On Mar 14, 2006, at 10:25 PM, Frank W. Zammetti wrote:
JSF is a way for a lot of people to make money. Many vendors have a stake in its "commercial" success or failure. This has been true from the beginning. Some would say the whole point of JSF from the start was to make money for one company, and eventually a lot of other companies. Incidentally, I'm a happy capitalist, I therefore have no problem whatsoever with that! I just like that fact not being denied, and I for one do see it as fact. Contrast this with how something like Struts began, which came straight from the idealism you speak of, a desire to help a community, a desire by one developer to create something that not only helped themselves but helped others. I think that is a wonderful motivation. And that may have been that same developers' motivation with JSF as well, but I to this day do not believe it was the motivation of the larger entities involved.
I find it ironic that people are bemoaning JSF for its commercial interests. First, I seem to remember sometime between 2001 and 2003 there were a lot of people asking "When is Struts going to become a JSR?". So, for the moment let's just pretend that the motivation for JSR-127 was to standardize an MVC framework. By the time JSR-127 was introduced we were already discussing the things we'd do differently in version 2 of Struts. Surely we didn't think the output of JSR-127 would be Struts as we knew it then. Surely we wouldn't have been happy if it had.
Second, look at who is represented on the Expert Group for JSR-127. Why would companies like Oracle, Borland, IBM, Macromedia, BEA, HP, etc. bother to participate in a such project if they weren't protecting their own interests? Just look at how many tool-makers are present among the expert group. Is it any wonder the resulting spec brings them the opportunity to cash in? That's not even to mention all the other community-driven framework options that were in play when JSF was under development. Personally, I think the resulting framework is not too bad considering. I would've liked the Struts worldview to have been better represented - or maybe I am saying the "tool-less" developer's worldview. But given all the players, I'm not surprised or disappointed with what we have.
Now, directly to your point of commercial interests. You say "JSF is a way for a lot of people to make money." What is Java? Do you think Sun developed Java as a "love offering" to the developer community? Why do any of these organizations exist? For that matter, why do I develop software? Is it because I've found the meaning of life or simply because it's better than working at a rendering plant? Well, for me it's somewhere in the middle. But for organizations like Sun, Oracle, or BEA, it's all about the economics. I'm not talking about the individuals that work at these companies. I'm talking about the organizations themselves. At the organizational level, they are solely about increasing financial gain. And I'm not saying that's bad. If they weren't they would quickly go out of business. People start companies to grow business. People start non-profit organizations (like ASF) for the betterment of mankind. So I guess I find the argument of commercial interests to be completely irrelevant.
I like some aspects of JSF and I dislike others. For some tasks I find it vastly superior to Struts. For others I find it difficult to use. Now *maybe* if JSF was developed in a community instead of a committee it would be less intrusive and more useful. But that's one of the reasons I have hope for Shale. It starts with the foundation of the JSF standard. It then builds on the foundation in a community- centric way and that has the possibility of resulting in something very useful.
Greg --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
