Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to Future directions for OpenACS
his ongoing disagreement with Jerry. Obviously, I think that Jerry's
on firm ground. I've followed this saga for the last year as he's
tried to get his nvshr and nsunix work incorporated into the code
base. Kriston has treated him (and others) like dirt. I choose to
slip him a quick verbal punch in the nose - in private, though.
He copied my private e-mail to the list - of which I'm not even a
member, BTW - without asking for my permission, apparently to
"embarrass" me.
So far I've gotten six notes that, summed up, say "thank you" and zero
that say anything else. The point that I e-mailed Kriston privately
seems to have been missed, so I'm being thanked for something I never
meant to do, i.e. tweak Kriston in public!
Oh well ...
Now, as far as the future goes:
aD has released a Java-based version of ACS 4. This is only being
supported in the Apache-Tomcat environment. They are still working on
the Tcl version, but it is safe to presume that they'll slowly be
switching towards Java.
How does this impact OpenACS? Hard to say, we're a community, and we
take a community attitude. If the community wants to continue
supporting Tcl ACS 4, and for that matter extending it with additional
modules, it will, right? I suspect quite a few of us will feel that
way. I personally have a Tcl/ACS/Postgres/AOLserver site that is
going to grow indefinitely. I have no reason to go through the agony
of switching to a new environment when the environment I have works so
well.
On the other hand, many people find Java attractive. I would be
amazed if there's no interest in porting new Java versions as they are
released.
My feeling is that we can be a "big tent" project, in the sense that
in our general space we can find room to accept those who might want
to work solely in the Java space, while continuing to accept those who
might want to work in the Tcl space.
The issue won't be direction in the sense of a couple of folks saying
"this is the direction we'll take", the issue will be whether or not
people who care about one direction or another will also be willing or
able to roll up their sleeves, get to work, and make it happen.
Same for supporting other Open Source databases. I'm interested in
the possibility of our supporting IB or SAP DB as time goes on, but
being personally tied into Postgres means that I'm unlikely to
personally sit down and put a lot of personal effort on the port. I'd
hope that the interests of users of one or more of those DBs would
intersect with the interests of the OpenACS project, and that we could
help find resources, help point out SQL "gotchas" involved in porting,
etc in order to make a port an easier task.
Speaking for myself, I view aDs move towards Apache/Tomcat/Java as
being a marketing, not technical move. People working on OpenACS may
or may not care about popularity in the same way that a business
focused on the bottom line does.
How do others feel? Is there a consensus one way or the other? How
do we tell? We've never even met each other in person (mostly) :)
