two projects with the same name? Which one should I be using?" and so on. While the Board is not going to dictate which route you should take here, we strongly encourage you to use your existing structure - website, mailing lists, revision control, etc - to bootstrap the new proposal discussed at https://s.apache.org/rSlq Leverage the existing expertise in your existing community. Build the new thing, and deprecate the old thing, while being completely transparent to your users that the new thing is a completely new thing, and isn't trying to be a drop-in replacement. We believe that doing the community/project "reboot" in place, rather than going via the Attic and Incubator, is to the benefit of everyone - you, your user community, the attic, the incubator, Infrastructure, and the Apache marketing team. And there are lots of people on the board, the members list, and the Community Development team, who would be glad to offer advice, assistance, and whatever support you need to make this happen. What do you think? --Rich, for the Board of Directors.
