Hi, <off-topic>
This week I was looking for a JSP caching solution (something that is right up the alley for Stripes Layout) and discovered that there was a product with excellent features called OSCache whose feature set was in deep alignment with my project's requirements. I became dismayed when I looked at the last release and it was for 2.4.1 on 07/07/2007. Yes, that is 3 years ago. The 1st thing that came to mind is that this project is either a) incredibly mature (wishful thinking) or b) abandoned for some reason. Looking at benchmarks I discovered that the product throws exceptions on a cache miss... a bad practice... but worse a known bad practice that has been in the product for quite some time. Then I looked at the list of bugs and found 4 blocker bugs and at least 11 critical ones. I then went to the support forums which were said to be in the process of cut over in Nov of 2009 and the message was still there almost a year later; worse yet there had been literally no activity on the mailing list in the past few years. I emailed the admin and my concerns were founded. Moreover I looked at other solutions like ehCache, Java Caching, JSPCache, etc... and with the exception of ehCache and found that many were also discontinued. In fact, even though ehCache appears to be the defacto product it didn't suite my requirements anywhere near how OSCache did (their web caching support is extremely feature poor). I thought, here is this great product that despite its greatness has fallen. Before anyone can say well this is nothing new... remember BETA vs. VHS... I'll agree but there are stark differences with Open Source software... as quickly as Open Source projects pop up and gain inertia they can unfortunately fall from grace as equally fast. Also, *perception* is huge and moreover *perception* can kill an Open Source project very quickly if the *perception* is that the project isn't being evolved or may soon be on life support. </off-topic> Why do I go to great lengths to mention the above which has nothing to do with Stripes. Because I am concerned. I am concerned because there are *a few* current similarities between Stripes and OSCache but *perception* is key. In looking at Stripes development: --> 1.5.3 last svn update was December 16 2009 --> 1.5.4 Snapshot was progressing at a feverish clip until June 10, 2010 w/ a much hoped release that fizzled... --> Trunk (1.6.0) has 3 commits in the last year... meaning lots of fixes in 1.5.4 Snapshot still need to be ported to the trunk (which is fine as this can obviously wait until 1.5.4 launches but is a little surprising from an new feature / activity perspective). --> Luckily other than a blocker issue in 1.5.4 Snapshot (which isn't even released yet) there do not appear to be any other serious Critical bugs and although there are many Major bugs a lot of them don't appear to be as harmful as OSCache's race condition, synchronization issues, etc... so that is a very good thing. In looking at Stripes releases: --> Whether you like Maven or not one thing is for certain Maven will *spur* adoption and provides positive *perception* assuming the releases are kept up to date (very negative *perception* if releases are not recent). Stripes suffers from some negativity in this regard with 1.5.3 not being available... some time ago Ben was looking to setup Sonatype repo but that too fizzled... --> Although one can setup an Internal Maven repo quite easily... using any web server... it is the negative *perception* that hurts most. I think at very least this should be setup ASAP and 1.5.3 should be made available via Maven (w/ site + doc links updated). In looking at Stripes mailing list there is a trickle in the developer list (if any) in any given month and the user mailing list has low volume. The good news though is that the community does still respond to questions or calls for help in a very timely manner. What spurred this post was *perception*; *perception* of OSCache, my recent fun with 1.5.4 Snapshot nested Stripes Layouts, 1.6.x future development and finally Grzegorz's post which in part read as follows: Grzegorz Krugły wrote: > I work with stripes on glassfish a lot, so could be able to fix/text > some gf-related bugs for sure. When I have some spare time, I'll also > look over the ticket list on Jira, perhaps I could offer my work on some > of them. > > Best regards, > Grzegor I think *many* more developers need to step up to the table and start helping with Stripes fixes and ongoing development otherwise I'm afraid this project like many open source projects I have seen over the last few years may end up like OSCache... a wonderful product but one that simply lost its inertia and then most likely fell victim to *perception*. My *perception* of Stripes is that it is a great product but I think we all can agree that *perception* of its development and future is lacking. This is not so much a *criticism* as much as it as *observation* as clearly nobody is being paid money to provide their time (of course rewards come in many flavours :-) Personally, at this time I have zero spare cycles to assist directly in fixes unless they are show stoppers but hope later this year to offer my services as well. In the interim, as I continue to leverage Stripes for a large project, I hope that those experiences and incorporation there can help makes Stripes a better product... through reporting issues, testing fixes, providing workarounds, etc... and possibly producing patches. What does the community think? How can we improve things for all? Comments / ideas??? ASIDE: One thing that isn't clear (to me at least) is how does someone go about getting involved to directly contribute to Stripes development? i.e. how can Grzegorz or I get involved when we are available... . Regards, --Nikolaos ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.net Dev2Dev email is sponsored by: Show off your parallel programming skills. Enter the Intel(R) Threading Challenge 2010. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-thread-sfd _______________________________________________ Stripes-users mailing list Stripes-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/stripes-users
