I am not sure that I agree with this section of
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAVEN/Project+Description+Contest*
"Note: *this does not preclude us from including a "feature comparison
matrix" page somewhere in our site... but we should recognise that such
a matrix would likely be biased by our philosophy, which most likely
negates the utility of hosting such a page on our site. Let us leave the
feature comparison matrices to those that have no axe to grind (and
spend our energy ensuring that their matrices are fair to us, just as
other solutions in this space should be doing for the representation of
their tools on such matrices)"
There may be some value is writing the comparison from a Maven point of
view.
It does give a chance to describe where there are differences and why
they are important from the POV of the "Maven way". Maven is based on
certain beliefs about the way software should be developed and built. As
most politicians can tell you, it is better to define yourself than have
someone else define you.
It is most uncertain that third parties will give the same weighting to
the value of certain practices and features that the Maven community would.
It is clear from the discussions in this forum, that it is easy to get
off to a shaky start when first trying to use Maven. A person doing a
quick evaluation of development tools could easily bring with them some
assumptions about software development processes and come up with a very
distorted view of Maven.
I think that an accurate product comparison written from the maven POV
is fair and useful for someone coming to Maven for the first time. It
will highlight things that Maven does that other systems don't do as
well and there is no reason to exclude things where Ant is better and
explain why the Maven community does not consider that a deal breaker.
Ron
--
Ron Wheeler
President
Artifact Software Inc
email: [email protected]
skype: ronaldmwheeler
phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102
