On Sun, Jun 8, 2014 at 10:46 PM, Hin-Tak Leung <[email protected]> wrote: > Others: I got the impression that the current java binding is unmaintained > and unmaintainable - please correct me if I am wrong.
Which facts are the base of this rather harsh impression? I am rather puzzled by this comment (that you happen to have mixed with some unrelated student feedback) and your other comments below. > That said, there are > possibly lessons to be learned from "what not to do", so I think it would > be useful to open the floor for discussion about the current status > of the java binding, what is good about it, what are the tools/functionalities > available, and what are the "unfixable" problems, etc. Again, which facts do you base these comments on? For one thing did you actually install and used this java library? What issues did you encounter if any? Did you happen to report them on this list or as bugs? > I also got the impression that some assume a re-write (or an alternative > implementation) would be better. My sentiments are probably summarised in > somebody else's writing (http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html); or that > something adopted > in GSoC would automatically get done, and get done well by a lot of > experienced people. Neither are the cases. What is your impression based on? What are you trying to say exactly? > Realistically, we should get "3-months x 2" of work from two smart students, > by the end of the summer, that would be 2 additional language bindings; how > much > that would engage contributions from the non-students, or other parties, > we'll have to see. The best case scenario would be some useable work > to base further work on by the end of the summer. It is unlikely > to replace existing work/usage wholesale after 6-student-man-months, however. Yes, so what? > Based on past experience, it is unrealistic to expect the student to > continue much beyond the summer - school work, or "getting a real job", etc > tend to come in. I have had one student who stated such honestly > ('cannot see himself spending much time beyond'), and came back > about 5 years later asking for another GSoC job - some countries have > very long student lives - but that's rare. So 3-month is 3-month, > please don't wishful-think that it will be a life-long dedicated commitment. > It isn't. Again, so what? has anybody expressed any such "wishful-think" here ? > Also, the failure rate of GSoC is about 10-15% overall, and quite > similiar in the linux foundation unbrella. About 1 in about 8 projects > does not pass mid-way evaluation, or the final evaluation. > Sometimes it is just "no show", student disappearing after > the first payment, sometimes it is just excuses after excuses, > or a lot of grand planning/design mission statements, without > a single line of code to show; sometimes it is getting bog > down to other things - e.g. a fictious scenario where the > student spending a few weeks playing with git server > configurations not essential to the work and/or could be > solved in a few hours just by asking the right > person/mailing-list, etc. To be honest, there are probably > far more unsatisfactory projects than that 10-15%, > mostly because mentors are reluctant to stop a "free" > student from "possibly" contributing, even if all the signs > are not good. So we may not necessarily have 2 useable new > bindings by the end of the summer. Do we have any sign of such issues *here* and not in general? Not that I know of. I am rather puzzled by the purpose -if any- of your comments and your lack of enthusiasm. I am a long time GSOC "veteran" mentor and my multiple experiences seem quite different from your negative ones. -- Cordially Philippe Ombredanne _______________________________________________ Spdx-tech mailing list [email protected] https://lists.spdx.org/mailman/listinfo/spdx-tech
