Re: civility? No, Velocity

[Jonathan Revusky <re...@wanadoo.es>]

Henning P. Schmiedehausen wrote:
> Daniel Dekany <dd...@freemail.hu> writes:
> 
> [...]
> 
>>exaggeration toward positive direction. Of course Velocity is not
>>(directly) interested in money, but still the "managers" of it will feel
>>desire to achieve success by having as big users base as possible. And
> 
> 
> Up to that paragraph I thought that you might understand it. Sorry,
> but no. You missed the point completely. Please re-read
> http://www.apache.org/foundation/faq.html

<sigh>

I'm really getting very tired of this nonsense. Really, I am. But I also 
feel that somebody just has to call your bluff. (That's all the above 
is, right?)

So... What is it that Daniel does not understand? Which of the 19 points 
in the ASF FAQ that you reference above are you referring to?

As for re-reading that, I did not re-read it since I had never read it 
in the first place. OTOH, I have now read through it and I do not 
understand your point.

Is this not just the "emperor's new clothes" playbook where you 
insistently wave your hands and insist that the person does not 
understand when he points out that the emperor is naked?

Anyway, I don't understand, and apparently Daniel doesn't either. So you 
should explain. Which of the 19 points of the FAQ are you referring to 
and how is it relevant to what we are discussing?


> 
> The ASF and all its projects are not about "size of user base". They
> are about community. We actually don't really care about _the size_ of
> our user base. We care about _our user base_.

That is odd. As I said, I have kept an eye on this community off and on, 
and the contempt with which I have seen committers treat people has, on 
occasion, made me cringe.

When asked explicitly whether there were any plans for further 
development, one of the committers of the time, I believe it was Daniel 
Rall, simply answered that, since Velocity did everything he needed, he 
saw no need for further development. That anybody else might have needs 
and that the community should consider them simply did not occur to him.

During the endless debate on decimal numbers, I distinctly recall Jon 
"Monkey see, monkey do" Stevens replying to somebody that he was free to 
create a forked version. IIRC, that somebody was one Peter Romianowski,, 
who had offered the community a patch that implemented decimal number 
support. Various other people definitely had expressed that they needed 
the functionality, and, AFAICT really, incorporating Peter's patch did 
not impose any burden on existing users who might not need it.

> 
> Our goal is that they are satisfied with what comes out of the ASF and
> that they can actively participate in ASF projects. The fact that this
> kind of behaviour tends to flock large user bases is duely noticed and
> the reason for this is IMHO purely non-technical. But it is not
> intentional, it is merely a side-effect.
> 

In a recent note foreshadowing all the goodies that may be available in 
the next Velocity release, Will mentioned map literals. I believe that 
Will was referring to a patch that some guy offered in 2002 IIRC. Will 
can correct me if I'm wrong, but I infer that he had in fact been 
reviewing all the patches that have been piling all these years and came 
across the map literal thing. Apparently the guy who contributed the 
patch needed this functionality, went through the bother of implementing 
it in code and contributing it and his contribution was ignored. (Until 
now, 3 years later. Okay, you guys do move slowly, you say, but is this 
reasonable?)

> This is also underlined by the fact that even though some of the
> projects inside of the ASF might be perceived as being "technically
> inferior" or "not up to par" to other projects, they still thrive and
> are often considered "industry standard". Struts or Tomcat as examples
> from the Java world. The http daemon as an example of a non-Java
> project.

Look, there are people out there who think that a project must be good 
because it comes from ASF. Similarly there were obviously enough people 
out there who thought that somebody would be a good president because 
his last name is "Bush". People make all kinds of suboptimal decisions 
for incredibly superficial reasons.

Things perceived to have a kind of brand name associated or to be some 
kind of standard with it have a big advantage. Part of that is 
visibility, and another part is that it is an easier sell to management. 
  Even people who are not very knowledgeable about anything technical 
will have likely heard of the Apache Web Server. Even though none of the 
Jakarta stuff has anything to do with that, there is a kind of coattails 
effect.

However, the idea that these ASF communities attend better to their user 
base is really utterly laughable. They have, on the contrary, a much 
greater tendency to treat users in a contemptuous arrogant manner than 
other open source communities.

> 
> If the committers fail to build and keep a community, then at some
> point the PMC and the board step in. This has happened in the past
> (Avalon) and it might happen again in the future. But this has nothing
> to do with user base (Avalon was (and is) a hugely popular project at
> the time the board decided to pull the plug).

I was unaware of this. Was Avalon in even worse shape than Velocity? Or 
is it just that the situation came to the attention of certain people 
and the situation here has not come to their attention?

> 
> I know that for someone who is a total "I got more downloads than
> them" junkie, this is hard to understand or even ludicrous. But once
> you got your mind wrapped around the concept, you will see, why many
> Apache projects continue at a leisurely pace, don't add the "feature
> of the day" or don't release every two weeks. Because this behaviour
> tends to disrupt community. Most of the ASF projects (and especially
> the successful ones) don't have a "fearless leader who leads the flock
> through the night". They have a small to medium group of individuals
> who might clash but continue on consensus. It might be slower but is
> much less susceptible to personal power trips.
> 
> On another thing:
> 
> Can we please have an understanding, that this is the users list of
> the Velocity project of the Jakarta project of the Apache Software
> Foundation. It is intended as a forum where Velocity users can discuss
> about Velocity and ask questions and the contributors and committers
> try to answer these questions. It is _not_ an advocacy forum or a list
> to discuss if there are different solutions for the problem space that
> Velocity lives in. It is also not a feature comparisation or product
> promotion forum. There are general and advocacy lists inside the ASF
> where this behaviour is tolerated and even encouraged.
> 
> I would very much appreciate if you (and according to
> http://www.freemarker.org/whoWeAre.html you are one of the core people
> on that project even if you tend to neglect that fact when writing
> here) and other people would keep the charter of this list, which is
> to either ask questions about Velocity or to help users answering
> questions about Velocity.
> 
> So I'm looking forward to you either asking questions about Velocity
> or help Velocity people out to solve their problems. 

When I replied to your post about the Development status of this 
project, it was quite definitely about Velocity. You were claiming that 
this project was being actively maintained and developed. I knew your 
statement to be false. Most other people, I infer, knew that you were 
not telling the truth, which is why hardly anybody leapt to your defense 
in that spot.

I can see why you would not like me pointing it out, but it was 
definitely right and proper for me to point out that you were not 
telling the truth.


> 
> If you won't do either of it or if you are not interested in helping
> Velocity users out, 

If I tell a Velocity user who wants a feature that does not exist in 
Velocity that said feature exists in FreeMarker, I am helping them out 
by providing them potentially useful information.

Since, as you state, you don't care about growing your user base, you 
should not mind my telling them this. In any case, if you don't want me 
pointing out that FreeMarker has a given feature that Velocity lacks, 
then implement the feature in question. Then, since my statements 
(unlike some people's) are invariably good-faithed and truthful, I will 
not be able to say that Velocity lacks said feature and point people to 
FreeMarker.

In other words, you guys should walk the walk.

In any case, as long as my messages are relevant to the topic on hand -- 
let's say the Jython integration messages as a recent case in point -- 
and they are factual, I do not think you have any grievance. It may be 
that these factual statements tend to cast Velocity and the development 
efforts (or lack thereof) of your community in a bad light, but the 
proper way to address that is by working on Velocity, not by trying to 
muzzle people who are making truthful statements.

Jonathan Revusky
--
FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/


> then I would like you to question the reasons why
> you are subscribed to this list. If you just want to keep up to date
> with the state of this project, then I'd rather point you to our mail
> list archives.
> 
> 	Best regards
> 		Henning
> 


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