Hi Justin, Good to hear from you again. I looked at Moonshine a few years ago and it didn't look like anyone was working on it. I'm glad someone has started it back up.
I have some suggestions based on your questions. A while ago I donated Radii8 (www.radii8.com) to Apache for a few reasons. 1. To give the community a tool that lets you create a design 2. Let's you add use Flex components to create that layout 3. Let's you use inspectors to set properties and styles 4. Generate the MXML properties and styles 5. Create and share your MXML documents for educational and instructional purposes 6. Publish and share that online 7. To get the community involved working on that tool In the process I learned that projects at Apache that rely on other libraries cannot be hosted on the site. It seems that mainly, the benefit of an Apache project, is that you can be confident you can use it in your own projects without any copyright issues. It doesn't seem to be the best place if you need to use libraries hosted on other websites, libraries of other licenses, binaries, graphics of any sort (even royalty free) and so on. It seems to be a place for singular type of projects. My case is that we have had to create an installer that gets all parts from all over for the Flex SDK to run. What I was hoping was for the community to be more involved. But that didn't seem to happen. The Apache atmosphere has a nobody is in charge, everybody is in charge perspective. So if you have an issue it's up to you to "scratch your own itch". It also has a no vision, any vision perspective and a no roadmap, any roadmap perspective. After some discussion, many times it's been repeated Apache is about community more than code. It's clear that looking back, you need someone to take charge, like Alex did with FlexJS, like Mike did with Falcon compiler work, like Josh is doing with Feathers MXML, like you did with the Moonshine project, and many others. But, that nobody running things, everybody running things also means that there are or were 4 or more different efforts to make Flex output to HTML; FlexJS, AS2JS, FalconJX, Radii8 Flex to HTML export, itzhi Starling conversion, etc. Sorry, I don't know if I got the names right but I remember the projects. A while ago but some time after I donated Radii8 I started working on it again but it was hosted on github. Over the last month I've been talking with Alex about trying to merge the changes back into Apache Flex repo but to do so I would or may have to strip out many of the libraries I use to make it all work. Pieces would be hosted all over the place and it's looking complicated. My point and my question is, what do you really want? Do you want community involvement? Do you want Apache and Apache Flex community blessing, whatever that means? Do you want it at Apache so it can be all bundled together for easier distribution? If that's the case, I would suggest that the community bless it as a side project. Allow it to be discussed on this list. Give it a discussion tag name [moonshine]. Maybe use JIRA here. But I would not be so quick to host it here. Host it at Github IMHO. I don't know if this breaks any Apache policy but if Apache is really about community more than code than IMHO let it be discussed here but hosted wherever it will make the most progress. BTW I looked at Moonshine possibly before you were working on it and would have liked to use it in Radii8 but I was attempting to create web based design view and Moonshine was much too integrated with the file system. I've been using Ace Editor <https://ace.c9.io/> for syntax highlighting (JavaScript code editor in a HTML loader). It's an open source project on Github and they may have some code that you could use to help with some of the issues you mentioned including code completion, etc. Also, I would like to add many developers are still using the main Flex SDK and so I suggest don't limit Moonshine to just FlexJS. PS Great to see it being worked on again! :) On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 12:51 AM, Alex Harui <aha...@adobe.com> wrote: > Hi Justin Hill, > > Justin McLean is factually correct, but I have a slightly different > viewpoint. > > Before you start signing ICLAs and Software Grants, I would first consider > the financial aspects: how will you and your team find the time (which > usually means money) to continue to contribute to Moonshine if you donate > it to the Apache Software Foundation? Apache software releases cannot be > sold for money. And product names and trademarks are supposed to be > assigned to the ASF as well, so if you donate Moonshine, then you can't > decide later to try to make a non-free version and still call it Moonshine > > I have seen two different ways that Apache projects have for-profit > ecosystems: > 1) The Apache Subversion project somehow decided that for-profits can use > the SVN acronym in product names, but not "Subversion" itself. Apache > Subversion is command-line and free, and SmartSVN, TortoiseSVN and host of > other for-profit applications leverage the free Subversion, add value to > it (usually GUI) and sell it for a price. > 2) When Adobe acquired PhoneGap, the PhoneGap folks contributed the main > body of code to Apache which became Apache Cordova, but Adobe adds value > and sells it as PhoneGap and I think IBM also sells it under a different > name. Other companies have also donated the core of their code-base to > Apache under a different name so they could maintain the branding they > have established for their for-profit products. > > So to me, that's the first set of decisions. > > Next, it is important to understand that Apache is really about > communities more than code. Once you can describe what it is you want to > donate and what you want to call it, we can have a discussion on this > mailing list about whether the same set of folks in the Apache Flex > project will be the same set of folks working on whatever you decide to > donate. Starting your own Apache project is a lot more work than having > your code donated to an existing project, but many folks at Apache are > wary of projects that have too many sub projects. Apparently there have > been problems in the past. > > After that, as Justin points out, is figuring out what to do about the > LGPL code, and finding out if the original code owners are ok with > donating whatever you decide to donate to Apache. > > When you get that far, you will know that you "can" donate whatever it is > you decide to donate. Then it is time to fill out a Software Grant. > > More in-line below. > > > > > > >> 1) Alex, do you see a value in having Moonshine IDE be contributed > >> officially to Apache FlexJS? > > Whether it becomes part of the Apache Flex project or its own > project/community, the Apache Software Foundation welcomes any existing > community that wants to grow under the Apache governance model. I'd be > interested in what others think about the impact having an IDE within the > project will have on the third-party IDEs. It might cause unrest in the > community. On the other hand, if you are donating some code-intelligence, > and other features and the other IDE manufacturers can leverage that in > their IDEs, then that might help the community. My question for you is > the same: What value do you see for bringing this code to Apache? > > > > >> 3) Would we still have rights to contribute? I don't think any of us > >>are > >> code contributors right now. > > Historically, Apache Flex has voted in the authors of code donated via > software grants as committers around the same time as the software grant > is accepted. I would imagine we would do the same. While most folks do > earn committer rights by contributing patches and helping out on mailing > lists, it doesn't make sense to me to require such steps for code donors. > You have expertise and momentum, and we want to get out of your way so you > can keep on going and attract new contributors. > > > > > > >> 4) Would we still have control or at least influence over the > >> Moonshine-ide.com website, or whatever the corresponding Apache page(s) > >> would be? > > I think that will depend on what you end up donating and what it is > called. There are restrictions on what you can do with a site with a > domain name that uses the trademark you are doing to donate to Apache. > > Anyway, think about the above and let us know what you decide. We can > keep the discussion going on this thread (public threads are always > preferred), but if there is sensitive topics, we can discuss them off-list > or in person. > > HTH, > -Alex > >
