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Posted to dev@tomcat.apache.org by James Todd <ja...@eng.sun.com> on 1999/08/04 20:58:53 UTC
my perspective ...
hi -
due to a few recent and, in my opinion, extreme responses
to some of the proposals i've gleemed together and have
laid on the table for review as of late i would like to
explain my perspectives on life, well, jakarta. btw, i
had hoped that i wouldn't have to "defend" my stance on
such issues but none the less i'm doing this to put *all*
my cards on the table. that and the fact that i failed to
see the sort of constructive responses to my rebuttal i
had hoped for (eg what do we mean here, can we consider
this, should we do it differently) with which i could get
my teeth into to figure out how best to proceed.
i do work for sun yet my contributions on jakarta are
tuned towards "making the configuration, deployment and
development" of servlets and associated technologies "just
work" on the most platforms possible. the servlet api is
clean and well embraced. now, if we can just nail down the
development, configuration and deployment issues surrounding
and quite possibly holding servlets hostage life would be
oh so cool.
put another way, i am not a corporate *tool*, and as such,
i can't help but wonder if my proposals would've been met
in a different light had i posted from another and less
obvious email address. heck, i could be posting to tomcat-dev
as another alias acting as a compatriot or devils advocate.
well, i'm not. i don't do politics. i have basically built
the sort of critter i'm describing before and i can't believe
there are real reasons why a thin/remote service built upon
open standards is not the direction we should be heading ...
but, none the less, i'm very interested in other constructive
perspectives.
some folks want to do applets. i can see huge synergy with
such folks and much of the server side work i've done. some
folks are fans of really thin clients (html) which, if
desinged right, the very same service logic can serve both.
some folks are fans of java ... some aren't. this is an
implemenation detail but one which does have extreme merit
in my book ... and not just because of the domain name of
my email address. http is pretty powerful. people can share
data across a wide variety of systems. why can't services
do the same? that is the picture i'm trying to paint here.
pretty simple as i see it. where am i wrong? let's discuss
this constructively, have a beer or two and have some fun
along the way. good things are bound to happen with a
multitude of open and complimentary standards with which to
choose from.
back to the details, i can clearly see a configuration
service which relies on open standards followed by one
of many possible implementations. i personally am ready
to rock on the proto work ... tomcat is one hell'a proto
friendly little engine ... no offense ... just my opinion.
<wipingTearsFromEyes>
i'm going to rev the docs/diags accordingly, continue
to try and engage interested parties, drill down on
prototocol, api and message formats and consider proto'ing
some of these concept with tomcat (an implemenation but
not formally *the* implemenation).
</wipingTearsFromEyes>
hope this helps,
- james