On Thu, 31 Oct 2002 22:16, Stephen McConnell wrote: > Even today, with an order of magnitude increase in the market > recognition of the value of component oriented programming, the hot > press coming out of Avalon is the release of incompatible and divergent > containers (Phoenix and Fortress). And yet, both address different > concerns and could really incorporated in a single comprehensive > solution. Why do these two different solutions exist?
because they serve different needs. > Why is it that they have not merged already? I am sure most Avalon developers and users would love to see a unified approach. Until recently there was no real solid idea about how to do it but now that there is it is largely just a SMOP. There is (at least) three people now who are currently developing the bits (and one other guy in my company who is doing another part) to enable this. I am also working on integrating their work into a new container. Given recent activity it will take a lot longer to materialize than originally planned but it will get there and Avalon will be better for it. > Merlin 2 manages to bridge both abstractions. What's wrong with this > story? The problem is the continuation, no! escalation of "playground > principals" - principals that fly in the face of the needs and interests > of our end-user. Irony. > Avalon is in my opinion the most important project in Apache. But I > believe that Avalon is only as strong as its community. For the > community to work together it must abandon playground policies and > really engage in addressing the difficult issue of bringing all of this > work together. If the Avalon community cannot do this the Avalon the > Community has nothing to offer. It is the way Avalon has worked since before I was a part of it. Personally I have found value in the community and usually am happy and proud to be associated with it. As far as I am aware, Cocoon does not regret their usage of Avalon so I assume they have found value in Avalon. Other people/projects have said much the same thing. Personally I think Avalon has a lot to offer and it is only going to get better in time. With the metadata + interceptor + tools work that is currently underway I think we will have a significant advance for Avalon - when thats done the sky is the limit. > This community *must* be totally committed to its core and its own > integrity. Any suggestion of the departmentalizing/separation of voting > and commit privileges is simply reinforcing a cancer that will only lead > to further fragmentation of interests. Apaches governance system is loosly based on meritocracy. People earn the privlidge to make decisions on codebases by putting in work to that codebase. Interests are already fragmented and people work on what they want, when they want. There is no *must* in opensource. Some projects manage to achieve a global momentum but that can only occur when there is consensus and direction. It may be possible to achieve this in Avalon but it would be a lot of work - it was what was attempted to be done with ContainerKit until it's continuing development went off list. > Avalon will only evolve if its > community evolves. That means that every single member of this community > must be given the real and tangible potential to contribute his or her > best in every aspect of Avalon's evolution. Less talk, more action. Communitys are based on trust and respect. People work together because they seem some need or value in doing so. Part of this is that people must be allowed an unffetted ability to experiment with different approaches and not fear retribution. For example, I have serious reservations about design decisions in ECM/Fortress and Merlin1/2. I have pointed out these problems time but I have never ever tried to block a change in any of these containers - regardless of how stupid I thought it was. People are always given the opportunity to make an impact. Their impact is proportional to the amount of work and effort they are willing to put in for the good of the whole project. More importantly it is about the ability to work with other people to come to a solution. > From this perspective I'm very strongly in support of Avalon "the > community" taking up the challenge and leveraging the opportunities for > real evolution offered by escalation to a top-level project. When we are ready we will do it. Scope and purpose are so ill defined at the moment that there is no value in going to the top level (we would just be another container project). When we have migrated logkit + most of excalibur + apps away (and possibly all their services ala cornerstone). Then we can tighten our scope and move forward. It is just going to take time. A willingness to move forward and help will get it done faster. -- Cheers, Peter Donald *------------------------------------------------------* | "Common sense is the collection of prejudices | | acquired by age 18. " -Albert Einstein | *------------------------------------------------------* -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:avalon-dev-unsubscribe@;jakarta.apache.org> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:avalon-dev-help@;jakarta.apache.org>
