I'll try keep it short so I skip many things I could have reacted on but likely wouldn't add anything new.
Dan Creswell wrote:
Why would I bother to put a spec into River? If River is going to be this small in focus, I'll develop services and API's elsewhere without bothering to do specifications.
I think you confuse specification with standard. To me an API of such as service is the specification and I see value in people collaborating to specify and implement such a service as part of River. As I already said. I see no problem in people collaborating to get something done here, but they can also do it somewhere else.
Boring == few developers == project that doesn't need to be at Apache with high visibility and might as well sit on SourceForge in a dark corner.
The Apache Software Foundation: - provide a foundation for open, collaborative software development projects by supplying hardware, communication, and business infrastructure - create an independent legal entity to which companies and individuals can donate resources and be assured that those resources will be used for the public benefit - provide a means for individual volunteers to be sheltered from legal suits directed at the Foundation's projects SourceForge: - provides hardware, communication, and business infrastructure So I think there are plenty of reasons why you want to do even 'boring' work that needs to be done here opposed to as in a dark corner at SourceForge.
It might be successful to you but IMHO, having such a thing so visible at Apache will be a PR disaster: "Some quiet little project at Apache that no-one's interested in, that has a couple of committers tinkering away on little things that no-one appears to care about. Wow, is that all there is to Jini?"
In my story I talked about a project that provided the foundation for a lot of other exiting projects, so that means a lot of people indirectly care about this project. I think not that many people download just the Linux kernel and then say "wow that is useful". Also I refuse to let my need for features I require be based on how the outside world thinks of it. I can only hope it will be appreciated but that is not my main motivation for contributing here. I believe there is room for things that Sean's Joe the programmer will directly comprehend and thinks this is great, as well as for things that makes sure that Joe the programmer won't hit the wall at some point in time because somebody already thought of that. There is always room for people that don't get all the attention but for which you can only hope they are there and I hope these kind of people will also be appreciated here too.
The kinds of minutae (e.g. PreferredClassLoader changes) we've talked about thus far will not address any of these problems. If River is not
I would appreciate it if you stop labeling these discussions as being about minutiae. The last thing we need IMHO is people backing of discussion about code because it might not fit someones definition of relevance.
If what you describe is the destiny of River as a user and committer, I see minimal value in what the project will be doing. I might as well take a simple snapshot of the source code and then evolve it and package it independently in a direction I find more useful to customers/users whilst avoiding the need for endless debate with people that want a small quiet project that does little. I'd also be crossing my fingers that I can attract attention away from River to avoid the PR disaster I mention above. Kind of sounds like the behaviour of a number of commercial Jini efforts out there using but preferring not to talk about Jini, why?
I think we should prevent we get some mindset there is a group of people that wants to make Jini irrelevant and that there is a group that wants to make it relevant and that are obstructed by the first group. Maybe it turns out that in the end our differences all boil down to our way with words, there is nothing so inaccurate as natural language especially when spoken by people from different countries and different personalities. From what you have said so far I can only conclude you have some ideas how Apache River can make Jini more relevant, maybe this is a good moment to talk about those ideas. Maybe it turns out your ideas for the roadmap align nicely with the ideas of others, so we can all work happily together hand in hand! -- Mark
