@Christian: >Playing the devils advocate I ask you (again): Is this still Devil's advocate though? I have had a very similar email sitting in my drafts for the last month asking the same questions about the future of Wave.
>Do you folks believe the incubator can ever be completed as it is now? >If you believe yes, please let me know why or how we can achieve that goal. >Otherwise my recommendation is to move Wave to GitHub and close the incubation >until the community around Wave has grown. I shall answer your questions throughout this email, though it probably suffices to say that I no longer think Apache Incubator is the right place for Wave (in its current form). (With retirement: what happens to the project's source code license? Does it become public domain instead of licensed to the ASF?) @FrankR: >You already have it - wave on github. Here, https://github.com/apache/wave Yes, the code is on GitHub. (Though this is simply a one-mirror of the Apache SVN tree). [Though, if we retire the project that will no longer exist - I suggest watching one of the personal trees (e.g. mine) https://github.com/alown/wave]. When people are calling for GitHub, they are actually asking for the development style that it uses: Git, Pull Requests, Quick-forking, Less 'paperwork'. [And to some extent the 'coolness' factor - which is not to be underestimated for getting development support]. @Fleeky: >lets finally have discussion for development happen on a public wave ;) I agree that the dogfooding should really have been a thing, but it hasn't been possible here. (Though I hestitate to say whether Wave is stable enough for multiple users heavily editing a Wave - my anecdotal data says it tends to 'get stuck' around the 100 blips mark). @Thomas: > Speaking as someone unable to contribute code to the client as its too > heavily tide into the server (which I cant make heads not tails of), This is a major contention point. It is definitely too tied together, but because of this, it is very difficult to separate it now... (But this is something that must be done). @Thomas/FrankR: >how will any move effect things? how will it help? wont it just be rearranging > things again that have little, if anything, to do with getting anything > actually done? It would indeed seem mostly arbitrary with regards to the tooling. The ethic however is quite different for GH projects, compared to Apache projects. (And I would argue it is this, that is part of the reason we struggle to maintain active developers here). The other problem, is that at ~500,000 LOC of Java, it is not easy for new people to get involved. (@Ewan: This ties in to your point, but it would take more than a few weeks to get someone familiar with this codebase [I have been focused almost exclusively on the server code for the last ~3 years, but I still couldn't tell you exactly how it all fits together - which is why the corruption issues are still outstanding]). > I am still massively enthusiastic about WFP as a communication method, and > making a good reference client and server is the way to push it. This I agree with, but it also tells us what our actual aim should be: A clearly separated library for using WFP to create things - of which the client/server are examples... Ultimately, from my point of view, a move to GitHub would provide us with several things: - Full Git integration (The Apache system is still very awkward to use and git-svn still chokes on things occasionally). - The GitHub 'ethic' - hard to explain - The opportunity to change the working style. I feel that the 'meritocracy' approach only works well for clearly established projects. Wave has too many options - and it is this that is dividing the effort going in to it. Making decisions here is proving incredibly difficult, getting votes for releases is very difficult, etc. As such, I would push for a much clearer philosophy of the 'new project'. Sorry about the long email. :) Comments? Ali
