What a breath of fresh air. THANK YOU, Niall. I hoped that if we stuck to our guns someone would come forward and begin a real discussion. I don't have time to consider your points in detail now but will later. Again, this is a positive thing. A beginning.
On 3/29/06, Niall Pemberton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Jonathan Revusky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Saturday, March 25, 2006 11:27 PM > > > It still seems broadly on-topic to me. It's certainly a legitimate, > > well-formulated question. > > > > Seriously, the only other possibility I see is struts-dev. If it's > > off-topic on both struts-user and struts-dev, then the question really > > is (as I am starting to suppose) basically taboo. > > > The question isn't taboo - I posed the same kind of thing (and offered one > perspective) in an earlier thread: > > http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.jakarta.struts.user/122903 > > However I don't think what I said in that thread was the whole story - > clearly frameworks such as WebWork succeeded and I assume they were a > volunteer effort as well. > > We currently have 22 committers on Struts - but levels of activity vary > widely and I would say that the type of talented people it takes to drive > a > project forward (and I don't include myself in that group) no longer have > an > interest in doing so on the Action 1 side - for various reasons. People > such > as Craig put their effort into developing the JSF standard and see that as > the future for web development and that is where they now concentrate > their > effort. Don was doing alot of work inovating with Struts Ti and had the > offer to merge not come along from WebWork - we would probably be seeing > the > fruits of his efforts as Action2 and not even discussing "stagnation" at > this point. Ted was AWOL doing C# for a while (hes been "back" for a while > which is good :-), Martin seems focused on javascript etc. etc. So I guess > this leads to the next question "Well why didn't we attract new talented > people into the project that would drive Struts forward?" This I don't > know - seems that lots of people decided to go invent their own web > framework (YAWF) rather than get involved with Struts. Some of that is > certainly their own egos being the "founder of a framework" and some of it > I > believe is the compatibility issue - its far easier to write a brand new > shiny web framework when not hampered by backwards compatibility. Whether > we > as a community "put them off" I have no knowledge - but I've never seem > that > proferred anywhere as a reason. It was always something like "Struts sucks > because of x, y and z and my brand new shiny framework does it better". > Course its far easier to invent a new framework by looking at existing > ones > and seeing how you can improve them. Back to the "new people" question > though - its not my perspective that we have lots of people knocking at > the > door trying to give us contributions and we're turning them away. I > believe > its easy to become a Struts committer - you offer reasonable code, are > helpful in the community (e.g. answering questions on the user list), been > around a while and don't start flame wars or attack people personally - > then > you get asked. Theres probably 2/3 people who probably think they should > have been asked, but haven't - they may or may no have a point - but > besides > them I don't see it as a case of Struts excluding people and I don't have > an > explanation for why there are not hoards of people wanting to join. > > Another answer to the question is "it hasn't stagnated - we've moved on to > Shale" and that is the future for existing Struts users. Clearly there are > quite a few people that will disagree with this - but also alot that will > say "great I buy JSF as the future and I'm glad the Struts project has an > offering that supports this". > > At the end of the day though this does seem academic - since we now have > two > offering for whatever camp you fall into (component orientated or action > orientated) and from my point of view the really good thing about the > WebWork merger is not only the great software were getting - but also the > talented new blood thats coming into the project. > > So I've given my answer to the question - now can we let this list get > back > to helping and answering user questions - which is its main purpose? > > Niall > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > -- "You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it float on its back." ~Dakota Jack~
