Fwd: [PROPOSAL] Incubate Wicket

[Matthias Wessendorf <ma...@apache.org>]

FYI

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Upayavira <uv...@odoko.co.uk>
Date: Jul 26, 2006 8:54 AM
Subject: [PROPOSAL] Incubate Wicket
To: general@incubator.apache.org


The Wicket developers (http://wicket.sourceforge.net) have expressed a
desire to incubate their project within the ASF.

I personally think that Wicket would fit very well at Apache with its
flavour of innovation and its strong, meritocracy based community.

The proposal follows (which can also be found at:
http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/WicketProposal)

Regards, Upayavira

= Wicket Proposal =

This proposal outlines the creation of a new top-level Wicket project
within the Apache Software Foundation.

== Rationale ==

Wicket is a unique web application framework that focusses on bringing
plain object oriented Java programming to the web tier. It is unique in
it's focus amongst the (many) web frameworks that exist today. Due to
it's unmanaged nature and reliance on plain Java, it is a very good
match for frameworks like OSGi and Eclipse RSP. Wicket has been gaining
a very steady increase in popularity, and with two books coming out and
vastly improved new releases we are working on, we expect this trend to
continue. We consider moving to Apache being an additional boost, and we
hope it will open the way for possible future cooperation with other
Apache projects.

The maintainers of Wicket are interested in joining the Apache Software
Foundation for several reasons:

 * Apache has a widely recognized name, which will help Wicket get an
increased visibility and acceptance.

 * We'd like to enjoy the benefits of utilizing Apache's infrastructure
and legal protection.

 * Most team members have been enthusiastic users of Apache software for
many years and would like to be part of the family with it's get
togethers etc.

 * It might open the door for cooperation with other projects, such as
Felix or Jetspeed.

 * Apache seems to attract great communities around its projects, we
hope joining Apache will help as make our growing community even bigger.

 * We hope to contribute to Apache's ongoing success by delivering an
innovative, dynamic project with an enthusiastic user base.

== Criteria ==

=== Community ===

Wicket has striven to foster a diverse community that is open to
everyone. It is released
under a non-reciprocal license (Apache License 2.0) to encourage the
maximum possible adoption by all
potential users and developers. The Wicket community encourages
suggestions and
contributions from any potential user, and more developers have joined
as contributors
since the project's inception in 2004.

=== Meritocracy ===

Wicket was originally created by Jonathan Locke in April 2004. Then it
was taken over in September 2004 by Eelco Hilenius, Johan Compagner and
Martijn Dashorst. Chris Turner and Juergen Donnerstag were invited to
join that same week based on their contributions and discussions. The
project now has committers and users from around the world, and Jonathan
Locke is back with the project again. The newer committers of the
project joined in subsequent years by initially submitting patches, then
having commit privileges for some of the applications (wicket-stuff),
and then privileges over a larger range of applications. The project
members understand the importance of letting motivated individuals
contribute to the project after they have proven themselves.

== Scope of Sub projects ==

Wicket is distributed as one large subversion tree, but contains several
distinct parts: the core framework, a couple of extensions project that
are endorsed by the core developers, an examples project (which includes
a component reference), a quick start project and a developer sandbox.
One of the extensions projects, called wicket-extensions, has a dual
purpose. The first is to ensure the core project does not get too large,
while still having a place to put interesting components and utility
classes. The second purpose of that project is to provide a place where
components can prove themselves before potentially graduating to the
core project.

Whilst Wicket has these various subprojects, access to the subversion
tree is maintained with a single ACL. Once voted in as a committer, an
individual will have access to the entire tree, and trust is used to
ensure that they only touch the parts of the tree that they are
knowledgeable enough to change.

== Features ==

Wicket is a Java web application framework that takes simplicity,
separation of concerns and ease of development to a whole new level.
Wicket pages can be mocked up, previewed and later revised using
standard WYSIWYG HTML design tools. Dynamic content processing and form
handling is all handled in Java code using a first-class component model
backed by POJO data beans that can easily be persisted using your
favorite technology.

== Initial Source ==

The source for Wicket that is to be imported is currently within the
Wicket project at SourceForge, and is all ASL2.0 licensed.

== Resources to be Created ==

 * user, dev, private and Announce mailing lists.
 * Copy current subversion code, and create a commits mailing list.
 * Copy Sourceforge issues into Apache system, if possible
 * Confluence Wiki.

== Potential Issues ==

These are a few details of how incubation will need to work in order to
maintain compatability for existing users whilst moving forwards to
adopt an Apache approach for newer code.

=== Versions ===

Wicket currently has three versions of their code base, 1.2 (the current
release), 1.3 (planned) and 2.0 (unreleased).

We would like to keep all three versions on the same infrastructure, and
would thus like to bring all three versions over to Apache.

This would involve the need to be able to make releases of 1.2 and 1.3
during incubation, as they have a current user base to serve that is
already using the product.

The exact manner of producing these releases would need to be clearly
understood by the Wicket team before incubation can start.

=== Package Naming ===

Wicket Java code uses the wicket.* package hierarchy. At this point, we
would propose that code in versions 1.2 and 1.3 would switch to ASF
servers, but maintain the wicket.* namespace, but code in 2.0 would
switch to an org.apache.wicket.* namespace.

Anything else would cause an unnecessary disruption to our users.

== Other Potential Concerns ==

=== Likelihood of Becoming an Orphaned Product ===

Assuming an "orphaned product" is one that arrives at the Apache
Incubator and then slowly dies before being ready to incubate, Wicket is
unlikely to fit into this category.

The Wicket code is currently used and maintained by the authors and
others, who depend
on it for their livelihood. Continued development of Wicket continues on
a daily basis. Statistics can be found here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/stats/?group_id=119783&ugn=wicket, where
the commit statistic form a sub view:
http://sourceforge.net/project/stats/detail.php?group_id=119783&ugn=wicket&type=svn.

=== Experience with Open Source ===

Most of the developers have been actively involved in multiple other
open source projects for years (jakarta regex, Eclipse plugins,
jWebUnit, Subclipse, SquirrelSql, JetSpeed, etc). But for all of the
developers the involvement in Wicket currently is the major one.

=== Heterogenous Developers ===

The developers are diverse, both geographically and in terms of their
employers. Of our 12 committers, no more than two work for the same
employer.

 * Jonathan Locke is from the US and is involved in various startups as
a software engineer and co-owner, and pursues a movie script writing career.

 * Eelco Hillenius is from the Netherlands but is in the process of
moving to the US (Seattle/ San Francisco). He currently is employed
through his own company, Code Droid, but will be working for Teachscape
Inc. from October on as a software engineer.

 * Martijn Dashorst is from The Netherlands and works for Topicus as a
software engineer

 * Johan Compagner is from The Netherlands and is an independent
consultant for its own company J-COM (regularly hired by Topicus) and is
working at a company Servoy that also uses wicket technology in its core.

 * Igor Vaynberg is from the USA working as a software engineer for
Teachscape Inc.

 * Juergen Donnerstag is from Germany and works for EDS as an IT Architect.

 * Gwyn Evans is from the UK and works for SmartTrust as a Solution
Consultant

 * Janne Hietamäki is from Finland and works for Cemron (that also uses
wicket technology in its core) as a technical director

 * Matej Knopp is from The Slovak Republic is a CS student and works for
EEA as a software engineer

 * Ate Douma is from The Netherlands as a software engineer

 * Jan Blok is from The Netherlands and works for Servoy as a software
engineer

 * Chris Turner is from the UK and works as an independent consultant.
He does not intend to move with us to Apache.

In addition, there are other contributors from France, Germany, Spain,
the UK, US, Canada, Brazil, India, Japan, China, Iran, and various other
countries.

All contributors come from a software background, but we - informally -
have some different tasks. For instance, Martijn is in charge of the
releases, Gwyn of maintaining the WIKI and possibly more site related
things and Jonathan provides regular code reviews. But any one of the
team has committed code, and may do so.

=== Reliance on Salaried Developers ===

None of the developers rely on Wicket for consulting work, though two -
Martijn and Eelco -  are writing Wicket In Action (publisher Manning) in
their spare time. Most of the developers use Wicket for their day jobs,
some for multiple projects, and will do so for a considerable while as
their companies (specifically Topicus, Cemron and Teachscape) choose
Wicket as their development framework of choice.

=== Ties to other Apache Products ===

Wicket uses Jakarta Commons Logging and Log4j and adopted some code from
Jakarta Commons Upload. It uses Maven for it's build process. Wicket
tries to stay as lean as possible though.

=== An Excessive Fascination with the Apache Brand ===

The ASF has a strong brand, and that brand is in itself attractive.
However, the developers of Wicket have been quite successful on their
own and could continue on that path with no problems at all. We are
interested in joining the ASF in order to increase our contacts and
visibility in the open source world. Furthermore, we have been
enthusiastic users of Apache from the earliest hour (remember JServ
anyone?), and feel honored at getting the opportunity to join the club.

== Committers ==

 * Jonathan Locke
 * Eelco Hillenius
 * Johan Compagner
 * Martijn Dashorst
 * Juergen Donnerstag
 * Igor Vaynberg
 * Gwyn Evans
 * Matej Knopp
 * Janne Hietamäki
 * Ate Douma
 * Jan Blok

== Proposed Apache Sponsor ==

Incubator PMC

== Champions ==

 * Upayavira
 * Alex Karasulu
 * Sylvain Wallez

== Mentors ==

 * Upayavira
 * Alex Karasulu
 * Sylvain Wallez

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-- 
Matthias Wessendorf

further stuff:
blog: http://jroller.com/page/mwessendorf
mail: mwessendorf-at-gmail-dot-com