wsrp4j code activity (lack thereof)

[Jason Novotny <no...@aei.mpg.de>]

Hi all,

    In trying to assess the viability of wsrp4j in the long term I used 
statcvs to generate code metrics and posted them here:

http://cvs.gridsphere.org/stats/wsrp4j/

(I have a bunch of other projects as well-- for real development 
activity check out Sun's reference implementation of JSF at 
http://cvs.gridsphere.org/stats/jsf/)

    I used the cvs repository 
":pserver:anoncvs@cvs.apache.org:/home/cvspublic" is this correct?

    Based on the graph, it doesn't look like the project has been doing 
much. It's a shame since the WSRP spec. seems like a good idea, but it 
turns out there's very little interoperability between various portal's 
producers and consumers from various tests and people I've spoken with. 
I'm not trying to send a flame here, but I'm becoming increasingly 
convinced that WSRP might simply be a lot of hype with very little 
practical consequence for those trying to deploy real-world portal 
solutions today. I'd like to know more from the official supporters of 
the project (and others) what their thoughts are. It's too bad since 
we're all looking at WSRP4J as the only game in town for an open source 
implementation and I've been hoping to make use of this codebase for 
well over a year now and I see very little has changed and filed bugs 
still have yet to be fixed. I guess unless IBM, Sun and other vendors 
can pump the necessary amount of money into funding developers on these 
projects, it's just too hard for it to become usable :-(
    On a positive note, kudos to some of the mail list people for 
jumping in, answering questions and rekindling my own excitement on 
OSS.. always need more of this.

   Cheers, Jason

Re: wsrp4j code activity (lack thereof)

[Jason Novotny <no...@aei.mpg.de>]

Julie MacNaught wrote:

>
>> It's a shame since the WSRP spec. seems like a good idea, but it 
>> turns out there's very little interoperability between various 
>> portal's producers and consumers from various tests and people I've 
>> spoken with. 
>
>
> Oracle, Sun, IBM, NetUnity, and BEA have each implemented an 
> interoperability portal that incorporates portlets from eachother. The 
> IBM servier is currently unavailable, so the WSRP4J portlets don't 
> work because they were hosted there.  Take a look at NetUnity's to 
> start. 
> http://www.netunitysoftware.com/e/e.dll?Function=Portal&Site=Resources
> Interoperability is alive and well in the WSRP vendor space.


    Thanks-- that looks very useful especially for proving 
interoperability between .NET and java based portals.

>
>> I'm not trying to send a flame here, but I'm becoming increasingly 
>> convinced that WSRP might simply be a lot of hype with very little 
>> practical consequence for those trying to deploy real-world portal 
>> solutions today. I'd like to know more from the official supporters 
>> of the project (and others) what their thoughts are. It's too bad 
>> since we're all looking at WSRP4J as the only game in town for an 
>> open source implementation and I've been hoping to make use of this 
>> codebase for well over a year now and I see very little has changed 
>> and filed bugs still have yet to be fixed. I guess unless IBM, Sun 
>> and other vendors can pump the necessary amount of money into funding 
>> developers on these projects, it's just too hard for it to become 
>> usable :-(
>>    On a positive note, kudos to some of the mail list people for 
>> jumping in, answering questions and rekindling my own excitement on 
>> OSS.. always need more of this.
>
>
> Open source is not about hoping IBM and Sun will do all the work. It's 
> an opportunity for all who care to participate.  WSRP4J will not 
> graduate from the incubator until a broader community (i.e. besides 
> IBMers) is working and functional.
>
    I agree with you however, I don't really believe many of these 
reference implementations and compliance toolkits would get off the 
ground if it were not for folks at Sun and IBM getting paid to develop 
and support this software. The majority of users, I wager to guess, are 
hoping to lift the fruits of your labor and use it to meet their own 
customer's needs and contributions, patches and support are seen by them 
as secondary. The other classification of users seems to be master's 
students working on their theses ;-)

> Today I met with several folks who are excited about using WSRP4J in 
> the higher education domain with uPortal, and I am very optimistic 
> about its future.

    That sounds great  but once again I'd like to point out that 
Jetspeed 2 and uPortal are both also basing their portlet 
implementations on Pluto (also contributed largely by IBM). So once 
again, that's not very exciting to me since we already know that WSRP4J 
and Pluto are already well integrated, in fact too much so as I've been 
arguing. I'll definitely be a lot more interested in Mike's 
contributions from Liferay.

    Thanks, Jason

Re: wsrp4j code activity (lack thereof)

[Julie MacNaught <jm...@apache.org>]

> It's a shame since the WSRP spec. seems like a good idea, but it 
> turns out there's very little interoperability between various portal's 
> producers and consumers from various tests and people I've spoken with. 

Oracle, Sun, IBM, NetUnity, and BEA have each implemented an interoperability portal that incorporates portlets from eachother. The IBM servier is currently unavailable, so the WSRP4J portlets don't work because they were hosted there.  Take a look at NetUnity's to start. http://www.netunitysoftware.com/e/e.dll?Function=Portal&Site=Resources
Interoperability is alive and well in the WSRP vendor space.

> I'm not trying to send a flame here, but I'm becoming increasingly 
> convinced that WSRP might simply be a lot of hype with very little 
> practical consequence for those trying to deploy real-world portal 
> solutions today. I'd like to know more from the official supporters of 
> the project (and others) what their thoughts are. It's too bad since 
> we're all looking at WSRP4J as the only game in town for an open source 
> implementation and I've been hoping to make use of this codebase for 
> well over a year now and I see very little has changed and filed bugs 
> still have yet to be fixed. I guess unless IBM, Sun and other vendors 
> can pump the necessary amount of money into funding developers on these 
> projects, it's just too hard for it to become usable :-(
>    On a positive note, kudos to some of the mail list people for jumping 
> in, answering questions and rekindling my own excitement on OSS.. always 
> need more of this.

Open source is not about hoping IBM and Sun will do all the work. It's an opportunity for all who care to participate.  WSRP4J will not graduate from the incubator until a broader community (i.e. besides IBMers) is working and functional.

Today I met with several folks who are excited about using WSRP4J in the higher education domain with uPortal, and I am very optimistic about its future. 

-- 
Julie MacNaught
IBM Research
jmacna@apache.org
jmacna@us.ibm.com
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