Thanks Tommaso. Though, I should say, initial thanks goes to Zhifei Li. I just took it over.
I think I can stick around in the capacity Chris suggests. Thanks, all. matt > On Sep 27, 2017, at 9:20 AM, Tommaso Teofili <tommaso.teof...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > +1 to Chris's proposal. > > Let me also add my thanks to you Matt for making Joshua happen in first > place and for bringing it to the ASF and involving me and the rest of the > team in such an interesting piece of sw and to machine translation in > general. I do understand the need for you to move into the NMT stuff but at > the same time I think Joshua is a very good resource (given also the so > many language packs available) for people and / or projects that want to > start with MT having reasonably good results so I can still see its value. > > My 2 cents, > Tommaso > > > > Il giorno mar 26 set 2017 alle ore 18:57 Chris Mattmann <mattm...@apache.org> > ha scritto: > >> Thanks Matt. My feeling is that if you are willing to make you the chair >> of the project, >> which is really an administrative role if you are willing and willingness >> to submit a board >> report once monthly, and then quarterly after 3 months. This is to >> recognize your contributions >> and merit to the project, which will never expire. Even if you are not >> actively developing, I think >> you would make a great chair. >> >> Apache Joshua works, has a release, and has a good community around it of >> people like Lewis, >> Tommaso, and others that I think it would withstand even your development >> departure. It could >> also make a good academic/learning tool and could be something we could >> focus on getting new >> GSOC projects to add in the NeuralMT stuff. >> >> If you are OK with that I think we should proceed. Let me know and thanks. >> >> Cheers, >> Chris >> >> >> >> >> On 9/25/17, 11:24 PM, "Matt Post" <p...@cs.jhu.edu> wrote: >> >> Hi everyone, >> >> I think now is as good time a time as any to mention my feelings about >> Joshua. You may have noticed that I haven't done much active development >> over the past year; you likely also know that the reason is that the >> research community has shifted entirely from work on statistical models to >> work on neural machine translation. On the research side, neural models now >> consistently outperform phrase-based systems on BLEU score on language >> pairs where there is enough data (roughly, around 15 million words of >> training), and work there has injected a lot of new life into a field that >> many had felt was starting to stagnate. From a production standpoint, >> neural systems are also a big win: the models do best with a GPU and take >> some time to train, but the architecture and pipeline are simpler, and the >> resulting models are constant-sized and on the order of a few gigabytes at >> most, instead of scaling with training data into the tens of gigabytes, as >> statistical systems do. Test-time inference can also be run fairly >> efficiently on CPUs where throughput demands are low enough. All commercial >> systems are now neural or are quickly moving in that direction, including >> relatively surprising places like Systran, which until recently was known >> as the world's best-known rule-based system. As GPUs become more ubiquitous >> and cheap, this situation is only going to get better, even for the end >> user. There is little doubt that neural MT has supplanted statistical >> approaches to machine translation, across both academic research and >> industry. And it is still in its relative infancy, with lots of interesting >> research problems and engineering issues to investigate and resolve. >> >> It's somewhat sad for me because I've been working on or with Joshua >> for almost seven years, but I also find my feelings here interesting in >> contrast to a previous time I've felt tugged away from Joshua. As many of >> you know, Philipp Koehn joined JHU a few years ago, which brought some >> tension to JHU with respect to collaborating on research. There was >> pressure for me to switch. Moses had a much bigger development community >> and was much more feature rich, but despite this, I was reluctant to let go >> of Joshua, for a number of reasons. Java is nicer to work with than C++ >> (and not really that much slower); our code is better written, IMO; jar >> files are easier to distribute than C++ in compiled or source form; and, of >> course, I had much more familiarity with the codebase, not to mention >> something of a personal stake in Joshua. But with neural MT, I have none of >> these reservations. It's nice for one to have the Moses/Joshua tension >> resolved (sometimes, ignoring a problem does make it go away!), but for all >> the reasons I listed in the opening paragraph, NMT is now the clear way to >> go. And the bottom line for me is that I can no longer justify spending >> time on Joshua during my working hours, and with a young family and other >> interests that I want to pursue, I don't have time for it outside of work. >> I am happy to still linger on the project, but am unlikely to be much of an >> active participant unless I'm explicitly asked for something. >> >> As I've written before here, I think there may still some role for >> statistical systems, and therefore, for Joshua. In low-resource situations, >> StatMT may still be the right approach overall, or even simply the best way >> to quickly build up a working system. There is some promise I think in >> deploying models easily on older hardware that people have, and perhaps >> getting people to hep contribute translations and translation memories that >> could be used to build and improve systems. There are surely more good >> ideas in this space in the vein of providing a good tool to users. >> >> It's been a great experience for me working with the Apache community >> on Joshua. I am grateful to Chris for convincing us to make Joshua an >> Apache incubator project, which put a lot of new life into the project. >> Lewis has been a lot of help throughout helping smooth over the transition; >> Tommaso has repeatedly helped with tasks large and small; and that is just >> three of you. It's too bad therefore that the timing just didn't work out, >> but neural MT ascended very rapidly. I know there are other members here >> who are also thinking along these lines. At the same time, I hope my >> departure from active development doesn’t mean the end of the project for >> those of you who wish to keep working on it. >> >> Sincerely, >> matt >> >> >>> Le 25 sept. 2017 à 23:10, Tommaso Teofili <tommaso.teof...@gmail.com> >> a écrit : >>> >>> I would also think we're ready for graduation. >>> My only concern relates to how many of the current committers are >> willing >>> to keep contributing to the project, basically if we have a PMC >> which is >>> big enough for the graduation. >>> >>> Regards, >>> Tommaso >>> >>> >>> Il giorno sab 23 set 2017 alle ore 01:21 Chris Mattmann < >> mattm...@apache.org> >>> ha scritto: >>> >>>> Tom, glad you raised this issue, IMO, Joshua is ready for TLP. >>>> >>>> We’ve: >>>> >>>> 1. Added new PPMC/committers >>>> 2. Made a release >>>> 3. Been friendly and cordial and welcoming on the lists >>>> 4. Vetted the software >>>> 5. Have some decent, emerging docs >>>> >>>> Graduation time…Thoughts? >>>> >>>> Cheers, >>>> Chris >>>> >>>> P.S. Subject line change to officially turn this into a [DISCUSS] >> and >>>> hopefully >>>> a [VOTE] >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On 9/22/17, 4:19 PM, "Tom Barber" <t...@spicule.co.uk> wrote: >>>> >>>> So I've not checked against the checklist on the podling page >> yet, but >>>> what >>>> do people feel is missing from Joshua prior to graduation? >>>> >>>> I'd like to see some non mentors ship a release so we know we've >> got >>>> the >>>> docs right, but of course it doesn't have to be a major release. >>>> Similarly >>>> was all the licensing stuff resolved etc? >>>> >>>> I'm curious as its not a very fast paced project and it feels >> like ones >>>> like Joshua could sit in the incubator for years without causing >> much >>>> trouble but also not graduating. I'm not in any great rush, but >> what do >>>> people feel about it? >>>> >>>> Tom >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >> >> >> >> >>
