On 3/7/07, Matt Benson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
--- Niall Pemberton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 3/7/07, Matt Benson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > @Members: > > I have recently joined the development > > team of an OSS project, Morph, that captures the > > spirit of Jakarta commons-convert but where the > > convert project stagnated, Morph is a > well-evolved, > > though still not 100% complete, library whose > > development I feel would benefit greatly from The > > Apache Way and would make a worthy ASF project. > > Object conversion seems to be a woefully > under-served > > subject in the Java OSS space, despite the > ubiquity of > > the need for it (however well-hidden it may tend > to > > be) in enterprise Java development. I have > contacted > > a few of you personally already, but having > received > > no bites as yet I am widening my audience one last > > time before giving up on this. > > > > You can learn more about this library at: > > > > http://morph.sourceforge.net > > From looking at the "roles" document for incubator > the champion needs > to either be a member or on the Sponsoring PMC. Just > out of interest > do you have a plan for which PMC will sponsor - > incubator or maybe > Jakarta? Although you don't have to decide this > before entering the > incubator do the Morph developers have a preferred > destination if/when > they exit the incubator - e.g. their own TLP or part > of a project such > as Jakarta? Hi Niall-- Since having joined the Morph team I would consider myself to be its secondary-but-currently-most-active developer, with the primary developer being content for the time being to let me take the reins on the issue of incubation @ ASF. I go into this level of detail here so it will be clear that this answer is mine, but that I feel I am justified in giving an answer I am coming up with as I go along. Obviously some thought has already gone into what might become of Morph after a successful incubation. My feeling is that as a replacement for/significant evolution beyond commons-convert, the Jakarta commons might indeed be an appropriate home. Because Morph's feature set extends somewhat beyond the original scope of commons-convert, however, I could foresee that some might consider it more appropriate as a direct Jakarta subproject. In either case jurisdiction would belong to the same PMC, IIUC, so I think "under Jakarta" is a sufficiently detailed answer for the moment, subject of course to the approval of the Jakarta community. This explains my posting to general@ rather than [EMAIL PROTECTED] Additionally, I was operating from the perspective that a final destination is moot until a champion is found, though I did realize on some level that the likely destination within Apache could to some degree dictate the likely championship candidates.
As others have said ASF policy is for externally developed codebases to go through incubation. AFAIK though there are two possible routes - the "full incubation" route, or a "short form" to bring code straight into an existing project. This is what Commons Math did recently with the Mantissa contribution: http://incubator.apache.org/ip-clearance/index.html Whether this is appropriate for Morph is another question. As a general observation (and occasional BeanUtils committer) it seems to me that many of these types of libraries such as Commons BeanUtils[1], OGNL[2], Commons JEXL[3], Commons EL[4], Commons Convert[5] fail to attract a developer community larger than 1 or 2 and as such are always precariously only ever one step away from being inactive projects. Morph with 2 developers faces a similar challenge. Now maybe if you go for "full incubation" you'll attract a large enough community to prove this wrong and go TLP. I have to say I think its doubtful - since IMO these kind of libraries people want to use - but not work on. Jakarta Commons seems to have overcome to a certain extent the problem of getting 3 votes on projects with only 1 or 2 developers - with developers from other components "pitching in" to help get releases out. If you feel that Morph has a reasonable chance by going the "full incubation" route (and by that I mean meeting the "community" exit criteria) then most of the above is irrelevant. If you don't think it does then maybe the "short form" route into somewhere like Commons is worth exploring. One last point - the "short form" is just about code (not developers/community) - but with the Math Mantissa contribution Luc (the author) was voted in shortly after the code. I'm sure if Commons accepted Morph, then they would be equally keen to see Matt join as well to continue work on it. Niall [1] http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/beanutils/ [2] http://www.opensymphony.com/ognl/ [3] http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/jexl/ [4] http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/el/ [5] http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/sandbox/convert/
br, Matt > > Niall > > > Thanks, > > Matt
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