State of the Project

Okay. This project is very out of date. I have made a few half-hearted attempts at revisiting it, but with no real results to show for it. The original code base was written when I had significantly less experience in web development and it has some major short-comings. I am willing to get back to donating some of my time to this project...however, I don't believe that there is any point in continuing the old code base. While there is a lot that can be mined from that code, I do not personnly believe it should be continued.

Enter the fresh blood: The company that originally retained me to create this software recently contacted me about the desire to revive it. They have a group of consultants that will, presumably, be the only people to read this. So, hi guys!

Here are my thoughts: The original desire for this application was to make the web interface fairly rich, and in the standards of the time it wasn't bad in that arena. Although, I did some very evil things to accomplish some of that. I think this application is an ideal candidate for a framework like Echo2 or GWT. Personally, I think that Echo2 will result in a much shorter development time. In that vein, I am going to start a code base that will likely be built on Echo2, Guice and JPA (backed by Hibernate) as the GUI, dependency injection and persistence frameworks. This code base will live where the skeleton project is right now (on sourceforge subversion servers). The original code will continue to live on the sourceforge CVS servers. I will leave it up to you guys whether you want to help this new generation of the application develop or continue work from the existing code base. I am more than willing to grant you committer privledges to this project, so that you can begin your work and will make myself readily available for questions and consultation. I created a list that we can use for just such a purpose: wos-development@lists.sourceforge.net As of this moment, it is still being created. However, once it is up and running I will set it up so that you are included. If you do not already have sourceforge accounts, I would go ahead and get them.

I do want to stress that this application is GPL'ed. So, unless you start completely from scratch to write a similar but seperate application...not at all based on this one, you will have to release any code changes back to the public. As a result it will probably be easiest on you to just do your work here. I will make sure that I am not a road block to your development.

So, in short, here is what I can promise you: You will hate me if you work with the old code and you will hate me much less if you work with me on the next version. Personally, I prefer the second option. :)

Let me know how you want to proceed. I am ready to begin work at any point...and there are some development and environment issues that we will need to discuss if you chose to work on the new version of the application with me. If you choose to go with the existing code, you will need me to grant you commit privledges for this project on CVS.

If you are not yet familiar or comfortable with the frameworks I mentioned as a possible grounding for the new project, don't let that scare you off by itself. I am not beyond considering other technologies/frameworks...and I really believe that working together on something improved will be beneficial to your cause...but, I digress. Take a look, let me know what conclusions you come to and we will go from there.