On 6/3/07, Mark Brouwer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I started a new thread for I was under the impression it was policy not
to have discussions on a vote thread as it complicates tallying.

Absolutely, thanks for this.

I agree with the recollection of John. It would be good if those with a
more in depth knowledge of the rules here could explain the
possibilities with regard to releasing in the com.sun.jini namespace.

Best thing to do is bringing this on the general incubator list once
we have a set of clear questions to ask and one or two possibilities
ahead.

The comparison with Wicket came up, and although I don't think it
was the intention of Gianugo to compare River with Wicket I believe
Wicket is a complete different project.

Absolutely agreed. On the other hand, consider how they were all in
all namespace neutral (they were using wicket.*).

It is my expectation that River will be much longer in Incubation due to
the fact this was a completely Sun driven effort in terms of coding.
Although estimations are hard to give I won't be surprised as it would
be in line with a project such as Derby.

Agreed, that's likely to happen.

For me moving to org.apache.river in the first releases (if these have
to be soon) while having no sight of a graduation is something I
consider a bridge too far.

I see your point, and I understand how backward compatibility matters.
On the other hand, my main issue is about branding, which has to deal
with diversity as well. More specifically:

a) from a branding perspective, it should be clear to users that this
is Apache River, not Sun's Jini  (or possibly the Apache
implementation of Sun's Jini specs). This is a clear Incubator
requirement.

b) I believe that diversity builds mainly upon neutrality: it's harder
to find people willing to work on com.sun.* (think competitors), as
they'd feel they'll be working on Sun stuff, not ASF's.

c) while I can see your point in changing packages as jumping the
cliff, sometimes you just have to burn your boats. Yes, River might
fail incubation, which would mean a mess to the Jini community. On the
other hand, playing safe with package names might be a sign of missing
commitment to the community.

Not only do I have a lot of patches in the
com.sun.jini namespace that needs to be integrated,

I assume this can be easily done once code lands in SVN?

I also have a lot of
derivative work based on the com.sun.jini namespace that is in
production at places and that needs ongoing support.

Good point, but there is a clear trade-off with branding and community
building. I'm sure there is a sweet spot somewhere which might be
satisfactory. Maybe a compatibility package (no idea whether it's
feasible at all) that bridges/proxies com.sun.* to org.apache.*? Or
some other idea we could come up with.

For me switching is
something I really would like to postpone until the larger outlines for
this project are clear, e.g. are we going to make incompatible API
changes in the com.sun.jini API, etc.

I see your point, and I fundamentally agree. All I'm asking is that
package renaming sits somewhere high in the priority list.

Personally I have no problem with no official release in com.sun.jini
and let people build one from SVN themselves [1] and postpone an
official release in the org.apache.river namespace if we have some signs
we are heading the right way, but I believe others do.

[1] I realize this comes to the expense of user satisfaction, but I also
believe this way they become a little bit more involved and get a bit
more understanding of the project. As I believe incubation is also meant
for building a developer community I don't consider this 'bad'. A proper
explanation near the download section will do fine I guess.

Yes, that could be an option.

Ciao,

--
Gianugo Rabellino
Sourcesense, making sense of Open Source: http://www.sourcesense.com
Orixo, the XML business alliance: http://www.orixo.com
(blogging at http://www.rabellino.it/blog/)

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