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From: Mike <nee...@gm...> - 2006-07-12 08:15:43
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Hello, Please do not interpret this as any sort of hostile request - I have read and searched all I could, but I am unable to figure out why NaviServer was forked from AOLserver and what the goals of the current development team are (why are they/you working on NaviServer)? I am very excited to see the new strides toward better documentatioin and code cleanup and such - but I am a bit scared to sign on to use NaviServer without knowing why it exists or what the roadmap is. Please, Zoran, Vlad, or someone - tell me your motivations and goals both for the fork and for the future of NaviServer. Maybe there's a pointer to a mailing list thread where this decision was made? An IRC channel log? Thanks! |
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From: Zoran V. <zv...@ar...> - 2006-07-12 09:19:17
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Am 12.07.2006 um 10:15 schrieb Mike: > Hello, > Please do not interpret this as any sort of hostile request - I have > read and searched all I could, but I am unable to figure out why > NaviServer was forked from AOLserver and what the goals of the current > development team are (why are they/you working on NaviServer)? I am > very excited to see the new strides toward better documentatioin and > code cleanup and such - but I am a bit scared to sign on to use > NaviServer without knowing why it exists or what the roadmap is. > Please, Zoran, Vlad, or someone - tell me your motivations and goals > both for the fork and for the future of NaviServer. Maybe there's a > pointer to a mailing list thread where this decision was made? An IRC > channel log? > Thanks! Hi! If you recall, AS forked already some years ago under the OpenNsd name. Mostly by OACS people who were not very pleased with the way the community issues have been handled by some "gatekeeper" persons assigned from AOL. This was I believe in 2001 or 2002. Our fork (15.02.2005) was motivated with similar reasons. All of us depend (to a high extent) to the server code which means that we'd like to have certain "influence" about the direction of the develompent. This proved to be a very time consuming and difficult task in the AS project as things have been questioned, re-questioned, endlessly =20 flamed etc. It was no big fun and it was contra-productive for us to remain active there, so we went out to build our own sandbox and try out new things by ourselves. Unlike AOL typical usage (a web-server) many of us (when =10I say many I mean mainly myself and Vlad) use the server as a general-purpose multithreading Tcl/C engine. Of course, this kind of usage-pattern is not something of the AOL's highest-priority, consequently the changes we need to add to the core server were not taken seriously and on top of that, some were fiercely opposed. Well, what would you do in such =20 case? So, as of now we have a pretty stable, in many respects improved code and will continue to improve it as the time goes by. We will "borrow" good ideas from the AOLserver project because there are (still) =20 excellent people working there, and we will add our own salt when we think it's needed. We will try to maintain compatibility to the AOLserver if =20 possible yet this is not a high-priority issue. Well (others may also comment), generally speaking, you will find much less "obstruction" to your ideas if you want to participate in the server development. There is no "Mr. Big" arround here and we solve most of the issues in the democratic way: i.e. by voting. This is not always easy, but the alternative is much worse (I personally know that from the experience). So. I hope I did not open more questions than I attempted to answer! If yes, hit me with your rhythm stick :-) Cheers, Zoran |
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From: Andrew P. <at...@pi...> - 2006-07-12 14:22:20
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On Wed, Jul 12, 2006 at 11:19:12AM +0200, Zoran Vasiljevic wrote: > of that, some were fiercely opposed. Well, what would you do in such > case? I would have started actively and frequently committing code to the AOLserver CVS, as Dossy explicitly asked/challenged you to do, rather than merely talking about doing so. Look, Zoran, I know that's not your personal style, but as far as I could tell you basically won your last public argument with Dossy, and he must have known it. He more or less threw up his hands and said, 'Ok, just start committing code, we'll work it out from there.' And then you walked away! If I recall correctly, Zoran had (and still has) CVS commit to AOLserver, but used it only rarely. Vlad had it too. Stephen Deasy never even asked for commit, which is a huge shame, as from his explanations on the AOLserver list, he seems to be a real AOLserver expert with a deep understanding of the code. Ideally, I would like to see Zoran, Stephen, and Vlad all actively collaborating with Jim Davidson and the other folks working on AOLserver, on a single codebase. Failing that, I would have liked to see the three of them SOUNDLY and IRREFUTABLY demonstrate that a fork was in fact necessary. IMNSHO that was not done, and thus the NaviServer fork was unjustified. Oh well, I guess it's all largely irrelevant now... -- Andrew Piskorski <at...@pi...> http://www.piskorski.com/ |
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From: Zoran V. <zv...@ar...> - 2006-07-12 14:49:46
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Am 12.07.2006 um 16:22 schrieb Andrew Piskorski: > On Wed, Jul 12, 2006 at 11:19:12AM +0200, Zoran Vasiljevic wrote: > >> of that, some were fiercely opposed. Well, what would you do in such >> case? > > I would have started actively and frequently committing code to the > AOLserver CVS, as Dossy explicitly asked/challenged you to do, rather > than merely talking about doing so. Ah, this goes again... I did that, was publicly exposed as one who "broke" some internally used AOL API which (almost) resulted in all my changes reverted back and a lot of strain on myself to fix that in the matter of *hours* in the CVS HEAD!!! What I did: I commited a "innocent" update to get keylists objectified as in one of the RFE's! And the bitter pill: I even did not need that personally! I commited just because somebody from the communitiy needed it! Net result is: I had to work later, under stress for some hours to get the fix. And the code was in the volatile CVS HEAD. Now, AOL used CVS HEAD for production. No wonder that they let nobody change a bit there! Now, you did not have that experience but I did. And not everything was going over the public list. I realized that AS project was more an AOL project with a large debugging community then community driven development. And I was not the only one with that impression... I do not blame anybody for that. I'm greatly thankful to people who open sourced the code and still have the highest possible respect to them. It is just that we (I'm speaking about my company) need some more than what's available and we do not have the time to spend persuading everybody if that is needed or not and why and why not. > > Look, Zoran, I know that's not your personal style, but as far as I > could tell you basically won your last public argument with Dossy, and > he must have known it. He more or less threw up his hands and said, > 'Ok, just start committing code, we'll work it out from there.' And > then you walked away! Well, this is a very good observation. The reason was simple: I did not have the *time* to try again. My company is relying on the code *more* than AOL does. After all, the server is the core of our product and several people live from that. So, having this in mind and having Vlad throwing the towel in resignation after the who-knows-what flame about multiprotocol support, we just joined the forces. Stephen was in the same position... So, the critical mass was there. > > If I recall correctly, Zoran had (and still has) CVS commit to > AOLserver, but used it only rarely. Vlad had it too. Stephen Deasy > never even asked for commit, which is a huge shame, as from his > explanations on the AOLserver list, he seems to be a real AOLserver > expert with a deep understanding of the code. > > Ideally, I would like to see Zoran, Stephen, and Vlad all actively > collaborating with Jim Davidson and the other folks working on > AOLserver, on a single codebase. Failing that, I would have liked to > see the three of them SOUNDLY and IRREFUTABLY demonstrate that a fork > was in fact necessary. Other folks? Who is "other folks"? I see only Nathan commiting anything new. I have very good relations to Nathan and Jim (I have a *great* respect to this guys) but they are both "biased" as they are both from AOL. Where is the community? You can say: you are the community (meaning myself). And I say, yes I was the community as I tried but did not succeed. > > IMNSHO that was not done, and thus the NaviServer fork was > unjustified. Oh well, I guess it's all largely irrelevant now... Well, I would not like to comment on everyting (there are other people here as well) but I will comment on "unjustified". From our perspective (I mean myself and my company) and I'm certain that other people think the same: it was a great relief! Suddenly whole lot of possibilities opened and time could be used in more productive way! But you know all that already, as you were (and are) present all that time. Cheers Zoran > > -- > Andrew Piskorski <at...@pi...> > http://www.piskorski.com/ > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > --- > Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, > security? > Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your > job easier > Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache > Geronimo > http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel? > cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 > _______________________________________________ > naviserver-devel mailing list > nav...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/naviserver-devel |
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From: Mike <nee...@gm...> - 2006-07-12 16:13:42
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On 7/12/06, Zoran Vasiljevic <zv...@ar...> wrote: > Our fork (15.02.2005) was motivated with similar reasons. All of us > depend (to a high extent) to the server code which means that we'd like > to have certain "influence" about the direction of the develompent. > This proved to be a very time consuming and difficult task in the AS > project as things have been questioned, re-questioned, endlessly > flamed etc. ... > So. I hope I did not open more questions than I attempted to answer! > If yes, hit me with your rhythm stick :-) Zoran, Thank you for your complete answer. It does raise a few questions, but they are simple... 1) Are you or the other developers committed to fixing bugs that do not affect your business? Again, this is not hostile - but I want to know, since the dev. team is small, if I run into bugs, will I be told "we work on the parts we need, feel free to fix it and submit a patch" or can I expect more of a "this is an opensource project we run, so we will devote time to helpind you with this bug you found." 2) Was anything from AS 4.5 merged into NS, if not - is there a plan for this? Finally, I would like to ask that you post either the above verbatum or a modified version of your response somewhere on the NS wiki. Perhaps short bios of you, Vlad, and Stephen and when you care about developing NS would be quite helpful. Right now the only information available is the "Key Facts" page, and it's quite hard to guage where this project comes from or why simply by reading that page. |
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From: Vlad S. <vl...@cr...> - 2006-07-12 16:21:14
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Yes, all bugs will be fixed, regardless of how Naviserver is used in our businesses, the whole project is intended to be bug-free and stable and usable for everybody. Some parts were merged from AS 4.5 recently, you can check ChangeLog from the CVS HEAD, more may be added but this is not the highest priority to keep-up with AS development. Mike wrote: > On 7/12/06, Zoran Vasiljevic <zv...@ar...> wrote: >> Our fork (15.02.2005) was motivated with similar reasons. All of us >> depend (to a high extent) to the server code which means that we'd like >> to have certain "influence" about the direction of the develompent. >> This proved to be a very time consuming and difficult task in the AS >> project as things have been questioned, re-questioned, endlessly >> flamed etc. > ... >> So. I hope I did not open more questions than I attempted to answer! >> If yes, hit me with your rhythm stick :-) > > Zoran, > Thank you for your complete answer. It does raise a few questions, > but they are simple... > > 1) Are you or the other developers committed to fixing bugs that do > not affect your business? Again, this is not hostile - but I want to > know, since the dev. team is small, if I run into bugs, will I be told > "we work on the parts we need, feel free to fix it and submit a patch" > or can I expect more of a "this is an opensource project we run, so we > will devote time to helpind you with this bug you found." > > 2) Was anything from AS 4.5 merged into NS, if not - is there a plan for this? > > Finally, I would like to ask that you post either the above verbatum > or a modified version of your response somewhere on the NS wiki. > Perhaps short bios of you, Vlad, and Stephen and when you care about > developing NS would be quite helpful. Right now the only information > available is the "Key Facts" page, and it's quite hard to guage where > this project comes from or why simply by reading that page. > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? > Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier > Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo > http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 > _______________________________________________ > naviserver-devel mailing list > nav...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/naviserver-devel > -- Vlad Seryakov 571 262-8608 office vl...@cr... http://www.crystalballinc.com/vlad/ |
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From: Zoran V. <zv...@ar...> - 2006-07-12 16:26:21
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Am 12.07.2006 um 18:13 schrieb Mike: > On 7/12/06, Zoran Vasiljevic <zv...@ar...> wrote: >> Our fork (15.02.2005) was motivated with similar reasons. All of us >> depend (to a high extent) to the server code which means that we'd >> like >> to have certain "influence" about the direction of the develompent. >> This proved to be a very time consuming and difficult task in the AS >> project as things have been questioned, re-questioned, endlessly >> flamed etc. > ... >> So. I hope I did not open more questions than I attempted to answer! >> If yes, hit me with your rhythm stick :-) > > Zoran, > Thank you for your complete answer. It does raise a few questions, > but they are simple... > > 1) Are you or the other developers committed to fixing bugs that do > not affect your business? Again, this is not hostile - but I want to > know, since the dev. team is small, if I run into bugs, will I be told > "we work on the parts we need, feel free to fix it and submit a patch" > or can I expect more of a "this is an opensource project we run, so we > will devote time to helpind you with this bug you found." I can't speak of others but if you have a problem with the server code itself and if I see that I can help I will do that. I'm already maintaining the Tcl threading extension so I know what you are asking about... I believe the others will do the same. > > 2) Was anything from AS 4.5 merged into NS, if not - is there a > plan for this? > This is good question! I do not know by heart. I will have to go and double-check against the 4.5 list. As the matter of fact, we added quite a lot of core-code which is not in the 4.5. The only source of such info at this moment is the ChangeLog. This contains everything but is not that easy to read. > Finally, I would like to ask that you post either the above verbatum > or a modified version of your response somewhere on the NS wiki. > Perhaps short bios of you, Vlad, and Stephen and when you care about > developing NS would be quite helpful. Right now the only information > available is the "Key Facts" page, and it's quite hard to guage where > this project comes from or why simply by reading that page. Well... I will have to see with other collegues... You know how it goes: we are all programmers and it's easier for us to write code than to write marketing materials! But I understand that this sort of info is needed. Cheers Zoran |
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From: Bernd E. <b.e...@ki...> - 2006-07-12 17:02:05
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Hi Mike, > 1) Are you or the other developers committed to fixing bugs that do > not affect your business? Again, this is not hostile - but I want to > know, since the dev. team is small, if I run into bugs, will I be told > "we work on the parts we need, feel free to fix it and submit a patch" > or can I expect more of a "this is an opensource project we run, so we > will devote time to helpind you with this bug you found." A bug does affect every single user of the server. As was already said, there are more than 3 people relying on Naviserver. Please take a look here and change the status to "any": http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=130646&atid=719006 This should answer your question. > Finally, I would like to ask that you post either the above verbatum > or a modified version of your response somewhere on the NS wiki. > Perhaps short bios of you, Vlad, and Stephen and when you care about > developing NS would be quite helpful. Right now the only information > available is the "Key Facts" page, and it's quite hard to guage where > this project comes from or why simply by reading that page. I updated the wiki :-) Bernd. |
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From: Andrew P. <at...@pi...> - 2006-07-13 17:40:06
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On Wed, Jul 12, 2006 at 04:49:38PM +0200, Zoran Vasiljevic wrote: > > Am 12.07.2006 um 16:22 schrieb Andrew Piskorski: > > I would have started actively and frequently committing code to the > > AOLserver CVS, as Dossy explicitly asked/challenged you to do, rather > > than merely talking about doing so. > > Ah, this goes again... I did that, was publicly exposed as one who > "broke" some internally used AOL API which (almost) resulted in all No, the argument you had with Dossy came AFTER (and because of) that incident, as did Dossy's saying more or less, 'You win, commit more code.' Note, I purposely said, "start actively and frequently committing code", not "commit one change once and then give up". I know you WANTED to commit code, but (for various reasons, all social) you didn't. If you were so convinced Dossy would in the future gratuitously revert your new contributions, fine, let him do it. Then at least you'd have shown that a fork really was required. My point is that as far as I could tell from the public record, you never did. > And not everything was going over the public list. Since I know nothing about that, I can only comment on what was public. > > Look, Zoran, I know that's not your personal style, but as far as I > > could tell you basically won your last public argument with Dossy, and > > he must have known it. He more or less threw up his hands and said, > > 'Ok, just start committing code, we'll work it out from there.' And > > then you walked away! > > Well, this is a very good observation. The reason was simple: I did not > have the *time* to try again. My company is relying on the code Your frustration was quite understandable, however, technically speaking, if you had the time to fork and then commit your changes to Naviserver, you also had the time to commit your changes to AOLserver. You were using CVS in both cases, same task... Yes, you may have not had that time to then enter into NEW arguments on the AOLserver list. But one, you assumed that a new argument would happen, it might not have. And two, even if a new argument did happen, it seems to me that there wouldn't be much forcing you to spend time on it. If necessary you could have simply ignored it, and walked away THEN. I've been in project lead situations before, and to my surprise, I noted in my own behavior how easy it was to get all hyper and overreact to small worries and problems, especially the first time or three they came up. And that's all I really saw in Dossy's response to whatever bug exactly was introduced with your keyed list commit (which you then fixed really fast). Yes, he overreacted, and he could and should have been a hell of a lot clearer and more proactive in admitting that. But as far as I could tell, that's all that that was really going on. A silly thing to lose half or so of AOLserver's active core developers over, and a silly thing to fork over as well... All IMO, of course. -- Andrew Piskorski <at...@pi...> http://www.piskorski.com/ |
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From: Zoran V. <zv...@ar...> - 2006-07-13 20:32:22
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Am 13.07.2006 um 19:39 schrieb Andrew Piskorski: > > A silly thing to lose half or so of AOLserver's active core developers > over, and a silly thing to fork over as well... All IMO, of course. > Do not unerestimate the AOLserver gatekeeper species! One (KH) spawned OpenNsd. The other Naviserver... After all, that one did made at least 3 persons really angry. The chance that all three of them are weirds is there, but not that high, I would say ;-) I see this so: if you are driving a car, you must look forward, otherwise you hit the wall. So, whatever *was* is secondary. It turned out this way and we now have what we have (or have not)... Cheers, Zoran |
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