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Posted to dev@commonsrdf.apache.org by Sergio Fernández <wi...@apache.org> on 2016/05/27 09:43:28 UTC
future of commons rdf?
Hi all,
once we got over the 0.2.0-incubating milestone, I think it's time to
meditate what's the future of Commons RDF...
FMPOV it's clear that we're far away from where we wanted to be when we
started this journey of incubation. Many reasons to explain why: the
incubation overhead, the discussions, the different personal/professional
priorities, key people withdraws, etc. Which in the end is all normal.
But that's part of the past, we have to look to the present. And if I look
to our team I can only count two active contributors Stian and myself),
which is clearly not enough to help the major toolkits (Apache Jena and
Eclipse RDF4J) to converge towards a commons API; we clearly lost the
timing on that (Jena 3.x is out there for quite a while and RDF4J's first
milestones came out last week).
So I'd like to make a straight question to all our community: what do we
want to do with the project?
If I'm honest, currently I'm more about retiring the podling than continue,
but you may have a different point of view... and I'd live to hear it.
--
Sergio Fernández
Partner Technology Manager
Redlink GmbH
m: +43 6602747925
e: sergio.fernandez@redlink.co
w: http://redlink.co
Re: future of commons rdf?
Posted by Andreas Harth <an...@harth.org>.
Hi Stian,
On 05/31/16 17:59, Stian Soiland-Reyes wrote:
> Thanks Andreas! This looks very promising. How long are you committed
> to staying on Java 7..? :)
we've just switched from 1.6. A lot of servers and mobile phones do not
support 1.8.
> I'm also interested in your views on my proposed Quad & Dataset support:
>
> https://github.com/apache/incubator-commonsrdf/pull/19
I'll have to have a look. Right now we model context/graph names using
internal Java objects, as we do elaborate provenance tracking.
> and also relevant - how we can make a general interface for parsing
> and writing? (I can look closer at NxParser interfaces perhaps)
>
> https://github.com/apache/incubator-commonsrdf/pull/21
Using other people's parsers was a key motivation for looking into
commons-rdf. But I'm happy with commons-rdf right now... "a little
agreement is better than no agreement", as danbri says.
Cheers,
Andreas.
Re: future of commons rdf?
Posted by Stian Soiland-Reyes <st...@apache.org>.
Thanks Andreas! This looks very promising. How long are you committed
to staying on Java 7..? :)
I'm also interested in your views on my proposed Quad & Dataset support:
https://github.com/apache/incubator-commonsrdf/pull/19
and also relevant - how we can make a general interface for parsing
and writing? (I can look closer at NxParser interfaces perhaps)
https://github.com/apache/incubator-commonsrdf/pull/21
On 31 May 2016 at 13:21, Sergio Fernández <wi...@apache.org> wrote:
> On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 1:32 PM, Andreas Harth <an...@harth.org> wrote:
>>
>> FWIW, we have started to add the commons-rdf interfaces in NxParser [1],
>> after removing the Java 1.8 stuff since we're only at 1.7.
>
>
> That's really cool, Andreas!
>
> Please, let us know any feedback from NxParser implementation to feed
> future decisions on our API.
>
> --
> Sergio Fernández
> Partner Technology Manager
> Redlink GmbH
> m: +43 6602747925
> e: sergio.fernandez@redlink.co
> w: http://redlink.co
--
Stian Soiland-Reyes
Apache Taverna (incubating), Apache Commons
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9842-9718
Re: future of commons rdf?
Posted by Sergio Fernández <wi...@apache.org>.
On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 1:32 PM, Andreas Harth <an...@harth.org> wrote:
>
> FWIW, we have started to add the commons-rdf interfaces in NxParser [1],
> after removing the Java 1.8 stuff since we're only at 1.7.
That's really cool, Andreas!
Please, let us know any feedback from NxParser implementation to feed
future decisions on our API.
--
Sergio Fernández
Partner Technology Manager
Redlink GmbH
m: +43 6602747925
e: sergio.fernandez@redlink.co
w: http://redlink.co
Re: future of commons rdf?
Posted by Andreas Harth <an...@harth.org>.
Hi,
On 05/31/16 12:40, Stian Soiland-Reyes wrote:
> On 31 May 2016 at 11:01, Andy Seaborne <an...@apache.org> wrote:
>
>> The "supply" side is doing OK. There are releases. Sticking to a stable API
>> is necessary to show it's ready.
>
> Yes. Still some got scared by 0.x and "incubator". So we also need to
> formalize the stability.
FWIW, we have started to add the commons-rdf interfaces in NxParser [1],
after removing the Java 1.8 stuff since we're only at 1.7.
Cheers,
Andreas.
[1] https://github.com/nxparser/nxparser/tree/commons-rdf
Re: future of commons rdf?
Posted by Stian Soiland-Reyes <st...@apache.org>.
On 31 May 2016 at 11:01, Andy Seaborne <an...@apache.org> wrote:
> The "supply" side is doing OK. There are releases. Sticking to a stable API
> is necessary to show it's ready.
Yes. Still some got scared by 0.x and "incubator". So we also need to
formalize the stability.
> The "demand" side is weak.
> Discuss what it is not, not just what it is.
> Why does anyone need (not "want") a portability layer?
> Is it for using two systems at the same time or one at a time?
> Is it for new development or for fitting to existing applications?
> What are its advantages over other approaches? (what's its niche?)
> etc etc.
Thanks Andy, I think these are important questions.
For me, one advantage of Commons RDF is that it is very narrow - so
when making APIs such as
https://taverna.incubator.apache.org/javadoc/taverna-language/org/apache/taverna/scufl2/annotation/AnnotationTools.html
..then I don't want to send downstream users (who might not know much
about RDF) straight into Jena or Sesame's comprehensive APIs - yet I
want to allow them to use those if they want to. I want to make it
easy to read or write just a tiny bit of RDF without learning a
framework.
Framework independence is also a good thing - not having to force
(particular versions of) the frameworks onto the classpath of
downstream users, giving flexibility to change implementation for
performance or compatibility reasons, but of course there's the danger
of slf4j/log4j/commonslogging multiple layering here as we're not
alone in that sphere.
For instance I am (somewhat) maintaining a perhaps messy application I
inherited that is tied to a very old version of Sesame - and I want to
update it to say get support for JSON-LD, but I would also want to try
Jena's StreamRDF mechanism and see how I can parse multiple files
concurrently. Currently I'm forced to choose which "update" path I go
down, or pick a new "outer" framework like Clerezza, but with Commons
RDF I can make the majority of the application deal with regular IRIs
and Triples using Commons RDF API, and just change the code that
parses files to see if I can get a parsing performance boost or use
new file formats. So that would be "one at a time" approach for an
existing application.
As Commons RDF have invested a lot in cross-framework support (e.g. in
terms of equality), our potential is to be used as a bridge whenever
an application for some reason needs to combine multiple frameworks
(e.g. combining two libraries which made independent framework
choices) - e.g. avoid things like serializing from Sesame to a
ByteArray stream just to parse it again in Jena within the same JVM
process. Perhaps not being able to demonstrate this yet, we have not
been promoting this feature enough.
Yet we have not seen much interest in that - the discussion with
potential contributors on our lists have focused on the more exotic
topics, e.g. generalizing RDF onto any JVM class structure, or having
an API that is easy to use across JVM languages. This line of inquiry
- while very interesting, was at odds of the original "one set of
interfaces to rule them all" approach and perhaps dismissed a bit too
easily - but this is perhaps also difficult to achieve for a narrow
Commons component with few committers.
--
Stian Soiland-Reyes
Apache Taverna (incubating), Apache Commons
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9842-9718
Re: future of commons rdf?
Posted by Andy Seaborne <an...@apache.org>.
I see this in terms of "supply" and "demand".
The "supply" side is doing OK. There are releases. Sticking to a stable
API is necessary to show it's ready.
The "demand" side is weak.
Discuss what it is not, not just what it is.
Why does anyone need (not "want") a portability layer?
Is it for using two systems at the same time or one at a time?
Is it for new development or for fitting to existing applications?
What are its advantages over other approaches? (what's its niche?)
etc etc.
Andy
On 31/05/16 10:25, Sergio Fern�ndez wrote:
> OK, I see all those points... Probably the initial goal of Commons RDF was
> to ambitious; specially taking into account it always was a side-project
> for all of us.
>
> But I do see the future of the project as a more compact component in
> Apache Commons. There with time we may be able to reach smaller goals that
> help other Apache project (e.g. Marmotta or Any23). Should we start to
> define more concretely that path?
>
> BTW, in parallel we have to prepare our June report, I'll prepare a draft.
>
>
> On Sun, May 29, 2016 at 9:01 PM, Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I've not gotten into the code as I am not a SME but as long as the _goal_
>> of the component are clearly defined, I think other Commons and Apache
>> developers can come in and out as they see fit.
>>
>> So long as there is movement and discussions on where to go next, I would
>> support that.
>>
>> Gary
>>
>> On Sat, May 28, 2016 at 2:40 AM, Benedikt Ritter <br...@apache.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello Sergio,
>>>
>>> Sergio Fern�ndez <wi...@apache.org> schrieb am Fr., 27. Mai 2016 um
>>> 11:44 Uhr:
>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> once we got over the 0.2.0-incubating milestone, I think it's time to
>>>> meditate what's the future of Commons RDF...
>>>>
>>>> FMPOV it's clear that we're far away from where we wanted to be when we
>>>> started this journey of incubation. Many reasons to explain why: the
>>>> incubation overhead, the discussions, the different
>> personal/professional
>>>> priorities, key people withdraws, etc. Which in the end is all normal.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Let me first express some of my observations and feelings regarding the
>>> development of Commons RDF.
>>>
>>> I've always only been kind of a spectator in this project. I see Apache
>>> Commons as a platform for other projects to come together and share code.
>>> This is why I wanted Commons RDF to become part of Apache Commons from
>> the
>>> beginning. However I always had the problem that RDF felt like a very
>>> special topic to me. At my company I built enterprise applications and I
>>> never had a use case for Commons RDF. I think this was a problem from the
>>> very beginning. People just don't know RDF and that's why this project
>>> never built a wider community.
>>>
>>> I have thought a lot whether it was a good move to force Commons RDF to
>> go
>>> through the incubator. We had a hand full of Apache people on board as
>> well
>>> as people who know other open communities. The incubator feels like a too
>>> heavy burden for a small project that has the Apache way and IP already
>>> figured out. This is why we accepted Commons Crypto directly into Commons
>>> instead of forcing them to go through the incubator. My feeling is that
>>> Commons Crypto benefited from the adoption by Apache Commons. So who
>> knows,
>>> maybe Commons RDF would have a much bigger community by now if it had not
>>> to go through the incubator.
>>>
>>> Some words about the (small) community: I realized that there where heavy
>>> discrepancies among community members, but I could not take party in the
>>> arguments because I simply don't know RDF. It's sad that we could not
>> find
>>> a common ground but I think this has something to do with fundamentally
>>> different opinions about how RDF should be modeled in Java. It's probably
>>> not possible to reach consensus in such a situation. It's a pity that
>>> several people left in the end.
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> But that's part of the past, we have to look to the present. And if I
>>> look
>>>> to our team I can only count two active contributors Stian and myself),
>>>> which is clearly not enough to help the major toolkits (Apache Jena and
>>>> Eclipse RDF4J) to converge towards a commons API; we clearly lost the
>>>> timing on that (Jena 3.x is out there for quite a while and RDF4J's
>> first
>>>> milestones came out last week).
>>>>
>>>> So I'd like to make a straight question to all our community: what do
>> we
>>>> want to do with the project?
>>>>
>>>> If I'm honest, currently I'm more about retiring the podling than
>>> continue,
>>>> but you may have a different point of view... and I'd live to hear it.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I'm very happy to see that you (= the Commons RDF) community have
>>> integrated into the Apache Commons community. You take part in
>> discussions
>>> about general matters of Apache Commons. This is important, because
>> Apache
>>> Commons is not a community of subcommunities, but a community maintaining
>>> several independent components. I think we can propose to graduate
>> Commons
>>> RDF to Apache Commons for the following reasons:
>>>
>>> - Commons RDF had 2 successful releases. (Imaging and Functor, while
>>> already proper components never had a release)
>>> - several people are interested in the code
>>> - the members of the Commons RDF community have started to feel part of
>>> Apache Commons
>>> - Commons RDF still is a project that can be used by other Apache
>> projects.
>>>
>>> So if you guys want to take this to the next level, you'll have my
>> support.
>>>
>>> Benedikt
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Sergio Fern�ndez
>>>> Partner Technology Manager
>>>> Redlink GmbH
>>>> m: +43 6602747925
>>>> e: sergio.fernandez@redlink.co
>>>> w: http://redlink.co
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> E-Mail: garydgregory@gmail.com | ggregory@apache.org
>> Java Persistence with Hibernate, Second Edition
>> <http://www.manning.com/bauer3/>
>> JUnit in Action, Second Edition <http://www.manning.com/tahchiev/>
>> Spring Batch in Action <http://www.manning.com/templier/>
>> Blog: http://garygregory.wordpress.com
>> Home: http://garygregory.com/
>> Tweet! http://twitter.com/GaryGregory
>>
>> --
>> <http://twitter.com/GaryGregory>
>> <http://twitter.com/GaryGregory>
>> Sergio Fern�ndez
>> Partner Technology Manager
>> Redlink GmbH
>> m: +43 6602747925
>> e: <http://twitter.com/GaryGregory>sergio.fernandez@redlink.co
>> w: http://redlink.co
>>
>
Re: future of commons rdf?
Posted by Sergio Fernández <wi...@apache.org>.
OK, I see all those points... Probably the initial goal of Commons RDF was
to ambitious; specially taking into account it always was a side-project
for all of us.
But I do see the future of the project as a more compact component in
Apache Commons. There with time we may be able to reach smaller goals that
help other Apache project (e.g. Marmotta or Any23). Should we start to
define more concretely that path?
BTW, in parallel we have to prepare our June report, I'll prepare a draft.
On Sun, May 29, 2016 at 9:01 PM, Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> I've not gotten into the code as I am not a SME but as long as the _goal_
> of the component are clearly defined, I think other Commons and Apache
> developers can come in and out as they see fit.
>
> So long as there is movement and discussions on where to go next, I would
> support that.
>
> Gary
>
> On Sat, May 28, 2016 at 2:40 AM, Benedikt Ritter <br...@apache.org>
> wrote:
>
> > Hello Sergio,
> >
> > Sergio Fernández <wi...@apache.org> schrieb am Fr., 27. Mai 2016 um
> > 11:44 Uhr:
> >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > once we got over the 0.2.0-incubating milestone, I think it's time to
> > > meditate what's the future of Commons RDF...
> > >
> > > FMPOV it's clear that we're far away from where we wanted to be when we
> > > started this journey of incubation. Many reasons to explain why: the
> > > incubation overhead, the discussions, the different
> personal/professional
> > > priorities, key people withdraws, etc. Which in the end is all normal.
> > >
> >
> > Let me first express some of my observations and feelings regarding the
> > development of Commons RDF.
> >
> > I've always only been kind of a spectator in this project. I see Apache
> > Commons as a platform for other projects to come together and share code.
> > This is why I wanted Commons RDF to become part of Apache Commons from
> the
> > beginning. However I always had the problem that RDF felt like a very
> > special topic to me. At my company I built enterprise applications and I
> > never had a use case for Commons RDF. I think this was a problem from the
> > very beginning. People just don't know RDF and that's why this project
> > never built a wider community.
> >
> > I have thought a lot whether it was a good move to force Commons RDF to
> go
> > through the incubator. We had a hand full of Apache people on board as
> well
> > as people who know other open communities. The incubator feels like a too
> > heavy burden for a small project that has the Apache way and IP already
> > figured out. This is why we accepted Commons Crypto directly into Commons
> > instead of forcing them to go through the incubator. My feeling is that
> > Commons Crypto benefited from the adoption by Apache Commons. So who
> knows,
> > maybe Commons RDF would have a much bigger community by now if it had not
> > to go through the incubator.
> >
> > Some words about the (small) community: I realized that there where heavy
> > discrepancies among community members, but I could not take party in the
> > arguments because I simply don't know RDF. It's sad that we could not
> find
> > a common ground but I think this has something to do with fundamentally
> > different opinions about how RDF should be modeled in Java. It's probably
> > not possible to reach consensus in such a situation. It's a pity that
> > several people left in the end.
> >
> >
> > >
> > > But that's part of the past, we have to look to the present. And if I
> > look
> > > to our team I can only count two active contributors Stian and myself),
> > > which is clearly not enough to help the major toolkits (Apache Jena and
> > > Eclipse RDF4J) to converge towards a commons API; we clearly lost the
> > > timing on that (Jena 3.x is out there for quite a while and RDF4J's
> first
> > > milestones came out last week).
> > >
> > > So I'd like to make a straight question to all our community: what do
> we
> > > want to do with the project?
> > >
> > > If I'm honest, currently I'm more about retiring the podling than
> > continue,
> > > but you may have a different point of view... and I'd live to hear it.
> > >
> >
> > I'm very happy to see that you (= the Commons RDF) community have
> > integrated into the Apache Commons community. You take part in
> discussions
> > about general matters of Apache Commons. This is important, because
> Apache
> > Commons is not a community of subcommunities, but a community maintaining
> > several independent components. I think we can propose to graduate
> Commons
> > RDF to Apache Commons for the following reasons:
> >
> > - Commons RDF had 2 successful releases. (Imaging and Functor, while
> > already proper components never had a release)
> > - several people are interested in the code
> > - the members of the Commons RDF community have started to feel part of
> > Apache Commons
> > - Commons RDF still is a project that can be used by other Apache
> projects.
> >
> > So if you guys want to take this to the next level, you'll have my
> support.
> >
> > Benedikt
> >
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Sergio Fernández
> > > Partner Technology Manager
> > > Redlink GmbH
> > > m: +43 6602747925
> > > e: sergio.fernandez@redlink.co
> > > w: http://redlink.co
> > >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> E-Mail: garydgregory@gmail.com | ggregory@apache.org
> Java Persistence with Hibernate, Second Edition
> <http://www.manning.com/bauer3/>
> JUnit in Action, Second Edition <http://www.manning.com/tahchiev/>
> Spring Batch in Action <http://www.manning.com/templier/>
> Blog: http://garygregory.wordpress.com
> Home: http://garygregory.com/
> Tweet! http://twitter.com/GaryGregory
>
> --
> <http://twitter.com/GaryGregory>
> <http://twitter.com/GaryGregory>
> Sergio Fernández
> Partner Technology Manager
> Redlink GmbH
> m: +43 6602747925
> e: <http://twitter.com/GaryGregory>sergio.fernandez@redlink.co
> w: http://redlink.co
>
Re: future of commons rdf?
Posted by Gary Gregory <ga...@gmail.com>.
I've not gotten into the code as I am not a SME but as long as the _goal_
of the component are clearly defined, I think other Commons and Apache
developers can come in and out as they see fit.
So long as there is movement and discussions on where to go next, I would
support that.
Gary
On Sat, May 28, 2016 at 2:40 AM, Benedikt Ritter <br...@apache.org> wrote:
> Hello Sergio,
>
> Sergio Fernández <wi...@apache.org> schrieb am Fr., 27. Mai 2016 um
> 11:44 Uhr:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > once we got over the 0.2.0-incubating milestone, I think it's time to
> > meditate what's the future of Commons RDF...
> >
> > FMPOV it's clear that we're far away from where we wanted to be when we
> > started this journey of incubation. Many reasons to explain why: the
> > incubation overhead, the discussions, the different personal/professional
> > priorities, key people withdraws, etc. Which in the end is all normal.
> >
>
> Let me first express some of my observations and feelings regarding the
> development of Commons RDF.
>
> I've always only been kind of a spectator in this project. I see Apache
> Commons as a platform for other projects to come together and share code.
> This is why I wanted Commons RDF to become part of Apache Commons from the
> beginning. However I always had the problem that RDF felt like a very
> special topic to me. At my company I built enterprise applications and I
> never had a use case for Commons RDF. I think this was a problem from the
> very beginning. People just don't know RDF and that's why this project
> never built a wider community.
>
> I have thought a lot whether it was a good move to force Commons RDF to go
> through the incubator. We had a hand full of Apache people on board as well
> as people who know other open communities. The incubator feels like a too
> heavy burden for a small project that has the Apache way and IP already
> figured out. This is why we accepted Commons Crypto directly into Commons
> instead of forcing them to go through the incubator. My feeling is that
> Commons Crypto benefited from the adoption by Apache Commons. So who knows,
> maybe Commons RDF would have a much bigger community by now if it had not
> to go through the incubator.
>
> Some words about the (small) community: I realized that there where heavy
> discrepancies among community members, but I could not take party in the
> arguments because I simply don't know RDF. It's sad that we could not find
> a common ground but I think this has something to do with fundamentally
> different opinions about how RDF should be modeled in Java. It's probably
> not possible to reach consensus in such a situation. It's a pity that
> several people left in the end.
>
>
> >
> > But that's part of the past, we have to look to the present. And if I
> look
> > to our team I can only count two active contributors Stian and myself),
> > which is clearly not enough to help the major toolkits (Apache Jena and
> > Eclipse RDF4J) to converge towards a commons API; we clearly lost the
> > timing on that (Jena 3.x is out there for quite a while and RDF4J's first
> > milestones came out last week).
> >
> > So I'd like to make a straight question to all our community: what do we
> > want to do with the project?
> >
> > If I'm honest, currently I'm more about retiring the podling than
> continue,
> > but you may have a different point of view... and I'd live to hear it.
> >
>
> I'm very happy to see that you (= the Commons RDF) community have
> integrated into the Apache Commons community. You take part in discussions
> about general matters of Apache Commons. This is important, because Apache
> Commons is not a community of subcommunities, but a community maintaining
> several independent components. I think we can propose to graduate Commons
> RDF to Apache Commons for the following reasons:
>
> - Commons RDF had 2 successful releases. (Imaging and Functor, while
> already proper components never had a release)
> - several people are interested in the code
> - the members of the Commons RDF community have started to feel part of
> Apache Commons
> - Commons RDF still is a project that can be used by other Apache projects.
>
> So if you guys want to take this to the next level, you'll have my support.
>
> Benedikt
>
>
> >
> >
> > --
> > Sergio Fernández
> > Partner Technology Manager
> > Redlink GmbH
> > m: +43 6602747925
> > e: sergio.fernandez@redlink.co
> > w: http://redlink.co
> >
>
--
E-Mail: garydgregory@gmail.com | ggregory@apache.org
Java Persistence with Hibernate, Second Edition
<http://www.manning.com/bauer3/>
JUnit in Action, Second Edition <http://www.manning.com/tahchiev/>
Spring Batch in Action <http://www.manning.com/templier/>
Blog: http://garygregory.wordpress.com
Home: http://garygregory.com/
Tweet! http://twitter.com/GaryGregory
Re: future of commons rdf?
Posted by Benedikt Ritter <br...@apache.org>.
Hello Sergio,
Sergio Fernández <wi...@apache.org> schrieb am Fr., 27. Mai 2016 um
11:44 Uhr:
> Hi all,
>
> once we got over the 0.2.0-incubating milestone, I think it's time to
> meditate what's the future of Commons RDF...
>
> FMPOV it's clear that we're far away from where we wanted to be when we
> started this journey of incubation. Many reasons to explain why: the
> incubation overhead, the discussions, the different personal/professional
> priorities, key people withdraws, etc. Which in the end is all normal.
>
Let me first express some of my observations and feelings regarding the
development of Commons RDF.
I've always only been kind of a spectator in this project. I see Apache
Commons as a platform for other projects to come together and share code.
This is why I wanted Commons RDF to become part of Apache Commons from the
beginning. However I always had the problem that RDF felt like a very
special topic to me. At my company I built enterprise applications and I
never had a use case for Commons RDF. I think this was a problem from the
very beginning. People just don't know RDF and that's why this project
never built a wider community.
I have thought a lot whether it was a good move to force Commons RDF to go
through the incubator. We had a hand full of Apache people on board as well
as people who know other open communities. The incubator feels like a too
heavy burden for a small project that has the Apache way and IP already
figured out. This is why we accepted Commons Crypto directly into Commons
instead of forcing them to go through the incubator. My feeling is that
Commons Crypto benefited from the adoption by Apache Commons. So who knows,
maybe Commons RDF would have a much bigger community by now if it had not
to go through the incubator.
Some words about the (small) community: I realized that there where heavy
discrepancies among community members, but I could not take party in the
arguments because I simply don't know RDF. It's sad that we could not find
a common ground but I think this has something to do with fundamentally
different opinions about how RDF should be modeled in Java. It's probably
not possible to reach consensus in such a situation. It's a pity that
several people left in the end.
>
> But that's part of the past, we have to look to the present. And if I look
> to our team I can only count two active contributors Stian and myself),
> which is clearly not enough to help the major toolkits (Apache Jena and
> Eclipse RDF4J) to converge towards a commons API; we clearly lost the
> timing on that (Jena 3.x is out there for quite a while and RDF4J's first
> milestones came out last week).
>
> So I'd like to make a straight question to all our community: what do we
> want to do with the project?
>
> If I'm honest, currently I'm more about retiring the podling than continue,
> but you may have a different point of view... and I'd live to hear it.
>
I'm very happy to see that you (= the Commons RDF) community have
integrated into the Apache Commons community. You take part in discussions
about general matters of Apache Commons. This is important, because Apache
Commons is not a community of subcommunities, but a community maintaining
several independent components. I think we can propose to graduate Commons
RDF to Apache Commons for the following reasons:
- Commons RDF had 2 successful releases. (Imaging and Functor, while
already proper components never had a release)
- several people are interested in the code
- the members of the Commons RDF community have started to feel part of
Apache Commons
- Commons RDF still is a project that can be used by other Apache projects.
So if you guys want to take this to the next level, you'll have my support.
Benedikt
>
>
> --
> Sergio Fernández
> Partner Technology Manager
> Redlink GmbH
> m: +43 6602747925
> e: sergio.fernandez@redlink.co
> w: http://redlink.co
>
Re: future of commons rdf?
Posted by Stian Soiland-Reyes <st...@apache.org>.
Thanks Sergio for helping push out 0.2.0!
It is of course sad we didn't achieve what we aimed for - as you say
many things affected this, including timing, politics and differences
in expectations. You could say that to do what we aimed for we should
have worked more like a traditional JSR or W3C committee with a fixed
timeline, chair, deliverables etc. - forcing through solutions rather
than trying to agree at every point. But let bygones stay bygones!
I think that doesn't mean we have to abandon ship - we can let Commons
RDF be more of an interoperability layer than a common layer - more
similar to Commons VFS as opposed to the JAXB API. The scope of
Commons RDF should however remain small - not to grow to a Clerezza or
Any23 competitor.
Perhaps rdf4j is a good use-case - Commons RDF could easily be a
compatibility layer between Sesame 4 and rdf4j on a triple/quad level.
We are facing a usual chicken&egg problem - if we go to a community
like rdf4j and say "Hey, use Commons RDF" they might say "Who else is
using it?".
I don't know what you think of us trying to release some basic
integration modules ourself within Commons RDF like my branches for
jsonld, sesame and jena? Too much of a distraction? Ideally for
maintenance we wanted Commons RDF to be a 'frozen' & stable API and
for such integration to be done at each third-party project - however
I think doing dependency upgrades is not something that is
particularly tricky within the Commons community - and things like
keeping APIs stable is a key value within Commons.
I agree with John on the point that we don't need a big growing
community to graduate to Commons - just to be in a "releasable" and
maintainable state - which I think we are already at. So personally
(as a fresh Commons PMC member!) be in favour of Commons RDF
graduating to Commons.
On 27 May 2016 at 12:11, John D. Ament <jo...@apache.org> wrote:
> Hi Sergio,
>
> Thanks for bringing this up. This has been on my mind since Andy left the
> project, I hadn't brought it up yet as I wanted to see if someone else
> would first :-)
>
> Retirement basically means the podling hasn't been able to build a
> sustainable maintenance cycle. I don't think that's the case here. A
> retiring podling is one where a large number of people signed up at the
> beginning, but then none participated.
>
> I will say I've always seen community growth as a big challenge for what
> you're trying to do. That's why I was pleased to see the target being
> commons rather than a standalone PMC. There are enough people in the
> commons community to rally behind a release that even if its just one or
> two committers here, its enough to get things moving forward.
>
> In my opinion, I would like to see the commons PMC weigh in on what steps
> they'd like to see commons rdf complete between now and graduation. You've
> had two perfect incubator releases. That usually means you're graduation
> material.
>
> Gary - you're probably the best one to answer that question. If I look at
> the graduation guide, it seems like the accepting project is pretty key
> here, http://incubator.apache.org/guides/graduation.html#subproject, and as
> chair of commons, I think you'd be the best one to ask.
>
> John
>
> On Fri, May 27, 2016 at 5:49 AM Sergio Fernández <wi...@apache.org> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, May 27, 2016 at 11:43 AM, Sergio Fernández <wi...@apache.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > I'd live to hear it.
>> >
>>
>> s/live/love
>>
>>
>> --
>> Sergio Fernández
>> Partner Technology Manager
>> Redlink GmbH
>> m: +43 6602747925
>> e: sergio.fernandez@redlink.co
>> w: http://redlink.co
>>
--
Stian Soiland-Reyes
Apache Taverna (incubating), Apache Commons
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9842-9718
Re: future of commons rdf?
Posted by "John D. Ament" <jo...@apache.org>.
Hi Sergio,
Thanks for bringing this up. This has been on my mind since Andy left the
project, I hadn't brought it up yet as I wanted to see if someone else
would first :-)
Retirement basically means the podling hasn't been able to build a
sustainable maintenance cycle. I don't think that's the case here. A
retiring podling is one where a large number of people signed up at the
beginning, but then none participated.
I will say I've always seen community growth as a big challenge for what
you're trying to do. That's why I was pleased to see the target being
commons rather than a standalone PMC. There are enough people in the
commons community to rally behind a release that even if its just one or
two committers here, its enough to get things moving forward.
In my opinion, I would like to see the commons PMC weigh in on what steps
they'd like to see commons rdf complete between now and graduation. You've
had two perfect incubator releases. That usually means you're graduation
material.
Gary - you're probably the best one to answer that question. If I look at
the graduation guide, it seems like the accepting project is pretty key
here, http://incubator.apache.org/guides/graduation.html#subproject, and as
chair of commons, I think you'd be the best one to ask.
John
On Fri, May 27, 2016 at 5:49 AM Sergio Fernández <wi...@apache.org> wrote:
> On Fri, May 27, 2016 at 11:43 AM, Sergio Fernández <wi...@apache.org>
> wrote:
>
> > I'd live to hear it.
> >
>
> s/live/love
>
>
> --
> Sergio Fernández
> Partner Technology Manager
> Redlink GmbH
> m: +43 6602747925
> e: sergio.fernandez@redlink.co
> w: http://redlink.co
>
Re: future of commons rdf?
Posted by Sergio Fernández <wi...@apache.org>.
On Fri, May 27, 2016 at 11:43 AM, Sergio Fernández <wi...@apache.org>
wrote:
> I'd live to hear it.
>
s/live/love
--
Sergio Fernández
Partner Technology Manager
Redlink GmbH
m: +43 6602747925
e: sergio.fernandez@redlink.co
w: http://redlink.co