Posted by
dkey on
Dec 09, 2005; 2:25am
URL: http://ofbiz.116.s1.nabble.com/Users-ASF-Whaaa-reply-tp136680.html
Hi all,
I won't any more time on posting Apache vs. MIT debates on the forum, but
I do want to read the article mentioned by Si Chen to possibly gain a new
perspective on the desire to switch license models as soon as possible in
order to find out what the hubbub is all about.
I am just coming at this from (in my mind) a practical point of view. It
was mentioned that by being under the Apache umbrella we would attract
more experienced contributors or just more contributors as a result of
the change, therefore giving some contributors that now participate a
break. These contributors are free to do what they wish already, no one
is holding their feet to the fire, they most likely contribute out of
pure passion for programming or a passion for the project or some other
personal reason, so how would the ASF realy change anything in that
perspective? (reading between the lines here, please correct me if I am
mistaken).
My contention is, if the contributors associated with ASF projects were
interested in the further development of OFBiz then they would already be
"on the bandwagon" by now. This theory is alluded to in one of the
replies to my post, as well as the fact that we see some dead ASF
projects out there as well as vibrantly evolving projects like Tomcat.
-->QOUTE ?Alternatively, one could consider another type of project: look
at Tomcat. It was donated by Sun to the ASF for a number of reasons,
from an organization which already had the funds and setup to do its
own marketing and development without the ASF's help.?<--
Let?s take a look at this statement and think on it a bit. I do not
believe we can use Tomcat as an example for comparison, although very
successful, it is a TOOL to deploy applications such as OFBiz and the
like. Sun also has other commercial application servers as well to
distribute and support to further the growth of the company (hopefully
lots of growth, I just sold all my Cisco stock for Sun). In my humble
opinion OFBiz does not fit into the same category as Tomcat, Ant, Maven
and so on. OFBiz is an entirely different animal, so these issues might
be something to consider when we think of spending resources and time
with the hopes of ?gaining mindshare? and ?emergent opportunities?. It
appears to me that there is not much guarantee for ROI here considering
the time needed to convert to Apache 2.0. please take a look at the high
profile customers who already use OFBiz as I stated before, the big time
is just around the corner (I believe).
It already makes me want to bite my own leg off in regards to people who
have branched out and made GPL offshoots of OFBiz, although those who
have engaged in those projects have committed quite a bit back to the
community, why would you even branch out and change the creators vision
of a project and modify the way that it is be distributed instead of
contributing all of your changes back to OFBIZ if you want to post them
to a project!.... Sorry Big thorn in my side :(
These are just my opinions and I thought that I would share them with
everyone to ponder on in good spirit, and I write them with the greatest
of respect for all involved with OFBiz and the sub projects as well.
Dale Key
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