I share your concern and, actually, I have had discussions on this subject with XAP mentors and quite a few other people inside/outside of the Apache Community a few times over the last few months.
On the flip side, I am less concerned about it after talking to the various folks. I think there are good reasons to be not too concerned about it too. As we all know well, it is not easy to build a community. A community get built and established for the following factors: 1. There is a need and interest for what the Project does; 2. People get to hear about or get to know about the project as a potential solution to their needs; 3. Once people hear about the project, some of them will try to check it out - typically starting by taking a look at demos or reading some quick/short materials to see whether it is worthy of further investigation or not; 4. If it deems worthy of further investigation, they will probably get hold of the code and try to dig in; 5. As a result of digging in, they may build some sample apps...eventually, starting to find bugs and fix code... There is an obvious need and interest for XAP as I have heard such from a lot of conversations and customer needs. Declarative Ajax is validated by various proprietary software offerings (such as Microsoft Altas); However, XAP lacks some elements required to engage a community: 1. How many people have heard of XAP? Not that many. There are some and I personally know quite a few are fairly interested in digging into it - however... 2. XAP has no engaging demo or samples, nor text description, to get someone to be further his interest; 3. Getting the XAP code and start to write an app? Or even digging into the code? Hard, very hard, even for me; The above are my observations. To a large degree, they are natural for a project at this stage - which is why I said we should not be overly concerned about the situation at the moment. Going forward, I think Bob Buffone made some really good suggestions that would certainly help. In particular, I think XAP needs: 1. Some good demo or sample applications that pick an visitor's interest; 2. Some straightforward documentation to help them get started with building sample code or apps; These are things that some committers are trying to work on over the next few months. Lastly, I want to caution other Apache folks though - there is not overnight success. It will take a lot of work and probably many more months for us to see a growing community. > -----Original Message----- > From: Bob Buffone [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Saturday, November 04, 2006 4:02 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: RE: The health of XAP > > As a committer and a person who likes everything that I am committed to > doing, to be a success, I understand your concerns. > > XAP is a relatively young project even from the stand point of Apache. > The initial code for the project was only the basic foundation of what > was needed to in order for others to make use of XAP in their projects > and work. Over the last 5 months the committers have been working heads > down on making the code useful to the population at large. We are just > starting to see the work payoff and will be doing more in the way of > getting people started with the project. > > I, as you would like to see more outside (of Nexaweb) people > contributing to the project. It would be great to collaborate with > others on the project. > > Things that I think we (XAP) can do make XAP accessible and visible: > > 1.) Utilize other Apache projects in XAP and also contribute > enhancements to existing Apache project with XAP functionality. Apache > as a whole has a great number of resources and people to draw from; it > would be nice if they were involved. > 2.) We need to make sure that we can make it easy for people to start > using XAP in their projects. If others don't see XAP as beneficial to > them, they are less likely to get involved. We have seen some people > start using XAP and I have been talking about it every chance I get. > 3.) Get some 3rdparty visible applications built on the project. > Showcase it benefits. > 4.) More public communication between XAP committers via the mailing > list. > > If anyone else has suggestions, please offer them up, I look forward to > hear them. > > Bob (Buffone) > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of > Martin Cooper > Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 1:06 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: The health of XAP > > I'm growing a little concerned about the health of XAP. Certainly there > is > some level of activity, but it all appears to stem from only Nexaweb > people. > > For example, if we exclude the mentors, none of the non-Nexaweb people > from > the original proposal, who are therefore now XAP committers, have shown > any > activity at all. The only people who are active are those from Nexaweb; > all > of the commits, all of the bug reports, and almost all of the e-mail has > come from them. I could probably count on my fingers the number of other > people I've seen on the mailing list. > > Now, don't get me wrong; there's nothing wrong with the Nexaweb folks > being > involved. On the contrary, it's good to see that they're still around, > and > active and involved. My concern is that we don't seem to be growing any > community around XAP. > > It was good to see Bob Buffone give a little spiel on XAP at ApacheCon > in > Austin. I'd hoped that that might bring some folks over here to see > what's > going on. Sadly, that doesn't seem to have happened. > > So, what can we do? How can we attract more attention to XAP, and get > more > people involved? Does anyone have any suggestions? > > -- > Martin Cooper
