I'm fairly astounded by the amount of email generated due to my name
being on the initial committer list.
It is interesting to note that all the people who have objected are
those who feel personally offended by some of my writing
(specifically, the tomcat and axis2 rants...ironically my tomcat
DefaultServlet rant was purely technical and did not degenerate into
my usual personal insult comfort zone). I'm sorry that you can't take
a little criticism, and while I will happily admit that yes, I did
insult you in ways that you probably didn't quite expect, I fully
stand by everything I said, and will still insist that Axis2 and
Tomcat are awful projects, that are badly written and have only
gotten where they are today due to marketing forces, instead of
technical merit. I am perplexed that you feel that a dislike of an
Apache project merits a membership rejection though. Does everyone at
Apache love every project there? If that were the case, then the
whole ecosystem is in a far unhealthier state than anyone on the
outside might suspect.
If Apache people feel that my technical abilities are not relevant,
and that what should matter in whether I am allowed in as a cxfire
committer is how willing I am to tow the party line, then I shouldn't
be on that list. Apache would be the first organisation I've joined
(or might have joined) that did not judge me on technical merit;
quite an irony considering the whole meritocracy approach that Apache
claims. This is, astoundingly, my first experience of being judged
not on technical merit, but on random blathering that serves no
particular purpose than ranting for ranting's sake.
Just to set expectations, I will not stop saying things like 'Apache
sucks', because I still do think that many of the processes and
members have some terrible flaws. I am not aware of any Apache
membership requirements that state that one's freedom of speech and
expression are curtailed in any way; it is after all an alleged
meritocracy, all that matters is how good the code I check in is, and
how well I play within the team I'm a member of. If the cxfire team
at any point feels I'm a liability rather than an asset, I would
gladly leave. In fact I'd like to think that I'm self-aware enough to
leave way before they feel the need to ask me to. I know plenty of
Apache members who find many of the processes cumbersome and onerous,
yet are still active participants; nobody seems to threaten them with
being kicked out.
I believe in cxfire, and think it's a superb project. I think
competition in this space is healthy, and think it's rather lame that
people like dims and sanjiva keep trying to cast doubts on the
validity of the project, just because it happens to eat into their
projected revenues. It does feel like there's a small amount of
hypocrisy going around, where people express concern that cxfire has
many IONA people involved, without noticing that most of the
objectors are WSO2 people, who (quite rationally) put WSO2 priorities
ahead of Apache ones.
If there's a policy of only endorsing one technology for any given
field within Apache, then sure, cxfire does not belong. If there is
space for allowing competing technologies, then I fail to see why
xfire choosing to ignore axis2 or not support it has any relevant at
all as to whether it can live in Apache or not.
I always thought that despite all its flaws, Apache was a great
ground for the 'let a thousand flowers bloom' approach, and I am
frankly disturbed by how much say commercial interests seem to have
in whether projects get accepted or not. In many ways this thread has
left me with an even worse impression of Apache than I already had,
which is, believe or not, a very sad thing.
I'd like to think that Apache is a meritocracy, driven by technology,
with no allegiance to commercial interests. It is driven by the
concept of open source for the sake of open source; not open source
that we can now build a company around and get funding and piss
around with in order to make a living to avoid having a real job.
Certainly not the latter to the exclusion of the former! On that
basis, I cannot conceive of a single good reason for rejecting
cxfire. By all criteria that count, it's a successful project, it is
widely deployed, it has an active developer base, and an interested
and participatory community. So what if it happens to be technically
superior to Axis2 (at least, in most people's opinions), is that a
reason to reject it?
I apologise if I've offended anyone, that was certainly not my
intent, in this case. I also apologise for being blunt and
undiplomatic, but this thread was too silly and the issues raised too
pedantic for me not to stoop to the same level. To the sane people
who responded with sensible requests and criticisms, I sincerely
apologise, and hope you see my rather long discourse as an heartfelt
plea for sanity and objectivity, rather than dismissing it as the
ranting of a rather angry random java guy.
Regards,
Hani
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