Re: [morph-developer] ASF incubation proposal

[Matt S. <Mat...@wh...>]

My email program has inserted line breaks into your text, so I will give 
comments rather than edit...

Matt Benson wrote:
> BACKGROUND/RATIONALE
>
>   As information flows through an application, it
> undergoes multiple transformations.  While the most
> prevalent examples of this in the J2EE space are
> well-known (e.g. HTTP request parameters to
> domain/data transfer objects, DTOs to domain objects)
> the overall problem space is characterized by the lack
> of a simple, well-known, conveniently extensible
> solution.  At least one JSR (295) describes such a
> facility as a dependency.  Having identified the basic
> commonalities among the best known application
> operations requiring object conversion, Morph consolid
> ates these into a single API which, along with various
> bundled implementation classes, seeks to achieve the
> oft-repeated software development goal of making "the
> simple things easy, and the hard things possible" with
> regard to its problem domain.
>   
Nice, we need to update the homepage with this (if you haven't already 
done so).
> CURRENT STATUS
>
> Meritocracy:
>   The Morph team is eager to invest more deeply in the
> meritocracy approach taken by the ASF.  To date,
> however, Morph's development team has been accumulated
> by a sort of "meritocracy-on-spec" approach:  Matt
> Benson was added as a develope
> r on the basis of his ideas until his actual work
> proved him an asset to the team.
>   
You're missing a word in that last sentence.  Did you mean "Matt B was 
*not* added" or "... *before* his actual work".  Sorry, I am fuzzy on my 
history so I wasn't sure what you were trying to say ;)
> Community:
>   It is somewhat difficult to gauge the size of
> Morph's community.  There have been modest but
> consistent downloads of the project since its initial
> prerelease:  these average 21/month over 28 months. 
> The traffic on its user and developer lists is
> similarly light.  The team acknowledges that this
> might indicate anything from high code quality to
> suboptimal promotion.  One possible outcome of Morp
> h's joining the Apache community is that increased
> cooperation with and buy-in from other ASF projects
> will generate users and possibly developers as well.
>   
There have been a half dozen users that have reported problems, 
submitted patches, added bug reports, etc. over the past couple years.  
I don't know if you want to mention them or not.
> KNOWN RISKS
>
> Orphaned Products:
>   The Morph developers are part of its user base.  The
> general-purpose, crosscutting nature of this project
> makes it a virtual certainty that a Java developer who
> is familiar with Morph will find uses for the library
> regardless of the particular industry, application
> tier, or technology implementation he may find himself
> working in/on/with.  For these reasons, the team
> asserts that the risk of abandonment is low.
>   
This would technically be more proper as "... or technology 
implementation *with/in/on which* he may find himself working.", if a 
bit stuffy.
> Inexperience with Open Source:
>   As has been indicated, one of the initial committers
> has some years of experience as a committer and PMC
> member at the ASF.  Additionally, Morph has always
> been open-source software, with its evolution being
> directly guided by user input and developer consensus
> in similar fashion to other Apache projects.
>   
In fact, the initial list of requirements for the project was hashed out 
on the jakarta-commons-dev email list.
> Homogenous Developers:
>   On the plus side, the initial committers are united
> only by their common interest in Morph (and their
> coincidental first names and middle initials). 
> However, both hail from the United States, and
> acknowledge this as a less-than-desirable level of
> diversity.  As Java Locale support is a key strength
> of Morph's transformation API, wider geographical
> displacement would be a boon.  The inevitable input of
> the ASF's diverse community could only be of positive
> influence in this regard.
>   
"dispersement" might be a better word than "displacement".
> Reliance on Salaried Developers:
>   While both of the core developers use Morph in their
> own paid development jobs, they intend for time to
> prove their committment to Morph's continued success
> as a library in its own right, and believe it has the
> potential to become THE solution for Java object
> conversion.
>   
I'm confused by the phrase "they intend for time to prove their 
commitment to Morph's continued success... "
> EXTERNAL DEPENDENCIES
>
>   Mandatory runtime dependencies are:
>
>   - Apache Jakarta commons-logging
>   - Composite @ http://composite.sourceforge.net
> (ASL2)
>   
Could we perhaps bundle Composite as a subproject of Morph?  I know this 
might be tricky and/or a sticking point, but Composite really does form 
a good bit of the low-level guts of Morph.
> REQUIRED RESOURCES
>
> Mailing Lists:
>   (Return to this subject after a sponsor is found)
>
> Subversion Directory:
>   (Return to this subject after a sponsor is found)
>
> Issue Tracking:
>   (Return to this subject after a sponsor is found)
>   
We already have this stuff available don't we?
>
> INITIAL COMMITTERS
>
>   - Matt Sgarlata (matthew DOT sgarlata DOT wh02 AT
> wharton DOT upenn DOT edu)
>   - Matt Benson (mbenson AT apache DOT org)
>
>
> AFFILIATIONS
>
>   Matt Sgarlata is employed by Spider Strategies, who
> have graciously agreed to host Morph's Subversion
> repository; this is the extent of the claim Spider
> Strategies makes on the Morph project (i.e. none);
> Morph has no corporate affiliation.
>   
If you like we can add something like "Spider Strategies has indicated 
it's willingness to sign any required documentation indicating it holds 
no claims whatsoever over Morph, its source code, or any related 
electronic information."  I have been told this by my boss, who is one 
of the partners at Spider Strategies and he has sole discretion over all 
software development matters.
>
> SPONSORS
>
> Champion:  Niall Pemberton
>
> Nominated Mentors:  TBD
>
> Sponsoring Entity:  TBD
>
>
> March 13, 2007
>