Thanks for your extreme patience in the matter of
the proposed Kabuki contribution to the Apache
Incubator. The original delay was due to cleaning
up code, writing documentation, and other activities
to make the code ready for check-in to the Apache
source code repository.
While preparing the Kabuki project for submission,
Zimbra helped co-found the OpenAjax Alliance[1] with
partners like IBM and others to make open source AJAX
technology more available to developers and improve
interoperability between AJAX libraries. Throughout
that experience, we spent a lot of time in discussions
with others involved with the OpenAjax Alliance such
as IBM, Yahoo!, Google, Dojo, etc. and confess that
we have recently had second thoughts about whether
or not to submit Kabuki through the Apache Incubator
process.
A few of the things we've learned:
1) Most parties in the OpenAjax initiative believe
one sweet spot for AJAX toolkits will be for
augmenting existing HTML pages. This is a more
evolutionary approach that provides a more generic
fallback in terms of accessibility, legacy clients,
and so on. So a key constituency is the "HTML
design center", and today we believe Dojo to be a
better choice for HTML developers than Kabuki.
2) At least some of the Java UI developers prefer
to continue to do their coding work in Java and
then map the resulting application to Javascript
for deployment. This is the model at the heart of
the Google Web Toolkit (GWT), which is directly
targetted at the "Java design center", and is now
available under the Apache license.
3) Kabuki, which targets object-oriented programming
in Javascript, retains its sweet spot for developing
more revolutionary AJAX applications ("Javascript
design center") that seek to take the full advantage
of the browser's capabilities in native Javascript.
We think that Kabuki is an ideal fit for a certain
class of Ajax solutions but not for others. As such,
we expect Kabuki to co-exist with Dojo, GWT, and
others. We now agree with other members of OpenAjax
that a peer relationship between these projects is
best. We feel that this approach facilitates sharing
and collaboration and is better than an approach
where one project has a special relationship with
Apache while others do not.
Due to the fact that the AJAX landscape has grown
and changed so much since the start of the Kabuki
project and from our discussions with the OpenAjax
community, we have made the difficult decision to
withdraw Kabuki from consideration for incubation
at Apache.
As always, Zimbra remains deeply committed to open
source software and the open source community. The
Kabuki project will continue to be freely available
under the Apache license, the only difference that
it will be hosted at Zimbra.
We appreciate all of the help we've received by
everyone involved in submitting Kabuki as a project
for incubation at Apache and we apologize to anyone
who has been inconvenienced by this decision. While
we realize this decision may not be popular, we are
convinced that this is the right thing to do for
the OpenAjax Alliance, Apache, and Zimbra.
For anyone that is either frustrated or concerned
by this decision, please feel free to contact the
President and CTO of Zimbra, Scott Dietzen[2], as
he made the ultimate decision and he would like to
understand your concerns.
Thank you for your consideration.
[1] http://www.openajaxalliance.org/
[2] scott DOT dietzen AT zimbra DOT com
--
Andy Clark * Zimbra * [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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