Clear the air Re: ATTN: Maven developers [was: primary distribution location]

["Andrew C. Oliver" <ac...@apache.org>]

This conversation is going in the wrong direction.

Sam:
The ASF has no juristiction over the Maven Repository.  The most that 
could be done is to say
"You can't use the word Maven in it".  Its not on ASF servers, is not 
"sanctioned" in any way.  You could probably say "Maven you can't use 
the Maven Repository" but what would that accomplish exactly. 

We're going about this all wrong with out tone.  Jason & co have built 
something that could be very helpful throughout the ASF and approaching 
this from the "You must do" type thing is not in my opinion effective to 
approach the end goal.  (and is WAY more in character for ME than for 
YOU Sam, I'm very sorry to say)

Jason:
Your tone is way out of line and is very disproportionate.  Sam's 
contributions to opensource and to opening Java are pretty hard to 
legitimately criticize and doing so serves no productive purpose.
The maven repository is the most compelling thing done in the last 
several months and could be the most compelling thing in some years.  
Congradulations.  What some folks are trying to say is "we want in".  If 
you want to work with us (your fellow Jakarta/XML/Java Apache folks), 
then we'll build something Java has needed since day 1.  Obviously 
you're aware of some of the problems with the Maven repository (in the 
simple-minded approach to versioning/etc), and we'll help extend it such 
that such problems go away.  In exchange you get these things Mirrored 
throughout Java-land.  That includes iBiblio.

Now on the GPL  and LGPL thing I agree with you completely.  There is 
nothing wrong with allowing their distribution, even off ASF servers.  
The Sun thing, you're completely wrong.  Sun sues people for dumber 
stuff all of the time.  I can hook you up to references for this fact if 
you would like.  In order to move foward we do have to stay legal.

What we all need to do is keep our eye on the ball.  Jason, I want to 
move all the jar files POI, Cocoon and other projects need, out of their 
CVS.  Yet I want them to play nice in gump.  iBiblio is awesome but even 
iBiblio gets bogged down some days (today for instance I was getting 
908Bps [not kbps] on my rpm download).  Having a mirrored, location 
independant version of the repository could do some wonderful things for 
Apache, Java, OpenSource and each of us.

What of it, Jason.  Can we work together on this, keep the legal 
concerns to a minimum (I propose distributing GPL and LGPL is okay, ASF 
projects might not be able to use them, but there is nothing illegal 
about distributing them),  work on getting the pieces in play?

Nick Chalko who is one of my own personal favorites (despite him not 
fixing commons-vfs's funky file error this morning) is talking about a 
project to extend the maven repository in such a way that all Apache 
projects could use it.  I'd rather not see a forked effort.  This is 
something I'm pretty sure we can all agree on if we focus on the larger 
effort/benefits rather than details.

In the end, the ASF gets to delete the duplicate jars from CVS and all 
projects can use Maven, Centipede or some ant tasks to resolve their 
depencies.

So Jason, are you willing to listen and maybe work with us on a new 
project which IMHO is far more important than Maven, Centipede or 
licensing arguments?

-Andy



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