IMHO, its over and set in stone. I would have liked that we examined
what the community wanted and tallied the vote based on our user base,
but unfortunately this is not my decision.
Vote count:
Jetty Tomcat
------- --------
Geronimo Committers 12 4
Users 6 11
------- --------
18 15
I may choose to disagree at the level of activity of Tomcat vs Jetty in
Geronimo over the last year, and could very well be proven wrong by
empirical evidence...but yes my nose has been knee deep in Tomcat, so
its likely my views may be jaded.
There is no doubt that someone's feelings are going to get hurt, whether
it's Greg's or mine, as we both stepped up and delivered our products
and got them certified. But at the end of the day...what counts is we
offer both and that is most important.
Jeff
Matt Hogstrom wrote:
My Magic G-Ball comment aside I'll throw my 2c into the debate. First,
the decision we make today is not binding for all time. Also, I
appreciate Joe's comment about simplicity but the reality is J2EE has a
steep learning curve and as much as I would like to see Joe's mom
download the server and get cracking I doubt she has much use for a J2EE
server to post recipes or pictures of her grandchildren on the web. PHP
or Ruby would be easier I think :)
I appreciate that Tomcat is an Apache Foundation project and we want to
taker that into consideration. Since my involvement in the project
though I think the Jetty team has been more actively involved in
Geronimo in terms of responding to questions and making changes. Jeff
has been doing a great job at making sure Tomcat is a first class
citizen as well. I may be wrong but the Jetty community seems to be
more active in G.
That said, I suggest we put some text in the installer that gives some
context to why a customer would want to choose one over the other.
Indicate that Geronimo works equally well with either WebContainer and
that what we are providing is a choice for them to meet their specific
needs. I would prefer to have a default checked and lean toward Jetty.
Regardless of which one is chosen I think the Installer should have some
text to guide the user to making a decision and we should be clear about
the Openness of Geronimo in allowing choice, providing information to
make a decision and provide a default so Joe's mom can get cracking.
Matt
Panagiotis Astithas wrote:
Jeff Genender wrote:
Joe Bohn wrote:
I agree with Aaron with regard to usability. Users don't want to
have to make any decisions on the first install (especially when
they first pick it up for evaluation). My mom doesn't install
anything on her computer unless she can click, click, click and get
it working. I know our users are more sophisticated than her ...
but we want to make it as easy as possibly to get something working
quickly. We want to make this easy enough for my mom to install
(even though she never will). :-)
So you think your average Geronimo user will have no idea what a web
container is?
I think this is the root of your miscommunication/disagreement: the
decision to choose a web container has to stem not only from an
understanding of what a web container is, but also from an evaluation
of the relative merits of both. That is, Joe User may know from
Servlets 101 what a web container provides, but he may not be aware of
what this choice entails. Of course such worries could be mitigated by
a blurb in this particular installer page that mentions that both are
OK, etc.
In the end, I think that not having a default choice (whatever that
may be) is a rather loud acknowledgment of a fear to have the debate
and make a choice :-)
Cheers,
Panagiotis
