On 13 Nov 2003, at 01:05, Stephen Colebourne wrote:
From: "robert burrell donkin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>jakarta-commons is high traffic but the worries about scalability are not to do with supervision but whether normal developers can continue to be attracted.
I've been quiet for a while, but I wanted to agree with this last statement.
Its not about supervision in j-c, but keeping attracting new ideas and
committers.
I would suggest
a) the j-c mailing list is very high traffic
b) some newcomers/contributers are definitely being put off by this
c) the ability for j-c to accept new components must eventually be limited
by the one mailing list arrangement
d) j-c is very well supervised
e) committed coders are in charge of their components
My mail system would undoutably be better off with multiple lists. But j-c
may suffer. This is a dilema. It would be nice if there was a clear division
into two or three that could occur, but finding it causes problems.
i'd be very, very unhappy to see any more sub-projects with split mailing lists at jakarta. jakarta is moving towards a more healthy position but it's going to take time. split mailing lists are part of the problem. we've got enough problems at jakarta without making any more.
so, i'd like to try to encourage people to think about whether there's enough synergy to move some products (at least) here to apache commons. the folks already here are all library builders (even though in other languages) so there's at least one area of common interest. some jakarta-commons products share similar goals. the ASF also contains some of the original framers of RFCs that some commons products are implementing.
in terms of synergy in the community, i'd say that it's early enough in the process (of formation) for the apache commons community to be influenced by any product communities who want to move. there's unlikely to be too much repressive beurocracy here (almost certainly less than the jakarta pmc is likely to be forced to institute - jakarta is now too big and too diverse.)
it seems to me that people who haven't been around jakarta for too long tend to forget that when jakarta was formed, jakarta was very frequently, strongly (and unfairly) critisized for living off the reputation of the apache httpd server. in the end, the apache way (and the quality of the jakarta code and the jakarta people) prevailed. it might seem strange now but it's very possible that apache commons might become (in a few years time) as reknown as a producers of library code as jakarta is reknown as a producer of server-side code. but only if those people who help to make jakarta-commons such a hothouse decide to move here.
IMHO the jakarta pmc is going to have to get a lot tougher and it's going to become a little more painful for committers than it's been before. we're going to have to take even more seriously the issues of scope and oversight. this means that some stuff that (in other circumstances) would be really cool might not be able to happen at jakarta. this doesn't mean that it shouldn't happen elsewhere in apache.
- robert
