Will Glass-Husain wrote:
Ah, hi Jonathan how are you?
Fine, thanks.
I think we discussed this issue extensively last time Jonathan was on thelast a couple of years ago.
<shrug> Update me. Did anything happen since then?
Perhaps I might suggest the rest of the Velocity community just refuse to be baited and stick to the topic at hand? (basically, ignore the temptation to have the last word). As I remember, the topic was how new community members can help out.
Well, you should also help them (which would help them to help you) by telling the truth, fostering a culture of brutal honesty. You people simply have no right to mislead people like this. Somebody reading archives of this list, trying to make a technically based decision about whether to use Velocity or an alternative, or whether to try to get involved, say, has the right to know what the actual status of the project is -- and the other things he's comparing it with.
People should not be telling lies about this kind of thing. When Henning claimed, in the message I responded to, that the project never was/is dead, and that the lack of activity was due to the developers' pickiness, he was not telling the truth by any stretch of the imagination.
And if that is not a serious matter, it darned well should be. Also, you have some complicity in it, frankly, because you know darned well that his post was not truthful. You want to change the subject to JR when the subject is really that Henning's post was not truthful. This does not really speak well of you.
That sounds very very harsh, I suppose, Will, but, in a way, I sympathize with you. You sincerely want to re-activate the project. What you don't realize is that if you want to have high quality development occur, you have to foment a culture of brutal honesty. You want to re-activate development, but in some "nice" way where you spend an inordinate time being a kind of mutual admiration club, stroking one another's egos. The cold hard reality IMO is that the two things are mutually incompatible and your attempts to re-activate the project on that basis will lead you to nothing but misery and frustration. (You do have a high threshold for misery and frustration, I suppose. I observed that while they jerked you around on the decimal number issue for 2 years or more.)
In any case, I really feel that it is unethical to be trying to mislead people about the state of the project. The guy who mentioned that the project was "dead" and got contradicted spent several months presumably getting a Velocity-based prototype working. Now, he hit a bug and discovers that the project is not really being actively maintained. Now, I can only speculate, but if he knew from the get-go that the project was not being actively maintained, he might not have made that investment. Misleading people about the state of the various software projects can cause people to waste a lot of their valuable professional time.
Henning has no right to be trying to mislead people about the actual state of the project. That's unethical and unprofessional.
Jonathan Revusky -- lead developer, FreeMarker project http://freemarker.org Velocity-FreeMarker comparison page: http://freemarker.org/fmVsVel.html
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jonathan Revusky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2005 2:56 PM Subject: Re: wanting to join the teamHenning P. Schmiedehausen wrote:"Llewellyn Falco" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes::-) this bug has been in the tracker for months.Can you give me a Bugzilla ID?you will gain 2 new programmers to help breathe some life back into thisproject.Velocity never was/is dead.Henning,I am reluctant to use the inflammatory L-word, but when you claim that the project never was/is dead, I cannot interpret this generously. AFAICT, youare knowingly stating a falsehood. Given my role in the FreeMarker project, I keep an eye on this list off and on, to see what our main competitor in this space is up to. And, the answer is quite clearly is that it is going nowhere and that has been the case for at least 3 years. Tell me, what was the last significant feature added to Velocity and when was it added? To me, it's really odd that you'd claim otherwise. Surely everybody subscribed to this list is familiar with that state of affairs. And, you know, the guy you're responding to has looked for himself at your bugtracker and anybody can see the neglected, pitiful state that this projectis in. I mean, it's literally like you're attempting a bluff in a poker game when the guy has already seen your cards and knows you have nothing.The current committers are just picky on what should go in the tree, mainly because the strongest asset of Velocity is stability.<sigh> Well, c'mon, that the thing's greatest asset is stability is a tacitadmission that nothing is happening. That's the great asset you can alwayspoint to when nobody does anything: stability. Rather overrated really. After all, if anybody wants stability, all they have to do is never upgrade when a new version comes out. Anyway, you're fibbing again. The statement "The current committers arepicky..." can only mean they actually review the patches and contributionsand so on and reject all but the best. That is clearly not the case. Basically, bug reports and contributed patches are simply being ignored.That is because nobody (except Will, I guess) is really actively involved,i.e. the project is not being actively developed and maintained -- i.e. it's basically dead. Jonathan Revusky -- lead developer, FreeMarker project http://freemarker.org Velocity-FreeMarker comparison page: http://freemarker.org/fmVsVel.htmlRegards Henning--------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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