Hi Mark,
I do thank you for taking a little time out to answer my mail. Believe it or
not, I try to imagine being you and cold chills make me shudder - and I mean
that in the nicest possible way!! :-)
I realise that organising jBoss is a tremedous undertaking and I pat you on
the back for what you've done. jBoss is the best open-source J2EE server
and, IMHO, one of the slickest, best documented o-s products around and I
did not mean to detract from that in any way, shape or form.
I know a lot of the fiasco I had was my fault as a novice in the o-s arena.
I also know that you tell no lies in your E-Mail. I just see jBoss as such
an exciting opportunity for me and it's hard and frustrating to try to jump
on a moving train.
A lot of these issues probably depends on who a team leader is for a
particular task and how much time they are willing to spend helping people.
Here is an idea, because I don't like this designer/programmer thing any
more than Rickard... ;-)
Could part of the documentation project include a section on 'how to get
developing jBoss'? This would pull a couple of things together which are
already there, e.g. how to run jBoss in JBuilder etc, with some new stuff
like peoples experiences of finding their way around the code, how things
work internally to a lower (code) level. As well as this, it can summarise
the 'housekeeping' like how to get a bugzilla account, how to get on the
task mailing list, how to get CVS committed etc.
I know, I know... problems:
a) Open-source is meant to be macho
<quote>So who should need all this crap? *I* never got *MY* hand held. It's
all in the code - read it!</quote>
b) It takes time...
and who would be willing to do it?
But let's face it... open-source is about being able to change and fix the
product as well as use it. The documentation stuff has been done very well,
IMHO. If we could extend it to the developer too... maybe we'd get more guys
(and gals) who want to put in the time because people want to make it easy
for them.
My last message: jBoss is by no means the worst (at least I got responses
from you guys, which makes you one of the best). I find myself promoting
jBoss internally at every turn and have met recent recruits who actually
used it extensively on project. If only the clustering/load balancing stuff
was there, I could get it in use tomorrow in a production environment. Keep
up the excellent work though perhaps in Mark's case, a little less of it if
possible!!
Regards,
Peter.
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