Henning P. Schmiedehausen wrote:
Daniel Dekany <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
[...]
exaggeration toward positive direction. Of course Velocity is not
(directly) interested in money, but still the "managers" of it will feel
desire to achieve success by having as big users base as possible. And
Up to that paragraph I thought that you might understand it. Sorry,
but no. You missed the point completely. Please re-read
http://www.apache.org/foundation/faq.html
<sigh>
I'm really getting very tired of this nonsense. Really, I am. But I also
feel that somebody just has to call your bluff. (That's all the above
is, right?)
So... What is it that Daniel does not understand? Which of the 19 points
in the ASF FAQ that you reference above are you referring to?
As for re-reading that, I did not re-read it since I had never read it
in the first place. OTOH, I have now read through it and I do not
understand your point.
Is this not just the "emperor's new clothes" playbook where you
insistently wave your hands and insist that the person does not
understand when he points out that the emperor is naked?
Anyway, I don't understand, and apparently Daniel doesn't either. So you
should explain. Which of the 19 points of the FAQ are you referring to
and how is it relevant to what we are discussing?
The ASF and all its projects are not about "size of user base". They
are about community. We actually don't really care about _the size_ of
our user base. We care about _our user base_.
That is odd. As I said, I have kept an eye on this community off and on,
and the contempt with which I have seen committers treat people has, on
occasion, made me cringe.
When asked explicitly whether there were any plans for further
development, one of the committers of the time, I believe it was Daniel
Rall, simply answered that, since Velocity did everything he needed, he
saw no need for further development. That anybody else might have needs
and that the community should consider them simply did not occur to him.
During the endless debate on decimal numbers, I distinctly recall Jon
"Monkey see, monkey do" Stevens replying to somebody that he was free to
create a forked version. IIRC, that somebody was one Peter Romianowski,,
who had offered the community a patch that implemented decimal number
support. Various other people definitely had expressed that they needed
the functionality, and, AFAICT really, incorporating Peter's patch did
not impose any burden on existing users who might not need it.
Our goal is that they are satisfied with what comes out of the ASF and
that they can actively participate in ASF projects. The fact that this
kind of behaviour tends to flock large user bases is duely noticed and
the reason for this is IMHO purely non-technical. But it is not
intentional, it is merely a side-effect.
In a recent note foreshadowing all the goodies that may be available in
the next Velocity release, Will mentioned map literals. I believe that
Will was referring to a patch that some guy offered in 2002 IIRC. Will
can correct me if I'm wrong, but I infer that he had in fact been
reviewing all the patches that have been piling all these years and came
across the map literal thing. Apparently the guy who contributed the
patch needed this functionality, went through the bother of implementing
it in code and contributing it and his contribution was ignored. (Until
now, 3 years later. Okay, you guys do move slowly, you say, but is this
reasonable?)
This is also underlined by the fact that even though some of the
projects inside of the ASF might be perceived as being "technically
inferior" or "not up to par" to other projects, they still thrive and
are often considered "industry standard". Struts or Tomcat as examples
from the Java world. The http daemon as an example of a non-Java
project.
Look, there are people out there who think that a project must be good
because it comes from ASF. Similarly there were obviously enough people
out there who thought that somebody would be a good president because
his last name is "Bush". People make all kinds of suboptimal decisions
for incredibly superficial reasons.
Things perceived to have a kind of brand name associated or to be some
kind of standard with it have a big advantage. Part of that is
visibility, and another part is that it is an easier sell to management.
Even people who are not very knowledgeable about anything technical
will have likely heard of the Apache Web Server. Even though none of the
Jakarta stuff has anything to do with that, there is a kind of coattails
effect.
However, the idea that these ASF communities attend better to their user
base is really utterly laughable. They have, on the contrary, a much
greater tendency to treat users in a contemptuous arrogant manner than
other open source communities.
If the committers fail to build and keep a community, then at some
point the PMC and the board step in. This has happened in the past
(Avalon) and it might happen again in the future. But this has nothing
to do with user base (Avalon was (and is) a hugely popular project at
the time the board decided to pull the plug).
I was unaware of this. Was Avalon in even worse shape than Velocity? Or
is it just that the situation came to the attention of certain people
and the situation here has not come to their attention?
I know that for someone who is a total "I got more downloads than
them" junkie, this is hard to understand or even ludicrous. But once
you got your mind wrapped around the concept, you will see, why many
Apache projects continue at a leisurely pace, don't add the "feature
of the day" or don't release every two weeks. Because this behaviour
tends to disrupt community. Most of the ASF projects (and especially
the successful ones) don't have a "fearless leader who leads the flock
through the night". They have a small to medium group of individuals
who might clash but continue on consensus. It might be slower but is
much less susceptible to personal power trips.
On another thing:
Can we please have an understanding, that this is the users list of
the Velocity project of the Jakarta project of the Apache Software
Foundation. It is intended as a forum where Velocity users can discuss
about Velocity and ask questions and the contributors and committers
try to answer these questions. It is _not_ an advocacy forum or a list
to discuss if there are different solutions for the problem space that
Velocity lives in. It is also not a feature comparisation or product
promotion forum. There are general and advocacy lists inside the ASF
where this behaviour is tolerated and even encouraged.
I would very much appreciate if you (and according to
http://www.freemarker.org/whoWeAre.html you are one of the core people
on that project even if you tend to neglect that fact when writing
here) and other people would keep the charter of this list, which is
to either ask questions about Velocity or to help users answering
questions about Velocity.
So I'm looking forward to you either asking questions about Velocity
or help Velocity people out to solve their problems.
When I replied to your post about the Development status of this
project, it was quite definitely about Velocity. You were claiming that
this project was being actively maintained and developed. I knew your
statement to be false. Most other people, I infer, knew that you were
not telling the truth, which is why hardly anybody leapt to your defense
in that spot.
I can see why you would not like me pointing it out, but it was
definitely right and proper for me to point out that you were not
telling the truth.
If you won't do either of it or if you are not interested in helping
Velocity users out,
If I tell a Velocity user who wants a feature that does not exist in
Velocity that said feature exists in FreeMarker, I am helping them out
by providing them potentially useful information.
Since, as you state, you don't care about growing your user base, you
should not mind my telling them this. In any case, if you don't want me
pointing out that FreeMarker has a given feature that Velocity lacks,
then implement the feature in question. Then, since my statements
(unlike some people's) are invariably good-faithed and truthful, I will
not be able to say that Velocity lacks said feature and point people to
FreeMarker.
In other words, you guys should walk the walk.
In any case, as long as my messages are relevant to the topic on hand --
let's say the Jython integration messages as a recent case in point --
and they are factual, I do not think you have any grievance. It may be
that these factual statements tend to cast Velocity and the development
efforts (or lack thereof) of your community in a bad light, but the
proper way to address that is by working on Velocity, not by trying to
muzzle people who are making truthful statements.
Jonathan Revusky
--
FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
then I would like you to question the reasons why
you are subscribed to this list. If you just want to keep up to date
with the state of this project, then I'd rather point you to our mail
list archives.
Best regards
Henning
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