Joe Germuska wrote:
At 5:30 PM +0200 3/29/06, Jonathan Revusky wrote:
It has some clear implications too. No matter how you shake it, the
two things were technical *competitors*. Normally, the Struts people
should be about as happy to say that Webwork is better as to have a
tooth pulled. So if they say it...
Here you ascribe an outlook on things to "the Struts people" which
assumes that your motivations are theirs.
Frankly, this is inaccurate for me. I see open source software as
cooperative, not competitive, even between projects.
LOL.
Well, Joe, wouldn't a casual observer say that you are taking this
position because your team lost the technical competition?
Of course, you'd expect the losers to rationalize things saying it
wasn't *really* a competition. But the fact remains that projects in the
same space are competing to offer the most compelling solutions in their
application space. It should be a friendly, good-natured rivalry, yes.
But the logic and structure of this is one of competition.
It is a marketplace (more of ideas than money and so on) but a market of
sorts nonetheless and a market system is something with a logic and
structure of competition.
When Patrick and Jason wrote stuff like "Struts really sucks" and so on,
there was a clear sense that this was a competitive situation and they
were kind of throwing down the gauntlet.
I think Niall's answer to the question "why did Struts development
stagnate" is pretty much what I would say. I'm not doing this for
bragging rights, and it's not the only thing I like to do in my spare
time. I contribute when I can. If it helps anyone, that's great. As
far as I can tell it hasn't hurt anyone.
Well, in this case, there is the additional problem that Struts and
Webwork, while competing, as I say, were not competing on an even
playing field. This is why the Webwork people, despite having a much
better product, have far fewer users.
By bringing in Webwork and abandoning the existing Struts codebase, you
are accepting that all the people who are currently using Struts would
have been better off using Webwork. (I suggest that you not try to
attack this point, because it looks unassailable.)
So your assertion that "it hasn't hurt anyone" is quite debatable. By
leveraging the extra placement and visibility advantages of ASF to
promote an inferior body of work, you have been breathing the oxygen of
an innovative project that really was doing the real work of pushing
forward the state of the art.
Also note that the WebWork team is supporting this merger process. As
far as I know, none of them have vigorously objected, nor sworn to carry
on WebWork under its own name, etc. So perhaps there is another group
of developers whose motivations are not what you personally might guess
they are.
Well, they've made a Faustian sort of deal in order to get more
publicity for their work.
But if you think these guys like Patrick and Jason aren't ego-driven,
surely you're kidding yourself. Just as you'd be kidding yourself if you
think Craig, say, isn't extremely ego-driven. None of these people, as
far as I can see, make the slightest attempt even to hide it.
Of course, when the ego-driven people are forced to admit that their
work was inferior, then sure, they can then say that this isn't really a
competition, and they don't mind because they don't have egos and so on.
But, Joe, I think that, most poeple, in their heart of hearts, don't
believe this kind of line. It's a bunch of politically correct drivel
really. Get real.
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
FreeMarker group blog, http://freemarker.blogspot.com/
Joe
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