Ted Husted wrote:
On 3/24/06, Larry Meadors <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
That is not really an accurate parallel...no one is saying that the
apache web server and the apache organization are the same thing...but
I guess struts-shale and struts-action aren't either...so why are they
the same project again? Is it just a branding thing?
It's a people thing, Larry. It's really the same reason most of us
came here in the first place. We came here because we believe that we
can build a better framework working together than we can working
apart. Likewise, we believe that we can build both a better Shale and
a better Action by working together, than we could working apart. If
you tune into the dev@ list, you can see this already happening.
I think the crux of the problem is that users perceive Struts as a
codebase, a product, some kind of car that we built. The committers
perceive Struts as a community of developers.
Well, the body of work that will be Struts Action 2 shortly was not
developed here. Webwork was developed under the OpenSymphony umbrella.
There was a de facto competition going on to produce the better
framework and they won that competition.
The fact remains that you and your colleagues failed to keep Struts
development going and it became uncompetitive in its space. Have you
guys really taken stock of why that occurred? What I have observed is
that whenever anybody questions your project management practices, you
simply point them to a page that outlines the project management
practices. FYI, this is commonly known as the "beg the question" fallacy.
In the commercial world, pointy-haired bosses try very hard to take
individual developers out of the equation. Bosses want developers to
be plug and play, like network cards. In the ASF world, we value
people more than we value the code. Code is just a snapshot of the
work our people do. The code may be golden eggs, but our focus is on
the geese.
In this case, I have no idea what you're talking about. The above
paragraph seems like meaningless gobbledy-gook to me.
If you value people as you say, how is it that I perceive such a culture
of arrogance and contempt here? Somebody offers an opinion about your
website's front page (me in this case, but it could be someone else) and
is told to put up or shut up.
Craig McClanahan wrote a post that shocked me. He simply said: This is
how it is. If you can't deal with it, go away.
Is that the discourse of somebody who values other people?
You get other people arguing vociferously that committers on an ASF
project have no obligation to listen to people. This is not a claim made
by one lone nutcase. Various people have made this extraordinary claim.
So I get absolutely no sense that you value people here. You hold
yourselves in high esteem, I guess, but there is just no sense that
there is a culture here of respecting people and valuing them. My
opinion is that this, more than any narrow technical issue, is what has
led to the technical stagnation of Struts 1.x.
So when people talk about sending some of us packing, it tears my
heart. These people are my friends. I like working with my friends.
Ted, this strikes me as a red herring issue. If you and other people who
like working together want to collaborate on something, there is no
obstacle to that. Actually, there's this great site called sourceforge
where you can start a project and have all the necessary infrastructure
to collaborate effectively: mailing lists, forums, bug tracker, code
repository....
Isn't the problem that, if you do that, you have to simply compete on an
even footing with other open source projects out there? You don't have
any of these placement/visibility advantages. Your work would just stand
or fall on its own technical merit.
Let's strip away the pretension for a sec. If you went and started a
project on sourceforge, all these people who love working with you so
much, would they follow you there and work with you? Maybe, just maybe,
they don't like working with you that much and they are actually here
because they know that what work they do here will get an in ordinate
amount of attention and publicity. Once they don't have that (say on a
sourceforge project you go start) then they aren't all that interested
in working with you any more.
It's a bit like a rich guy who has all these friends. See how many
friends he has when he loses his money. :-)
> It's one of the reasons I volunteer. And, I know if we stick together,
> we will find more and more places where we can share work, and make
> life easier for all the developers that use our products (including
> ourselves).
We already see sharing and reuse happening with Tiles, Commons Chain,
and Spring. Now we are seeting it happen with XWork. I think that
before we are done, we may be able to take virtually the same Action
and use it in Shale or in Action 2.
Well, that sounds good, but if Shale were a separate project, it could
use the Action classes that you define in this project. Lots of projects
have external dependencies all the time.
In general, open source projects can leverage one another's code without
sharing mailing lists, code repositories or brand name. Webwork (and
hence Struts Action 2) make extensive use of FreeMarker, which is
largely (but not exclusively) my work at this point. Webwork and
FreeMarker are separate projects.
Well, in short, none of what you have said in this message I am replying
to rings true to me.
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
People who think like PHBs want everything to be about brand and
product differentiation. But, that's not what we are trying to do
here. We are trying to level the playing field for the developer. Not
for the product managers, or for the larger entities. But for our own
selves.
-Ted.
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