[rant] the difference between a community and a software

[Stefano Mazzocchi <st...@apache.org>]

I started this project because xml.apache.org was sucking up almost all 
the ASF web bandwidth and stylebook (the tool used before) didn't have a 
community around.

Forrest *happens* to use Cocoon because that's what I knew and liked.

And uses Cocoon from the command line because I thought it was a cool 
thing to mix cocoon views with crawlers (a first taste of what power 
standardized URIs schemes could bring).

Forrest uses the Document DTD because that's what we came up with.

Forrest is a software and as a software is limited, like any other software.

Many people wrote that I consider Cocoon and friends sacred, holy and 
untouchable. That's BS. That's something people say when they have no 
more arguments. Do you seriously think there could be 20 developers on 
cocoon if I had a stupid code ownership problem?

I started Cocoon for something like Forrest. I choose the XML way. It 
grew bigger than I expected. The software? no, the community. So big, in 
fact, that the stylebook-like functionality was enough to start another 
project (forrest). And another community.

Oh, I would love to unify Forrest and Maven and Stylebook and all other 
documentation-generation efforts around Apache. But people have to be 
'respectful' of one another and about other choices.

I can hardly see this happening.

Maven and Forrest are full of people who disrespect the choices others 
did because they are so full of themselves to seriously think "you're 
wrong" without even considering the fact that maybe there is something 
more behind that they don't know about and might change their picture 
entirely.

The same could be said about Cocoon and Turbine.

Interesting enough, Jon and I get along so well in real life.... and no 
so well on email comunication. Could it be that the communities we 
started got that perception and built from there? I wonder.

Sure, Jon and I have different attitudes toward technology, but this is 
*value*, damn it. It becomes a problem *only* if we start lacking respect.

I hear people say "you're wrong" instead of "I think you might have a 
problem when you reach this and that stage", I hear people complain 
about 'element names of DTDs', I hear people complaining about speed and 
memory consumption... I wonder if they complained about speed and memory 
consumption of java back in '95.

I hear people trying to bring these communities to talk together, but 
with the "you must do this" attitude. How are you to tell somebody else 
what to use for their stuff? how in hell do you think you can know what 
they need and like?

Maven uses anakia, it's text based, it's light and fast. Great, it might 
be useful in those situations where lightness and speed is needed.

Forrest uses cocoon, it's xml based, it's heavy and slow but it can be 
run as a webapp, it can contain browser editing code, it has great 
support for multi-channeling and link-translation, it can use all cocoon 
components to connect to various things like databases and so on.

There is overlap between forrest and maven. Can this be reduced? 
factored out?

I don't know.

Do I care?

Well, no. In all honesty, I don't. I just wanted xml.apache.org to stop 
sucking and this project is helping doing that, I'm happy. Everything 
else is a plus.

But please, everyone, let's try to understand we are all part of the 
same family, just trying to do the same things with different ways. We 
sure have more to learn by keeping our eyes open, than by looking the 
other way "just because" your bikeshed happens to be painted with a 
color I don't like.

Arguing about technology is silly. There are much better ways to spend 
your time. Think about it.

-- 
Stefano Mazzocchi                               <st...@apache.org>
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Re: [rant] the difference between a community and a software

[Nicola Ken Barozzi <ni...@apache.org>]

Jeff Turner wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 19, 2002 at 03:11:05AM -0800, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
> ...
> [snip good stuff, except for the bit about arrogant bastards on
> forrest-dev which hits *far* too close to home:]
> 
> 
>>There is overlap between forrest and maven. Can this be reduced? 
>>factored out?
> 
> Is there overlap?
> 
> Certainly if you read dreams.xml, you get the impression there _should_
> be overlap, but practically, I don't see any.  Forrest docs can't even
> link to Javadocs yet.  The software landscape changed since dreams.xml
> was written, and it looks like Forrest's natural place is as a plugin to
> project management systems like Maven and Centipede.  Fine with me.

Yes, fine with me too... except that Maven does it's own documentation.

The overlap is ATM on the documentation system, and in the future it 
could grow. There are many projects in Apache that do basically the same 
things Maven does. The changelog stuff is an Ant task, if nobody yet 
understood it. And the code JXR is taken right from Alexandria, with the 
package names changed.

They could work with these projects and use them in a spirit of 
collaboration rather than assimilation.

*This* is where overlap occurs.

-- 
Nicola Ken Barozzi                   nicolaken@apache.org
             - verba volant, scripta manent -
    (discussions get forgotten, just code remains)
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [rant] the difference between a community and a software

[Jeff Turner <je...@apache.org>]

On Thu, Dec 19, 2002 at 03:11:05AM -0800, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
...
[snip good stuff, except for the bit about arrogant bastards on
forrest-dev which hits *far* too close to home:]

> There is overlap between forrest and maven. Can this be reduced? 
> factored out?

Is there overlap?

Certainly if you read dreams.xml, you get the impression there _should_
be overlap, but practically, I don't see any.  Forrest docs can't even
link to Javadocs yet.  The software landscape changed since dreams.xml
was written, and it looks like Forrest's natural place is as a plugin to
project management systems like Maven and Centipede.  Fine with me.


--Jeff