Bye bye 2007 ... here comes 2008

[Matt Hogstrom <ma...@hogstrom.org>]

I came into my office today to go through the accumulation of stuff  
from this year and prepare for next year.  I guess it is inevitable  
but one generally tends to be a bit contemplative around this time of  
year.  Thinking about accomplishments, missed opportunities and the  
goals for next year and how much weight you gained and want to lose :)

2007 was a huge year for apache Geronimo.  Looking back to 2003 when  
the project was formed till now has seen a lot of change.  The project  
has seen people come and go, new twists on the server and expanding  
relationships with other projects.  Here are a few highlights (in no  
particular order):

Certified Apache Geronimo 2.0-M6 as a certified Java Enterprise  
Edition 5.0 container.  (have to pause for a second on that one)

Wow, everyone pulled together to do surgery on Geronimo and at the  
same time pull together code from other projects to make EE 5.0 a  
reality.  Here is a quick list of other Apache Projects we pulled in  
(forgive me for the ones I miss) MyFaces, Tomcat, OpenJPA, CXF, Axis2,  
Commons shtuffes, OpenEJB, ActiveMQ, Yoko and some others as well as  
non-apache projects whose help is very appreciated like Jetty.  In  
some cases I saw Geronimo committers get involved in other projects to  
help them with their certification efforts as well.  It was a tribute  
to the Apache Way how people pulled together to make this happen.   
There were so many contributions from folks it seems unfair to name  
names.

However, I'd like to recognize Dain for his significant contributions  
in Geronimo, OpenEJB, as well as his involvement in OpenJPA to pull  
all of this together to deliver a solution for EE 5.0. Even though 1.2  
never saw a release almost all of the code in that release defined new  
infrastructure for 2.0 and you can see it today in 2.0.x.

Also I'd be remiss in not recognizing the OpenEJB / Geronimo folks  
like Blevins for leading by example in getting a whole new EJB  
container written. As well as Jacek for his continued faithful  
involvement across projects and for causing me to scour the web for  
Polish phrases.

Dillon gets a mention for his whining and complaining at the rest of  
us and cleaning up our dog droppings around the build stuff.  Without  
Jason I know we wouldn't have made it sure we'd be where we are  
today.  Dillon even help automate some of our legal muck because of  
Kevan's constant whining.  Speaking about Kevan ...

Kevan (or shall I say Miller, Miller and Miller at Law) for his  
incessant pestering us for NOTICE file this and LICENSE file that.  It  
seems to me that we probably have one of the best release processes /  
legal coverage of any Apache project (of course I'm merely  
speculating :)  Apart from that Kevan did a huge amount of TCK work  
and debugged a bunch of memory leaks.

Talking about TCK I think Joe Bohn's eyes are bloodshot from running,  
monitoring and managing the TCK bits during our certification  
process.  I know from personal knowledge that Joe was busy as the  
servers he used sit in my basement.  Joe singlehandedly drove my  
electric bill up and also increased the temperature in my basement by  
at least 10 degrees.  Thanks Joe.

Gianny has been very active in terms of adding clustering  
functionality on to the server and I don't know how he manages to find  
the time to get this large set of work done; a magician by any measure.

Anita continued to move us forward in terms of improving the  
monitoring story in G as she worked and mentored a few folks into the  
Geronimo fold.  I'm not sure how she juggles family life and stays  
connected to Geronimo but I know we'd be hurting without her.  If  
memory serves me correctly she also did some work on fixing up the  
server to support multiple instances in a single file system.

Genender was a busy beaver this year working on Web Services around  
certification and spent a lot of time with the CXF folks.  I think he  
also added a new feature around Async HTTP stuff which is a neat  
feature G has that others don't.  He also worked on a plugin for  
Terracotta and other stuff.  How he continues to work while enjoying  
the view from his living room in Colorado I'll never know.

Jarek was another WebServices guy who did a lot of work with Axis and  
CXF and helped mentor new folks in like Lin Sun.  Jarek is like a  
bulldozer in ploughing through the muck and making beautiful things  
happen.  Thanks bubba.

Dims spent lots of time on the Geronimo side from Axis and working  
with the team to get the WebServices pieces going.  I know its hard to  
wear multiple hats and Dims wore them well.

Of course, who could forget Jencks.  David seemed to work on  
everything, get it completed and made the impossible seem possible.   
He's one of the few folks I know that is deep across a broad set of  
technologies; and humble to boot.

Donald Woods for discovering the security flaw before we released 2.0  
(I'm still not sure if I am happy about that :-).  Donald is a  
faithful follower of JIRAs and keeps us from falling behind.

Lin Sun joined us as a commiter this year (as did others) and worked a  
lot on the WebServices pieces.

Mr McHugh joined us as well and has been helpful to the team around  
EJB development and especially helpful to users.

Prasad has continued his involvement by adding test cases and support  
around Geronimo.  Always happy to help others and a great resource for  
Maven help.

McGuire continues to amaze me with his ORB prowess and general  
flexibility in EJB, core server, and other stuff.

Erik and Viet have been cranking on some cool new monitoring stuff  
based on DOJO and gives people a better view into what is happening in  
Geronimo.

McConnell did a lot of work on annotations and on the Eclipse Plugin.

Vamsi has been active on the user list and working on security related  
stuff as well.

Paul McMahan has been busy carving up the console and has a cool new  
framework for making console plugins available.  He also did some work  
with the MyFaces guys to help them get certified.

Apart from the people listed above (I know I've forgotten someone I  
just don't know who ;-0 )  we have lots of folks that use Geronimo,  
provide patches and give lots of good feedback.  Even on the items  
listed above, there is not one person who did all the work but it was  
the collection of the individuals that produce a single server that  
our users can build their applications on.

2007 was a significant year for Geronimo...we pulled out from behind  
other AppServer vendors and projects with a certified release.  We're  
ahead of the game.  That said, there are lots of opportunity for  
innovation in 2008 and I can't wait to see where we end up.

Here is congratulating everyone on a great year.  Wishing you an  
excellent holiday and looking forward to what comes next.

Matt