RE: DO NOT REPLY [Bug 33760] New: - [Patch] current AWTRenderer

[Victor Mote <vi...@outfitr.com>]

Jeremias Maerki wrote:

> I think you misunderstood. I wanted to suggest transferring (not
> copying/forking) these parts over to Apache with you as a 
> committer in the Commons part. That would make it mostly your 
> decision. I'm all against duplication of efforts. Actually, 
> it was the motivation for this post. At Apache you'd have a 
> bigger audience as well as a bigger chance of finding people 
> willing to help. And I don't see a big risk for disputes as 

I don't mean to be rude or insult anyone, but the help I found at Apache was
a net loss. Sure, there is some real help, but it was far outweighed by the
hindrances. There is something wrong either with me or the way the FOP
community works, maybe both. Of the 18 months that I spent working on FOP, I
consider the last 12 of it to have been utterly wasted. Worse, I probably
wasted other people's time along the way. There is a steady stream of FOP
users who want to contribute to the project who simply cannot find a way to
overcome the obstacles that the FOP committers place in front of them. The
rather thin constituency that allows me to continue working on open-source
publishing software would evaporate if I went down that path again. At the
risk of seeming coy or ungrateful (I hope I am neither) it really is not an
option for me. As for a bigger audience, I am not worried about that. If we
produce something worthwhile, people will find it.

> willing to help. And I don't see a big risk for disputes as 
> there were for the overall approach for FOP.

You may be right, but I have reason to doubt it. If what you say were true,
FOP would have done a 0.21 release in September that incorporated FOrayFont:
a very modest (but real) cost to the project, significant gains to both
users and the project, the fairly speedy removal of a whole class of support
issues, a test-bed for one actual 1.0 module, modest cleanup of the code
base, the opportunity to attract developers to work on a much simpler
discrete subsystem, elimination of the *immediate* need for a competing
product, etc. IMO, that should have been a slam-dunk, but wasn't. Here is a
huge disagreement that has nothing to do with system design at all. As with
many other FOP decisions, I am just baffled.

> It was just an idea in the hopes of bringing people back 
> together to work on things with little to no potential for 
> disagreements.

I think we can and should work together, but I see only downside potential
to making the relationship as tight as it once was. My philosophy makes
ample room for making mistakes ... once.

Victor Mote