[ajug-members] Too use Open Source or Not
Travis Bailey
mail at travisbailey.com
Wed Oct 10 22:06:28 EDT 2007
Keep in mind all that Wiki, Blogs, and Forums of both a work or personal nature could potentially count...
As many times they all have a mechanism for supplying an RSS feed to some aggregator.
Travis Bailey
www.travisbailey.com
404.664.7782 (c)
"The greater the artist the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize." - Robert Hughes
----- Original Message ----
From: Vincent <vincent at xaymaca.com>
To: ajug-members at ajug.org
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 4:59:50 PM
Subject: Re: [ajug-members] Too use Open Source or Not
I wonder how many AJUGers have blogs?
Travis Bailey wrote:
>
> AJUG should install a blog...
> I added a post to my recently created blog for ya... needs material
anyway:
>
> https://blog.travisbailey.org/?p=7
>
> behind a self-signed certificate right now, so not production grade.
>
>
> Travis Bailey
> Travis Bailey Photography
> /www.travisbailey.com <http://www.travisbailey.com>/
> 404.664.7782 (c)
>
> "The greater the artist the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is
> granted to the less talented as a consolation prize." - *Robert
Hughes*
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Burr Sutter <burrsutter at gmail.com>
> To: ajug-members at ajug.org
> Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 11:11:38 AM
> Subject: Re: [ajug-members] Too use Open Source or Not
>
> That is a good one.
>
>
>
> We should find the time to craft this into a blog entry or
something….
>
>
>
>
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:* Travis Bailey [mailto:mail at travisbailey.com]
> *Sent:* Wednesday, October 10, 2007 8:41 AM
> *To:* ajug-members at ajug.org
> *Subject:* Re: [ajug-members] Too use Open Source or Not
>
>
>
> I agree substantively with all your points.
> I think you might miss one Burr... ;-)
>
> F) Prognosticate and Pray: When making decisions about which
> technologies to use on a new project, I think it is important to
> consider it's maintainability. No one small firm is likely to be
able
> to take an OSS project into the mainstream, but that small firm is
> looking to leverage the community with support of frameworks and
> technology. When a team chooses to use newer projects like Struts2,
> Spring2, jBPM, Drools, etc... they are really just trying, in part,
to
> bet on the horses that they think will be mainstream a year or two
from
> now. I think part of the value of developing software for a company
is
> developing that software with technologies that are appropriate and
> hopefully are popular enough the customer can find developers to
support
> and maintain the software for years to come. Just because a
technology
> is best doesn't mean it will become mainstream...
>
> A lot of our decisions about the technology we use surrounds these
points:
>
> * Does the technology solve a business problem?
> * Will the technology offer a value proposition during it's
> lifecycle (bleed to maintenance)?
> * Is the technology within a core skillset of the largest pool of
> developers? (minimize the skillsets needed for support)
>
>
> We started this project last February with a target initial release
of
> end of Q1 2008 with a subsequent release schedule likely lasting
another
> year for "recognized" features.
> It is really hard to guess what technologies I will be able to hire
> smart folk for in 2009 without paying through the nose.
>
>
>
> Travis Bailey
> */www.travisbailey.com <http://www.travisbailey.com>/*
> 404.664.7782 (c)
>
> "The greater the artist the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is
> granted to the less talented as a consolation prize." - **Robert
Hughes**
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Burr Sutter <burrsutter at gmail.com>
> To: ajug-members at ajug.org
> Sent: Tuesday, October 9, 2007 12:25:55 PM
> Subject: [ajug-members] Too use Open Source or Not
>
> Travis’s recent response to my inquiry about jBPM has sparked an
idea
> that I want to discuss with the group (thank you, it created an
> interesting thought and I’m NOT picking on Travis, please don’t
take it
> that).
>
>
>
> He made a point that jBPM had “headaches” and seemed to have
flaws in a
> given area (oracle & forking) both of which are I think are perfectly
> reasonable assertions as someone who is interested in or trying to
use a
> technology. So here is my thought…
>
>
>
> Open source projects tend to have a number of quirks as they are
> primarily driven by small numbers of contributors, working around the
> global, in many cases during nights & weekends. The successful OSS
> (open source software) projects often have a charismatic leader,
someone
> to evangelize the core ideas behind the value for the OSS project.
> With that said OSS-based projects often lack formal documentation &
QA
> resources and since most OSS projects are founded by coders, not tech
> writers/quality engineers you can see the problem. That is where the
> community comes into play and adds significant value. Struts
benefits
> from having numerous individuals writing books on that framework,
> consulting & training companies offering services and from having
1000s
> of users put it through the wringer in every possible way imaginable.
> Therefore the result is a well documented and well QA’d piece of
> technology. Perhaps of the worlds best documented & QA’d
technologies.
> The community is also serves as the BA role and in some cases the
> project manger role (demanding the core contributors finish on time
by
> nagging them to death, offering to buy them beer & steak dinners).
>
>
>
> Now here is the “catch-22” (or chicken & egg issue), in order to
get all
> of those extra documentation, QA and BA resources, you have to be
pretty
> popular and pretty “mainstream” where 30+% of most Java users
know of or
> are attempting usage of that technology. Struts, Spring, Hibernate,
> Ant, JUnit are just some that fall in that category. The trick is
> getting popular (therefore getting all the goodness of the community)
> while at the same time have good enough quality, docs, email list
> support, etc. Obviously there is the complexity factor as well.
Ant
> and JUnit are pretty simple tools therefore it is easier to provide
> enough quality, docs & email list support to get a community.
>
>
>
> Here are the options I can think of:
>
> A) Wait: So you might wish to wait to adopt a technology after it
has
> gained popularity. Struts, Spring, Hibernate, Apache WS, Ant, JUnit,
> JBoss App Server are all “safe bets” and have been proven by the
usage
> of thousands of individuals and companies. However, this puts you
very
> late to the game on OSS innovation. People adopting Struts now would
be
> considered to be “laggards” while people adopting MyFaces,
Facelets
> and/or Seam would be considered “early adopters”.
>
>
>
> B) Bleed: Or you might wish to bleed a little and adopt the less
mature
> technology and participate in the community (great community members
can
> simply be those who develop a test case to illustrate the issue and
> attach it to a Jira task). Bleeding isn’t fun but you might want
to
> have the most innovative tech. You might want Struts2 or Spring2 or
> Hibernate Shards or an OSS-based ESB to solve your business problem
and
> you are unwilling to build the framework from scratch or unwilling to
> pay the huge fees to a major commercial vendor to provide closed
source
> software.
>
>
>
> C) Pay: To pay some open source “consulting” & “support”
company some
> dollars to help you overcome the lack of docs, best practices, etc
and
> perhaps even track down and fix bugs on your behalf. There are
> several organizations attempting to make a profit in this space. Some
> have already failed as businesses.
>
>
>
> D) Build: Build your own solution that solves your end-user’s
specific
> use cases. That is quite common for MVC, IoC/DI, ORM-lite and ESB.
I’ve
> met several who built their own Tomact/App Server like thing before.
> Those who built their own clustering/grid-like frameworks. Plus a lot
of
> custom ESB-like solutions.
>
>
>
> E) Sell: If there is only a small community for a technology but you
> really, really wish to use it then you work your butt off to
evangelize
> it. You become a salesman. A recent example of this was Ruby on
Rails
> and Dave Thomas. He was the “maven, connector & salesman” who
helped it
> reach its tipping point (must read: Blink & Tipping Point). Bruce
Tate
> also falls in that category. Now they make great money selling
> consulting, books, training, etc. I’ve personally been accused of
the
> same, as far back as pushing the notion of the internet, modems, NCSA
> httpd and CGI for a new application platform OR even the concept of
> server-side Java as an application server. Some of you were around 10
to
> 13 years ago when I was “selling” those ideas in Atlanta .
>
>
>
> I think this is important concept for current & future software
> architects, those people who have to make hard decisions about which
> tools/frameworks they’ll embed in the solutions they’ll create
for their
> end-users. Sometimes we gamble big (try any JAR file we find on
> sourceforge.net <http://sourceforge.net>) and sometimes we don’t
gamble
> at all (we use exactly what IBM tells us to use).
>
>
>
> What do you think about this topic?
>
>
>
> Burr
>
>
>
>
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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> ajug-members at ajug.org
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--
The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet.
-William Gibson
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