Re: JCP Program Chair responds to Apache Software Foundation (fwd)

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

Peter Donald wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 23 Mar 2002 16:00, Jason Hunter wrote:
> > Peter Donald wrote:
> > > Wow this is absolutely fabulous - not what I expected to see - yea!!!
> > >
> > > If some one would bug them to include JMX in their "soon to be blessed"
> > > list then everything that we do at Apache would be legal - woooh!
> >
> > I'll pass that on.
> 
> Thanks for this and everything else you are doing!

Yes, I want to thank Jason, Chuck and the rest of the guys involved in
this for their diplomacy and ability in moving this forward.

Keep up the great work!

I'm very proud of being part of this and I'm sure many others are as
well.

-- 
Stefano Mazzocchi  One must still have chaos in oneself to be
  able to give birth to a dancing star.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche




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Re: news@jakarta list? (Re: Introducing Enterprise Object Broker)

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 8 Mar 2002, Jeff Turner wrote:
> 
> > Then could we perhaps have a news@jakarta list for this sort of thing? A
> > lot of people find announcements like this relevant and interesting.
> 
> +1  as I like those messages - but general@ should be kept clean
> and lean for jakarta projects and asf code mostly.

+1 as well.

-- 
Stefano Mazzocchi  One must still have chaos in oneself to be
  able to give birth to a dancing star.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche




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Re: cvs commit: jakarta-poi/build/jakarta-poi/docs/apidocs/org/apache/poi/util - New directory

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

"Andrew C. Oliver" wrote:
> 
> Hi Stefano,
> 
> I totally agree, here is the problem:
> 
> I've offered to write this script provided with the relevant
> server/directory information.  I've offered to help however I can to get
> the POI website up, the builds and releases up, etc.
> 
> No one has taken me up on it.  Via CVS is the ONLY way modifications can
> be made to our website.
>
> To be honest, I'm kinda frustrated.  The project has been held back
> because we can't get our builds published, we've only recently gotten
> the site up and modifications working.
> 
> Until we have a solution that allows us to publish information on our
> website, and have our build published there is really nothing I can do
> about this.  Shortly we'll even be committing a milestone build into our
> CVS just to get it on our website because it is the only way we can
> publish builds.

We are working for a complete solution to these problems in the
[EMAIL PROTECTED] project, the goal is to come up with a
complete cvs->web publishing infrastructure for xml.apache.org, but
we'll make sure it's easily adopted also for other projects.

Then it will be up to each general@ community to decide what publishing
system to use.
 
> I'm fully happy to participate in another solution, but no one has taken
> me up on that up to now.  I've asked for Marc to be given access to that
> server (he's our build scientist), but no one has taken me up on that.

Ok, [EMAIL PROTECTED], could you please set up an account for 

   Marc Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

he is already a committer on cvs.apache.org for the POI project. He
needs to access the /www/jakarta.apache.org/poi/ directory.
 
> So basically until it annoys someone enough to help us out, this is the
> only thing we can do...

This should fix it. If not, please, let us know what we can do to help.

> Sorry,
> 
> Andy
> 
> On Thu, 2002-03-07 at 07:57, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > >
> > > acoliver02/03/06 18:27:54
> > >
> > >   jakarta-poi/build/jakarta-poi/docs/apidocs/org/apache/poi/util - New directory
> >
> > I would *strongly* suggest to avoid adding things that can be
> > autogenerated (such as javadocs) in the CVS repository, the Apache CVS
> > is already big enough. Thanks.
> >
> > --
> > Stefano Mazzocchi  One must still have chaos in oneself to be
> >   able to give birth to a dancing star.
> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche
> > 
> >
> --
> http://www.superlinksoftware.com
> http://jakarta.apache.org - port of Excel/Word/OLE 2 Compound Document
> format to java
> http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/bugParade/bugs/4487555.html
> - fix java generics!
> The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to
> vote.
> -Ambassador Kosh


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Stefano Mazzocchi  One must still have chaos in oneself to be
  able to give birth to a dancing star.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche




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Re: Jakarta PMC 2002: Results of the Ballot.

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

Pier Fumagalli wrote:
> 
> "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > The 7 people with the largest number of votes (in alphabetical order):
> >
> > Stefan Bodewig
> > Craig McClanahan
> > Diane Holt
> > Conor MacNeill
> > Geir Magnusson Jr.
> > Costin Monolache
> > Sam Ruby
> 
> Interestingly enough this will be the first PMC that doesn't contain a
> "founding" Jakarta member...

...and I think I resonate with Pier here since I believe this is here to
show that the process *does* work, despite the feelings that it's hard
to get into Apache to earn some power to influence things.

I'm very happy about this PMC and I love also the fact that, for the
first time, we have a women in an ASF committee. If we needed a sign
that Apache is healthy, I think this is a big one.

Keep up the great work!

-- 
Stefano Mazzocchi  One must still have chaos in oneself to be
  able to give birth to a dancing star.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche




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Re: Java is dead... but it could still be saved!

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

James Duncan Davidson wrote:
> 
> On 2/5/02 08:24, "Stefano Mazzocchi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > My position: give me a solid (possibly GPL-ed) CLI implementation, a
> > Java2C# porting tool, a BSD-licensed library of .NET classes and
> > java-cloning classes and I say let's kiss java good bye.
> 
> Heh. You are ahead of schedule. I figured that you'd be saying something
> like this about June of 2002.

uh, I take this as a compliment :)

> 
> 
> You're right you know. Stay flexible. Go with the flow. Sometimes it's not
> worth fighting all the battles at once.

Wise words, brother, wise words.

But my fear is that .NET might be even worse in the long run :/

Gosh, I think I'll have to write my own programming platform one day to
avoid all this.

-- 
Stefano Mazzocchi  One must still have chaos in oneself to be
  able to give birth to a dancing star.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche




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Re: ApacheForge

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

Vladimir Bossicard wrote:
> 
> > Apache is and has always been selective for a reason: we value
> > communities more than software and it takes a lot of energy to build a
> > community solid enough to build good enough software to pay back Apache
> > for the risk of diluting the brand each time a new effort is added.
> 
> The question is: what comes first?  Do you first need a good software
> and then build a community around it or the opposite?

In my experience, OSS communities never develop without software and
without one individual to step to the plate and make things happening.

> Apache.org value communities and that's fine.  But how do you build such
> a strong community when you just start a new project?  You have no
> functional application, no developers and no users.

Ask Linus, ask Larry, ask Guido, ask every single individual who was
able to create a community out of its own energy.

And look at Log4j, look at POI, look at BCEL, look at Lucene, look at
FOP, look at XIndice, just to name a few: they were all able to build a
community on their own, thus they were entitled to get in.

Apache is not an ivory tower, Paul, is just seriously concerned about
the balance between energy that goes *to* a project and energy that
comes *back*.

In order cross-pollinate between communities and in order for them to
scale (in size and number), we must be *very* concerned about this
balance, between social energy that we have to give to the project to
bootstrap and how much of this comes back, possibly amplified.

Sourceforge (and GNU, for what matters) don't care if projects die, we
do. In fact, it's a rare event that a software project hosted under
Apache dies out.

> I think that SourceForge is a real great tool if you want to start
> something new without knowing if it's a good idea, if it will be used
> and supported by other developers.  If it fails... well you have at
> least tried.  But SourceForge is not a community where people can
> exchange advises and experiences.  It's basically "do all mistakes
> yourself".
> 
> You cannot start a serious project without having CVS, ML, bug tracking
> and release directory and SourceForge offers that for free, without
> having to ask for an Apache account (it will be rejected due to the lack
> of developers/users anyway).
> 
> If Apache wants to attract more projects/developers, I think that it can
> use SourceForge's ressources (CVS...) and play more a mentoring/advisor
> role.

Using Jon's terms: thansk for volunteering.

In case you didn't notice, mentoring/advising is a very time-intensive
role.

What you say is perfect: there is room for something in between Apache
and SourceForge and ApacheForge would fit that role.

But the lack of *resources*, expecially human resources (even if the
technical ones will be very hard to find too, believe me!), will destroy
the issue from day one.

So:

 *if* we had the human resources
 *if* we had a way to protect the brand (with a different domain name so
that people have @apacheforge.org accounts and not @apache.org which are
a different thing)
 *if* we had the technical resources
 *if* we had a serious rating system that would indicate when a project
is *healthy* enough to be brought to apache.org
 *if* we thought this was valuable to the entire ASF effort

then apacheforge.org would be a good idea.

Unfortunately, not a single of those *if* is satisfied.
 
> If you're a hockey team, you need farm teams to let young players make
> their experiences.  But young players need coaches.

And coaches have families, need to eat, sleep and have a life.

And a few coaches can't mentor a thousand projects effectively.

So, we choose to stay at the window and do recruiting as the big teams
do, instead of using our scarce resources to build our 'incubating'
teams.

Painting this as an ivory tower is, IMHO, a clear misunderstanding of
the Apache spirit.

-- 
Stefano Mazzocchi  One must still have chaos in oneself to be
  able to give birth to a dancing star.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche




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Re: ApacheForge

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

Paul Hammant wrote:

> Apache create ApacheForge. It has rules on IP and decision making, but
> is completely open to entrants.

-1

Apache is and has always been selective for a reason: we value
communities more than software and it takes a lot of energy to build a
community solid enough to build good enough software to pay back Apache
for the risk of diluting the brand each time a new effort is added.

*this* is the reason why lots of efforts are left out

*this* is the reason why not a single Apache member wants to see this
changing

Also, doing a parallel with the FSF doesn't help: they are focused on
code (the more code is covered by the GPL, the better), we are focused
on the people and on their collaboration (the more people follow the
Apache spirit, the better).

For anything else there is sourceforge.

-- 
Stefano Mazzocchi  One must still have chaos in oneself to be
  able to give birth to a dancing star.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche




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Re: Java is dead... but it could still be saved!

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

"Kevin A. Burton" wrote:

> Dont't sit back and do nothing.  Sending emails to this list is just a waste of
> your time.

Try to imagine what makes Sun officials worry more:

- the guy who pushed java technology in the ASF since '97 and was so
efficient with his java-lover friends that the ASF has more than 70% of
its code written in Java and now thinks seriously at abandoning the boat
because java technical evolution can't stand the rate of community
evolution

- the java enthusiasts who is going to sit in front of the moscone
center in order to change Sun official's minds about Java licensing
saying that they lied to him because instead of giving him 100% of their
intellectual property, they gave him just 90% and now they are keeping
the 10% for them

Now tell me: who is wasting his time?

-- 
Stefano Mazzocchi  One must still have chaos in oneself to be
  able to give birth to a dancing star.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche




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Re: Java is dead... but it could still be saved!

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

Jon Scott Stevens wrote:
> 
> on 2/4/02 1:58 PM, "Kevin A. Burton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > I created the java-is-dead mailing list to address these issues.
> >
> > Note that this mailing list is a place to help fix things.  The java-is-dead
> > mailing list is for people who love Java but are *very* concerned.
> 
> The only people who can fix these things is Sun. This mailing list sounds
> like a black hole and these types of politics usually don't work against Sun
> (neither do online polls)...
> 
> The way to get Sun's attention is to corner them into a hole and then pound
> on their head for a few years. Then, if you are lucky, you might get them to
> concede on an issue or two so that only you will be happy.

In case you didn't notice, Sun might go out of business as soon as a
couple of years: if even Oracle says that bigiron is dead, Google and
yahoo run on huge though inexpensive clusters of pc clones, Dual G4
machines are starting to beat the pants out of Sun boxes and run
unix where the hell is Sun going to earn its money from?

yep, you guessed it right: Java.

They dropped the ball for java on the desktop: sun management decided
that it will never happen: there will be no Java version of StarOffice.

So they want to earn money on the other two sides: 

 big -> enterprise (J2EE) 
 small -> embedded (J2ME)

why? simple: these are the things that pay off and these are the things
that go along better with Sun core business: which is hardware (both big
fat machines and silicon chips).

Now: is Sun going to change this because Mr. Burtonator cries on his own
mail list? yeah, sure.

Unless he has a few 10 billion dollars to invest in Sun to open up java.

Sun can't start selling JDK's, otherwise people will switch to .NET (or
OSS clones of it, see Ximian MONO), but it sure can stop improve on it
(after 1.4 is out) and give away for free *normal* java implementations
and sell better/faster/more-scalable JVMs (which is what M$ will be
doing with .NET)

You can be sure Sun has a lot to learn from M$ on the marketing-software
side of things.

Yep, people, Java is turning into legacy for most corporations: they'd
rather spend some thousand dollars in new software (which will run on
sparc only, of course) than spend millions in retraining people, porting
software to .NET and blah blah blah.

Where does OSS stand? We have been *used* to make java solid.

Now things are changed: they think they don't need us anymore because
Java is a commercial reality. That's the truth and you'd better learn it
fast.

My position: give me a solid (possibly GPL-ed) CLI implementation, a
Java2C# porting tool, a BSD-licensed library of .NET classes and
java-cloning classes and I say let's kiss java good bye.

Interesting enough, this is where Ximian is leading.

Or we wait for another mozilla-like miracle.

Anyway people: be ready to jump off the train, we are approaching the
cliff at full speed.

-- 
Stefano Mazzocchi  One must still have chaos in oneself to be
  able to give birth to a dancing star.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche



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Re: Jakarta PMC Nomination - Rejection

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

Jon Scott Stevens wrote:

>Hey all,
>
>I just wanted to say that I'm not going to accept my Jakarta PMC nomination
>and do not want to be included in the voting for the next election.
>
Uh.

>
>I have been involved with Java Apache/Jakarta since Sept 1996 and I think
>
it was '97 (I know, I know, I'm a pain in the ass :)

>
>that it is time for me to move on from being politically responsible for
>this group. Honestly, I'm jaded and burned out on it all.
>
Oh, I know how that feels :-) I really enjoyed my year off all this mess 
and I think you'll do the same.

>
>That said, I recently signed a 10 year lease on a prime event space in
>downtown San Francisco and I am moving towards spending more time being a
>big time night club owner than working on Jakarta. More info:
> (p.s. that site is built with Anakia )
>
Way cool, dude! Awesome!

>
>I also just released Scarab 1.0b1 and am focused primarily on making Scarab
>the best issue tracking tool around. Expect to see more great developments
>on this project. It is by far, one of the best designed, largest and most
>complex pieces of software that I have ever had the pleasure of helping
>develop. It will be around for a very long time and will eventually put
>Bugzilla out of business. More info: 
>
I strongly hope so and I plan to try it out myself in the near future.

Anyway, keep it up, dude :)

Stefano.


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PMC Nomination

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

I would like to nominate

 - Jon Stevens
 - Sam Ruby

for the upcoming PMC elections.

The reason is simple: nobody else has done more for jakarta.

Sure, they have diametrically different styles and attitudes, but this
the reason why I want to nominate both at the same time: they balance
out since they listen to each other and, deep down below, they share the
very same feelings about what apache is.

If somebody has to decide where jakarta is going, I'd like having them
decide for me.

Thanks.

-- 
Stefano Mazzocchi  One must still have chaos in oneself to be
  able to give birth to a dancing star.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche




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Re: [PROPOSAL] POI @ Jakarta

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

"Andrew C. Oliver" wrote:

> PMC Votes
>  +1  +0   -0   -1
> James Duncan Davidson   [ ]  [ ]  [ ]  [ ] (not yet voting)
> Peter Donald[X]  [ ]  [ ]  [ ]
> Pierpaolo Fumagalli [X]  [ ]  [ ]  [ ]
> Ted Husted  [X]  [ ]  [ ]  [ ]
> Geir Magnusson Jr.  [X]  [ ]  [ ]  [ ]
> Craig McClanahan[X]  [ ]  [ ]  [ ]
> Sam Ruby[X]  [ ]  [ ]  [ ]
> Daniel Savarese [X]  [ ]  [ ]  [ ]
> Jon S. Stevens  [X]  [ ]  [ ]  [ ]
> Jason van Zyl   [X]  [ ]  [ ]  [ ]
> 
> Non PMC members voting
> 
> Andy Armstrong  [X]  [ ]  [ ]  [ ]
> John Morrison   [X]  [ ]  [ ]  [ ]
> 
> Thanks everyone!

Andy, 

welcome aboard :)

-- 
Stefano Mazzocchi  One must still have chaos in oneself to be
  able to give birth to a dancing star.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche




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Re: Code conventions

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

Jon Scott Stevens wrote:
> 
> on 1/10/02 1:16 AM, "GOMEZ Henri" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> >> LOL!
> >> Are you taking these guys seriously?
> >> =;o)
> >>
> > No, since Jon didn't participate
> > to the thread ;)
> 
> I heard that if you shorten the names of your variables and methods down to
> single letters, the execution speed increases by a factor relative to the
> amount of space saved in your .java files...
> 
> :-)

execution no, but it does reduce classloading time... of course, that's
not enough of a reason to do it anyway :)

-- 
Stefano Mazzocchi  One must still have chaos in oneself to be
  able to give birth to a dancing star.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche


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I'm tired of noise...

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

... so I go back to action.

When Forrest powers xml.apache.org, you'll know about it.

[I'll remain subscribed here, but don't expect much participation from
me: I'd rather spend my time doing something more useful than crying
about why this project isn't the project I dream about]

Take care.

-- 
Stefano Mazzocchi  One must still have chaos in oneself to be
  able to give birth to a dancing star.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche




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Cross-pollination

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

The only concept that I found worth talking about (apologies if I missed
others covered by the incredible noise!) is Sam's suggestion that
'degree of cross-pollination' should be used as a metric to measure the
value of merging efforts.

Of all the other proposed metrics, I find this one the most appealing
because is *not* technology oriented.

The current effort merging guidelines (code donations approuval) are
strictly based on the presumed health of the community behind the
donation. The reason for this is that merging healthy communities brings
value since it expands the global IQ.

Now, Sam points out that this might not be enough, as many efforts don't
cross-pollinate, thus fail to increase the 'genetic variety' of the
community.

In society, two terms are used for this 'melting pot' (when cultural
cross-pollination exists) and 'mixing bowl' (when cultural groups are
forced live side by side, but don't share much).

Sourceforge is the ultimate 'mixing bowl' and we don't want that.

But is Jakarta (or XML) really a 'melting pot'?

Would a single container increase or decrease such cross-pollination?

Would POI increase it more on Jakarta, more on XML or more remaining it
on Sourceforge?

Would factoring out a bunch of efforts to 'tools.apache.org' increase it
or decrease it?

Would moving the velocity-based stylesheet language to XML increase or
decrease it?

One thing is for sure: both Gump and Forrest want to go in this
direction: provide solid technological infrastructure in order for
efforts to communicate, interoperate, share visions and exchange code,
ideas and solutions.

Food for thought.

-- 
Stefano Mazzocchi  One must still have chaos in oneself to be
  able to give birth to a dancing star.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche



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Re: On unity and coherence [was Re: [Request For Comment] POI @ apache]

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

Ted Husted wrote:

> At this point, I'm reconciled to do more work on the Jakata site using
> XML in the old-fashioned way.

I can't resonate more with your feelings. That's exactly what made me
started the 'forrest' effort: the coherence on xml.apache.org and the
ease of update has been slowly falling apart until now when people can't
even run in on their machines without getting fonts problems (yeah,
blocked by fonts problems! go figure!)
 
> We have some unratified guidelines that expand on the ones (you?)
> originally set down.

No, that wasn't me to edit that page, even if much was taken from my
java.apache constitution (as you indicate below), which on my side, took
from the old dev.apache.org guidelines for [EMAIL PROTECTED]

> http://jakarta.apache.org/site/proposal.html
> 
> If you were able to review them, I would of course very much like to
> have your comments before making a final update and calling for a vote.

I'm honored. I'll do it ASAP.
 
> I would also like to add more rationale for some of the guidelines. The
> recent dicussion regarding coding conventions had less to do with the
> conventions themselves, and more to do with why we even have
> conventions. (And having conventions, why don't we enforce them.)

Good point.
 
> As Jakarta grows, it becomes more and more important that we have better
> ways to introduce peoole into the fold. Right now, there is a tendency
> to make someone a Committer and let them find their own way around. At
> this time, I'd like to go to work on a Committer's guidebook that would
> help explain how things are done (starting with How to do a Release --
> which raised the JAR discussion the other day).

Oh, gosh, you are probably unaware of the fact that I'm the one that
continously pisses people off on the ASF member list (unfortunately
private) about having those 'committer guidelines' up and running. James
Davidson and I were the one who made the page on how to setup your SSH
tunnel for CVS.

Yes, this is the right direction, but people must commit to keep those
guidelines up 2 date and many people (expecially apache root's) failed
miserably to do it.

Also we must make those easy to find.

Again, Forrest will help.
 
> I think the real solution to improving the noise:signal ratio is to move
> away from the "oral (email)" tradition we have now, and move back toward
> providing more grassroots documentation, as you did in the "preamble" to
> the original constition.
> 
> http://java.apache.org/main/constitution.html

Absolutely.
 
> An actual history of Jakarta might also be useful to give people a
> better perspective. Here's one passages I tucked away (to be joined by
> your own snippets of late).
> 
> Pier to Jon - Thu, 21 Dec 2000
> > We've traveled a long
> > way together, from my very first steps in open-source land in January 1998,
> > to our marvelous meeting at the first ApacheCON in October 1998, the Jakarta
> > room meeting, all JavaONEs, and all we did together to bring this project
> > where it is right now.
> 
> Pier again, same day
> > And we, as the newly formed Apache Software Foundation, accepted that code
> > in donation as a point of start for the Jakarta Project. I was there, in
> > that meeting room, that day when we outlined how the process would have
> > evolved, with Jon, Stefano and Brian. And I was there, on stage at JavaONE,
> > when Patricia Sueltz announced the spinoff of the project againg with Jon,
> > Stefano and Brian. If that has been a wrong decision, we four are the people
> > to blame...
> 
> A coherent history might help with many of the questions about why we do
> things the way we do. (Or why we don't do some things at all.) I think
> clearly documenting the Apache Way would be an important first step to
> unifying the Apache Projects.

Great point. I absolutely agree.
 
> I would also like to personally commend Jon with his efforts to better
> document Jakarta. He has put a lot into the Web site (probably 90%), and
> we all owe him a great debt.

Oh, I never even thought about questioning this.

I personally owe everything to Jon: without his kind messages, I
wouldn't have remained around the community enough to get the 'apache
feeling' out of it.

Jon and I have very different technical views and very different ways of
doing software architectures and sometimes some friction develops, but
all the times I land in SFO, he's the first one who I call to hang out
with! :)

[yeah, people, the 'rude' Jon Stevens was the one who gave Pier and I
hospitality in his place when we came to ApacheCON 98 and we didn't have
a place to stay since we 

On unity and coherence [was Re: [Request For Comment] POI @ apache]

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

Jon Scott Stevens wrote:
> 
> on 1/4/02 4:14 PM, "Stefano Mazzocchi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > That makes me wonder about the real causes of this "whole fucking mess"
> > and "jakarta is fucked up today" feelings of yours...
> 
> Of course. I forgot. I'm always wrong. Sorry.

I wasn't thinking about you, but about the fact that there might be a
limit about amount of the amount of traffic (or subscribers) a mail list
can handle without automatically ignite friction because of
misunderstanding that are generated by degradation of signal/noise
ratio.

Usenet is the perfect example of this.

As much as I would love to avoid project containers, I fear the
degradation of signal over noise in the required '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
mail list.

The [EMAIL PROTECTED] mail list, for example, is a very low traffic
mail list and even politically harsh discussions (see the recent ebXML
vs. UDDI feelings, a very bad battleground for corporate interests!) are
quickly resolved.

At the same time, collaboration between subprojects is much less
required, mostly because 'contracts' are established someplace else
(W3C, JCP) or don't need many changes that couple of GUMP nags and Sam
emails can't fix.

But at the same time, this lack of collaboration and subproject
isolation prevents (or has prevented in the past) coherence in the
infrastructure, reduction of overlap between projects and unity at the
direction level that resulted in the major Xerces vs. Crimson fight.

Yes, Jon, your attitude has changed a lot from that very first email to
me (the first reply I ever received from an open source mail list!) 4
years ago where you told me (publicly!) that you once visited Florence
in Italy and you had a great time. While new-httpd@ was putting down
people daily, your message made me feel between friends.

I know this has also something to do with your RSI hand problems (oh,
BTW, I got an Aeron chair as well :) and I feel terribly lucky and
terribly sad because were you and Brian that taught me everything I know
about OSS community engineering. I seems so long ago :/

Now that I know those individuals at new-httpd@ that had such a bad
reputation and I have witnessed with my eyes the changes in your
attitude, I think this has very little to do with the person attitude
but something to do with 'size', frequency of messages and the relative
frustration of impersonal communication (probably some exhaustion as
well, I've been one entire year out of this and I think I learned many
things from that).

Anyway, besides the POI, this thread makes me wonder a lot: on one hand,
we have the clear potential of mixing together jakarta+xml and showing
the ASF a way to 'flat' the hierarchy of efforts, bringing more vibility
to the communities. On the other hand, the intrinsic degradation of
performance due to the increased overlap and required rules has the
potential to waste all the benefits of such a flat hierarchy.

Imagine the kind of discussion that would emerge on an eventual
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" about standardizing an apache-wide DTD for
documentation. Scary, eh?

There is something else that makes me wonder: the first important thing
about OSS that I learned is that, given the same ideas and direction, a
buggy software makes a better open community than non-buggy one. Code
stability and polishness must come, but after a community is already
established.

Could it be possible that lack of coherence could do the same as
software bugs for metacommunities (communities about communities, such
as all the general@ mail lists)?

I mean: a common and strong philosophical foundation must exist in order
for such metacommunity to remain stable, no question about this, but
there could be a point of equilibrium to the coherence that can achieve
between its internal communities without deteriorating other issues
(such as collaboration).

Sourceforge seems to show that lack of metacommunities is a way to allow
scalability of efforts, at the cost of unity, direction and coherence.

Perl, Python and the old Apache Group seem to suggest that
metacommunities that range from one to a few people, give strong
direction, sacrificing scalability of efforts. 

Linux and GNU have metacommunities of single individuals (Linus and RMS
respectively) and seem to scale incredibly well, but sacrifice choice
(in OS architecture, for the first, on software licensing on the
second).

Jakarta and XML.apache are the biggest metacommunities around. And I
think it shows: on all the other ASF projects, a few codebases are
contained, this results in a metacommmunity coincident with the
development community.

In my mind, all this long trail of thoughs yields the following
equation:

 metacommunity size * community coherence * individual freedom =
constant

in result, if we unify the two projects, we double the size of the
metacommunity and we

Re: Jakarta Status [was Code conventions]

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

Jon Scott Stevens wrote:
> 
> on 1/4/02 4:20 PM, "Geir Magnusson Jr." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > They aren't even comparable, are they?
>
> Of course not.

No, I agree, I was just teasing :)
 
> http://jakarta.apache.org/velocity/dvsl/
> 
> When DVSL is integrated into Turbine's presentation layer and people are
> using it, the comparison will definitely be Cocoon2 vs. Turbine.

Uh, cool, let me take a look...

-- 
Stefano Mazzocchi  One must still have chaos in oneself to be
  able to give birth to a dancing star.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche




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Re: [Request For Comment] POI @ apache

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

Jon Scott Stevens wrote:
> 
> on 1/4/02 12:00 PM, "Sam Ruby" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > 2) Related to POI.  As long as they know the current state of Jakarta and
> >  can make an informed decision, and meet all the criteria described in
> >  http://jakarta.apache.org/site/newproject.html, then they have my +1.
> >  After all, what good is it to have published criteria which omits
> >  important "details" like "Jon will block if he feels that Jakarta is
> >  fucked up today"?  ;-)
> 
> Sam...not even funny... I never gave a vote so don't put words into my
> mouth.

Funny, I share Sam's vision entirely.

> >  Oh, and Stefano's stewardship more than sufficiently meets that
> >  particular criteria in my book.
> 
> Yea, after I wrangled it out of him. This whole fucked mess would have been
> averted if Stefano had simply stepped up and said he would take stewardship.
> Multiple times, I said that that was needed and it *finally* got stated by
> him. 

Here is my *FIRST* email on the subject (Thu, 03 Jan 2002 01:47:02
+0100)

> Please, keep me copied since I'm not currently subscribed to 
> general@jakarta
>
> "Andrew C. Oliver" wrote:
>
> >I don't see any convincing reason to bring POI to Jakarta, unless I see
> >that
> >you have a Jakarta PMC member champion your cause. Stefano's
> >recommendation
> >to you isn't enough, he or someone else needs to be a committer and
> >interested in working and overseeing your project.
>
>I do.

On all the others mail lists I'm subscribed, that would have been
enough, but not here.

That makes me wonder about the real causes of this "whole fucking mess"
and "jakarta is fucked up today" feelings of yours...

-- 
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  able to give birth to a dancing star.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche




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Re: Jakarta Status [was Code conventions]

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

Sam Ruby wrote:
> 
> Ted Husted wrote:
> >
> > What would also help, I think, would be if we published more of our
> > statistics. I know Vincent was working on a download stats page once.
> > I've also seen people post interesting statistics about the posts to the
> > mailing lists. A snapshot of how many commits are being made and number
> > of unique committers making them would also be interesting. And other
> > things, I'm sure.
> >
> > Now, if I only had the faintest idea of how to automate something like
> > this ...
> 
> Stefano, I and others are working on this.
> 
> http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-apache-general&m=100857962129228&w=2
> http://www.apache.org/~stefano/forrest/1.5/
> 
> - Sam Ruby
> 
> P.S.  Food for thought: wouldn't it be nice if we could somehow merge xml
> and Jakarta?  Then discussions as to where POI should go would be moot.
> Gump doesn't care about these arbitrary distinctions, why should we?

I fully resonate with this: I have *always* hated projects as
containers. I think Tomcat is a project, not Jakarta. I think Xerces is
a project not XML (which conflicts with XML the language).

In the future, I would simply love to see

 www.apache.org/tomcat

go along with 

 www.apache.org/httpd

and a good software map to tell the story, indicate the overlap, outline
those distinctions and so on.

It would also remove the need for PMCs and give the ASF board a reason
to exist.

The reason question is: could we stand the heat of a [EMAIL PROTECTED]
mail list?

-- 
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  able to give birth to a dancing star.
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Re: Jakarta Status [was Code conventions]

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

"Craig R. McClanahan" wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 4 Jan 2002, Ceki Gülcü wrote:
> 
> > >
> > >- Sam Ruby
> > >
> > >P.S.  Food for thought: wouldn't it be nice if we could somehow merge xml
> > >and Jakarta?  Then discussions as to where POI should go would be moot.
> > >Gump doesn't care about these arbitrary distinctions, why should we?
> >
> > +1 on the principle of merging Jakarta and XML.
> 
> Agreed that it's definitely worth looking at.
> 
> > However, you realize
> > there are technical considerations such as the look and fell of the
> > merged web-site.
> 
> Sheesh ... just when I was starting to think that *nothing* could top the
> rancor of arguing about coding conventions ... :-)

Yeah, Anakia vs. Cocoon2 would be a fun pissing contest to watch :) NOT!

-- 
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  able to give birth to a dancing star.
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Re: Code conventions

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

Peter Donald wrote:

> So I +1 on suggesting standards for external parts of project, -1 for forcing
> it

uh, I jumped in the middle of a "where to place the curly brace code
format pissing contest", how cool.

For those of you who weren't around, we had the first resolution of this
(what later became condensed into the current PMC directives) around
1997 on the jserv-dev mail list. (Jon, remember that?)

Sure, it would be cool to have a clear code convention (or a language
like Python that more or less doesn't even compile if you don't follow
the right conventions) or a benevolent dictator (that used the
convention you like!). Unfortunately, we don't have any of those, so the
resolution was: most of the java source code out there (well, it was
1997, you know!) used the Sun coding conventions so we started from
there, but we decided to be tollerant on *cultural* differences.

And *cultural* differences include: editor used, favorite OS, favorite
mail client, favorite browser, favorite native language, favorite ice
cream flavor... :)

Sure, there should be *compromises* and there are some that are very
useful and understandable (the use of english as the language, no HTML
in email, nice quoting, polite messages, support for old browsers, no
ice cream attached to email) and some that are more subject to personal
judgement (local variable names, curly brace location, tab vs. space,
how many spaces for a tab).

When no objective result can be reached, discussions become religious
wars.

I'd follow Sam suggestions: let's be tollerant.

-- 
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  able to give birth to a dancing star.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche




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Re: [Request For Comment] POI @ apache

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

[note: no need to keep me copied since I subscribed]

Jon Scott Stevens wrote:
> 
> on 1/3/02 5:31 AM, "Stefano Mazzocchi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > Exactly, ignoring M$ doesn't make it go away. I would say the opposite:
> > there are tons of companies that base their document systems on M$
> > software and would like to move to a more open world but they simply
> > can't afford loosing the legacy data, so their managers decide to stick
> > with M$ stuff.
> >
> > I would say that an exporting tool would rather do the opposite than
> > encourage people to use M$ software, would encourage much more those who
> > already use it to get away from it.
> 
> Based on the ranking that it is at now, keeping the project at sourceforget
> clearly doesn't hurt it at all. I don't see that as a reason to move it to
> the ASF.
> 
> > I'm not part of the Jakarta PMC (even if I've been) but I am an ASF
> > member, which is even a higher status community-wise.
> 
> > Please, explain why you think my community sponsoring wouldn't be enough
> > as a warranty for your vote.
> 
> You need to be willing to step up and help integrate their project into the
> ASF. In other words, you (or another PMC member) needs to be willing to
> watch over the project. 

I am willing to do that.

> Based on your past history of appearing and
> disappearing (and the fact that you aren't a PMC member anymore), I'm not
> confident that you will stick around long enough to make sure that they
> integrate well and play well. 

I understand and appreciate your concern, but I would like to remind you
that I never left any project without making sure that a community could
stand my absence.

I are fully aware of the fact that I personally bootstrapped JMeter,
Avalon, JAMES (on jakarta.apache.org) and Cocoon, FOP, Batik and XIndice
(on xml.apache.org).

Those times where I could not provide my continuous and active presence,
I made the people know and *never* left the community without a clear
leadership or guidance.

For JMeter, a votation was made to elect the new coordinator and I
remained there for months before leaving. The project has released two
major versions since then.

For JAMES, I passed the hand over to Federico and Serge. Several
software releases and major improvements happened.

For Avalon, Federico first then Berin and Peter. No need to question the
health of this community. Federico earned the ASF membership for those
efforts.

For Cocoon, Giacomo, then Carsten. Giacomo earned the ASF membership for
that. Again, no need to question the health of the community.

For FOP, Arved. Arved earned the ASF membership for that. Same thing for
the community status.

For Batik, there isn't one project coordinator, but the community is
very successful as it's reaching full compatibility with W3C
recommendations.

For XIndice, I'm still the sponsoring member and no plans to leave until
the software goes in the direction I would like it to see it going.

> What happens to their project when you decide
> you don't feel like keeping an eye on them anymore?

100% of the communities I bootstrapped under ASF are still alive and
healthy. Several individuals on these communities earned ASF membership.
They count several thousands of users and developers.

What I'm stating here, in case it's not clear, is my intention to help
the POI codebase to generate a community around the needs to
import/export data from M$ binary formats that I consider very important
legacy data in many situations.

I won't leave the community until it is solid enough to withstand my
absence, should it take 2 months or 2 years.

I hope my present commitment and my past results clear up any doubts on
my sponsoring of this code donation.

-- 
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  able to give birth to a dancing star.
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche




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Re: [Request For Comment] POI @ apache

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

Jon Scott Stevens wrote:

> > Excuse the phrasing I was attempting to be concise while getting the
> > following point across:  I see this project as potentially being of
> > great benefit to both Jakarta developers and users.  By "business sense"
> > I mean to say that greater collaboration would make it possible for
> > developers to select a Apache-based solution where they might presently
> > have to use proprietary technologies.  This could expand the user base
> > for the projects I mentioned as well as some of the xml.apache.org
> > projects.
> 
> Actually, I personally think that your project is contrary to ASF principles
> in that it allows/encourages people to use proprietary closed source M$
> products. Of course ignoring M$ doesn't make it go away, so I'm sure that
> some people would like to use your product...

Exactly, ignoring M$ doesn't make it go away. I would say the opposite:
there are tons of companies that base their document systems on M$
software and would like to move to a more open world but they simply
can't afford loosing the legacy data, so their managers decide to stick
with M$ stuff.

I would say that an exporting tool would rather do the opposite than
encourage people to use M$ software, would encourage much more those who
already use it to get away from it.

> > Yes I did.  The guidelines lay out how to propose/approve a project,
> > they do not seem to preclude proposing that members/commiters look at
> > the project, comment and consider a possibly supporting a proposal.
> 
> here is the paragraph...
> 
> It is required that at least 2 active developers be actively working on the
> project. 

We have that.

> According to the unratified proposal guidelines, it is preferred
> but not required that at least one PMC member be a Committer to a new
> subproject. Think of this as being similar to bringing a new baby into a
> household. You want to be sure that it will be supported by its parents.

I'm not part of the Jakarta PMC (even if I've been) but I am an ASF
member, which is even a higher status community-wise.
 
> My personal PMC vote is strongly in favor of having a PMC member be a
> committer. While this isn't a requirement from the PMC, it is a requirement
> of my personal PMC vote.

Please, explain why you think my community sponsoring wouldn't be enough
as a warranty for your vote.
 
-- 
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  able to give birth to a dancing star.
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Re: [Request For Comment] POI @ apache

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

"Geir Magnusson Jr." wrote:

> > Comments?
> 
> Why is it appropriate for Jakarta?  That's the missing piece for me.  You
> said that the Cocoon community is excited about it, it could be important
> for data conversion in XML land...

The missing piece might be that this library is general enough to be
useful for other non necessarely XML-related subprojects.

-- 
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Re: [Request For Comment] POI @ apache

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

Please, keep me copied since I'm not currently subscribed to
general@jakarta

"Andrew C. Oliver" wrote:

> >I don't see any convincing reason to bring POI to Jakarta, unless I see
> >that
> >you have a Jakarta PMC member champion your cause. Stefano's
> >recommendation
> >to you isn't enough, he or someone else needs to be a committer and
> >interested in working and overseeing your project.

I do.

> I see.  Thank you, for taking the time to consider the prospect and
> provide feedback.
> 
> >Did you read:
> >
> ><http://jakarta.apache.org/site/newproject.html>
> >
> >-jon
> 
> Yes I did.  The guidelines lay out how to propose/approve a project,
> they do not seem to preclude proposing that members/commiters look at
> the project, comment and consider a possibly supporting a proposal.

We initially talked about moving this code to xml.apache because I think
it would give us a great technical advantage, expecially for migrating
all the existing legacy data encoded in Office formats to the web.
Having the ability to edit XML content directly from M$ Office is
something that many of our users would *scream* to be able to do.

At the same time, I suggested Andrew to talk about it here instead of
xml.apache.org because importing/exporting Office formats back and
forward from XML is only one of the possible uses of such a technology
(indexing office formats using Lucene is another darn good example of
use that currently requires big bucks commercial software!)

> My apologies if I've gone about that the wrong way.  What would you
> suggest is the more appropriate way to do so?

Interpreting Jon's words with the provided context as I know him, he is
afraid of you guys lacking the necessary community management skills
that are required in all Apache projects in order to keep the process
going and probably didn't see the importance of such a codebase under
the jakarta mission.

Whether or not this codebase is big/strong/good/sane/future-proof enough
to be a full jakarta subproject, I don't know, up to you to decide, but
we have:

 1) a working codebase licensed under an ASF-compatible license and
willing to be donated to the ASF along with copyright and all that.
 2) another Apache community (Cocoon's) *very* excited about integrating
this technology
 3) two very active developers (the sourceforge logs tell us about it)
 4) a sponsoring ASF member (myself) willing to take care about helping
bootstrapping the community.

Reading the current guidelines, community-wise, I see no obstacles in
the creation of such a subproject.

Technically speaking, since POI is more or less a codec library (not
useful by itself), it could probably be better placed under
jakarta-commons. In that case, even less community requirements would be
needed, even if I would still like to appear as a sponsoring member for
that codebase.

Sorry if this wasn't clear from the start.

Comments?

-- 
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  able to give birth to a dancing star.
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Re: Forrest (a.k.a. xml.apache.org 2.0)

[Stefano Mazzocchi]

Ugo Cei wrote:
> 
> Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
> 
> > 3) layout
> > -
> >
> > The layout previously proposed on this list was a solution to the
> speed
> > problem but I couldn't adapt it to the depth needs identified in the
> > rest of the goals.
> >
> > So, I resurrected my rusty web design skills and came up with the
> layout
> > you find attached. I've tested it on IE 5.5, NS 4.78 and Moz 0.9.5
> on
> > win2k.
> >
> > Feedback, suggestions and criticisms are appreciated.
> 
> Ok, hope this is considered constructive criticism ;).

Of course.

> I really think that we, as a community that thrives on open standards
> like XML, should do our best to adhere to such standards. 

Oh, absolutely.

> I've tested
> your page with the W3C validator and it reports 43 conformance errors
> if
>   validated against the HTML 4.01 Transitional DTD and too many errors
> to count if validated against the XHTML 1.0 Transitional DTD.

Well, I didn't aim to XHTML compliance, so that doesn't surprise me.

> As I said before, this is intended to be constructive criticism, so I
> rolled up my sleeves and transformed it into a valid XHTML 1.0
> Transitional document. I even added the nice W3C validation logo ;).

Thanks for doing this.

> I've tested it on Mozilla 0.9.6 and Opera 6.0 beta on Linux. Mozilla
> is
> fine and Opera shows a little glitch that I think could be easily
> fixed,
> I just have no time at this momento to look after it. Sorry but I
> couldn't test it under IE 5/6 at the moment.
>
> What about NS4 and IE4 and earlier? Well ... read
> http://www.alistapart.com/stories/netscape/ then come back to talk
> about
> it (maybe off these lists if this is considered OT).

h, what do others think on this?
 
> Speaking of standards conformance, besides validation, I'd like to
> rewrite this page to use a more structural markup, take all
> stylistical
> attributes (colors, sizes, margins, etc.) to CSS, and refrain from
> using
> tables and spacer gifs for layout. More on this in the coming days, if
> I
> can find an hour or two to work on it.

As long as you achieve the same visual content and you don't sacrifice
portability, I'll be very happy to include your work and give proper
credits (of course) :)

-- 
Stefano Mazzocchi  One must still have chaos in oneself to be
  able to give birth to a dancing star.
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