I really liked hearing Avik speak up because he's been hurting for
awhile and not spoken up. It was Nick's first release, cut him some
slack. POI has been around since 2001, in Apache since 2002. It is
nearly 2007. Talks of mentoring us or incubating us are a little
patronizing and insulting (multiple of us our even members of the
foundation though I forget who). Much of the thread is about bashing us
and bashing me in particular which I stupidly reacted to partly out of
fatigue. I appologize for that, I've been very busy launching
http://buni.org and planning our corporate structure.
It is fair to say that not many POI people participate in Jakarta.
However, to add perspective we never joined the "Jakarta as it is" -- we
joined Jakarta as it was...and one day this formed around us. It is
fair to criticize our build...it is pretty rusty and yucky. I do
however thing focusing too much on it is a bit well...mean. Nick has
been doing a great job and a lot of work. (I on the other hand will
have to merge my patches into SVN before I can even commit them since
they're off of CVS :-P ). However it was his first release. Moreover,
Apache's "release policies" have evolved considerably since the last
official release and none of us have a valid signed key...that needs to
be rectified (laziness, don't like conventions where all the cool key
signing parties). We're not the only one's guilty of kinds of neglect.
Our own Marc Johnson (who cofounded the project) has been extremely
frustrated at the lack of responsiveness in getting his access/etc in
order and no one at POI seems to be able to jerk the right chain in
Apache to make that happen (and I think he requested from this PMC with
no effect). So much that he's given up!
In any case, legal issues aside (which have to a good degree abated, but
take yourself back 5 years) I really don't want POI to really merge into
Jakarta (which is really now the successor to Jakarta Commons) and I
don't think the majority of the committers do either. On the other
hand, I really don't think POI by itself can be a TLP as its scope is
too narrow (historically this was deliberate). I also don't think that
parts of POI have much of a future as we're moving to an XML formats
era, but other parts certainly do. Partly because of projects like POI,
Microsoft is even moving. Once the default is to save in an XML format
then will anyone really care about POI "as it is" as more than a
migration tool.
That being said, there is considerable interest in unified APIs for each
of these verticals (spreadsheets, documents, etc) and considerable life
in POI with a very active userbase. Many people dealing with data
formats have asked for common APIs for the various verticals that output
to the various formats. Moreover, many of us are no longer as single
minded with regards to Java as we once were (POI ruby for example). And
achieving API compatibility across these could be interesting.
I therefore propose this:
* Jakarta PMC has the responsibility to not call more votes on
restructuring POI during the next X months. (Access or otherwise)
* POI committers have responsibility for achieving the proper oversight
procedures and putting out a new release in the next X months
* POI committers have responsibility for putting together a TLP proposal
and working out a consensus.
(BTW that pretty much is batting 1000 on this:
http://wiki.apache.org/jakarta/JakartaPMCRequestTLPBenchmark)
Full disclosure:
I've also submitted a counter proposal to the committers as an
alternative to leave apache entirely. However thus far most folks seem
to value POIs association with Apache and the opportunities afforded
them, even if they find it "difficult to work with" as one person stated
in response. I suspect TLP status would alleviate some of the mutual
snags between apache and POI (for one we could get poor Marc his access
back despite him having sent in his CLA now like 3 times including when
the project moved to Apache and for two we'd be sending our reports in
ourselves and thus have to do more proper oversight).
However, PPPPPLLLLLLEEEEEEAAAAAASSSSSSEEEE let's press the PAUSE button
until January 3rd so that we can all get very drunk and open presents
rather than jerk each other's chains in front of a computer on a mailing
list.
-Andy
----
Andrew C. Oliver
Buni Luni
http://buni.org
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