Draft is below. Please provide feedback, and sorry for paraphrasing people, and feel free to correct it if you are not comfortable with those quotes.
Sally will only comment/correct grammar and inaccuracies in representation and stuff like that, so it is mostly up to us to make the meat of it. Also, I think she recommends press releases on Tuesdays or something like that, so we need to have this hashed out latest by Sunday, including download present on page. -o-o-o-o- Apache Software Foundation announces Apache Zest 2.1 The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 170 Open Source projects and initiatives, today announced the release of Apache Zest Java Edition 2.1, the Composite Oriented Programming platform leveraging Java. "Apache Zest arrived to the Apache Software Foundation four months ago, and we are incredibly satisfied with the progress on both the codebase as well as the transition from our previous Qi4j identity", said Niclas Hedhman, the V.P of Apache Zest. >From Apache Zest's home page we can read; Composite Oriented Programming allows developers to work with 'fragments', smaller than classes, and 'compose' fragments into larger 'composites' which acts like the regular objects. Apache Zest also tackles the enforcement of application composition, i.e. composites are declared in modules, modules are contained in layers and access between layers are controlled/enforced. Niclas continues; "Apache Zest is a completely new way of writing software. Object orientation isn't the appropriate abstraction, as objects in real application get too bloated and inter-dependent. By working with fragments, it is possible to break the objects down the respective roles that objects typically have, and mix those roles across different types of objects." Apache Zest integrates aspect oriented programming, persistence, indexing/query, architecture enforcement and dependency injection. "This 2.1 release is a important stepping stone towards the future.", says Paul Merlin, the Release Manager of Apache Zest. "Compatibility with Qi4j 2.0 API has been maintained, but all documentation and other references are fully converted to Apache Zest, and in Zest 3.0 the transformation will be completed." "Apache Zest challenges us Java developers to think differently, but enables increased productivity and fewer bugs.", says Jiri Jetmar, a Project Management Committee member and long-time user of Zest. "We find that nearly all boiler-plate code, often found in JPA applications are completely eradicated, without mapping configuration and other details that just slows you down." Niclas concludes; "Apache Zest has the slogan 'New Energy for Java - Classes are Dead, Long Live Interfaces", and that truly capture what Apache Zest is really about. Designing software efficiently. We are now looking forward to Zest 3.0, with many new interesting features, such Messaging integration, Event Sourcing, Timeseries, Geospatial Support and much more. All with Java 8 goodness." Apache Zest is available both at https://zest.apache.org/download, as well as Maven Central under the groupId of "org.qi4j" For an in-depth presentation of Apache Zest, please come to ApacheCon:Core in Budapest. Apache Zest is presented on the 2 October 2015, and most of the core development team will be available for questions, discussions, introductions and more. -- Niclas Hedhman, Software Developer http://zest.apache.org - New Energy for Java
