Hani.
I haven't read your bileblog, but this email really shows a bad
attitude.
I personally don't care how good your code is. in my past experience
your code isn't worth the pain the attitude is going to cause.
Technical merit is only aspect of apache, it's about the community.
and flamewars are so 90's it isn't funny.
as for party line, you don't have to tow anything.. you just need to
give other apache comitters / members some respect.
as for saying Apache Sucks.. go for it. just be constructive about it
(and be prepared to help un-suckify it.. any moron can say something
is bad)
--Ian
On 23/06/2006, at 2:52 PM, Hani Suleiman wrote:
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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