(forgive the rambling reply)

On Nov 12, 2007 4:47 PM, Noel J. Bergman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>   XAP - mailing lists show almost no discussion, mostly JIRA issues and
> commits

XAP is an interesting case. in some ways, i think that XAP has always
been short of just one independent developer showing up to scratch an
itch. there was no end of endeavour in the early days from the team to
try to fit in. the atmosphere has always been open, polite and
encouraging to outsiders but the volumes of people turning up on list
have just too far too low. i've tried to figure out some rational
explanation for this but i don't have one.

at apachecon EU, rob gave a very well attended session on XAP and many
people had questions. but no one really showed up on list to follow up
afterwards. not sure why.

martin tried hard for quite a while to encourage the team to talk a
lot more on the list without long term success. it's tough, though. i
find it hard to explain why talking is vital for community building.
most of the time, no one is listening but sometimes, just sometimes a
few words flung out into the ether will connect with someone. one
connection with someone who goes onto become a long term contributor
then pays back the time spent on the rest. but if there really isn't
anyone listening then the effort is really wasted. in many ways, the
fault is mine. i probably should have found more time to actively
promote community building and envanlegise (but JAMES took a lot more
energy than i'd expected).

i'm not an expert in this area but the design ideas seemed to me
powerful and unusual enough to be worth allowing development to
continue whilst there were developers willing to code. however, this
unusual miss may be that this is a sign that the people that brought
XAP to apache are finally starting to run out of patience. on the
other hand, it's possible that someone will show up on list tomorrow
and say - XAP's cool but here's a patch that'll make it even cooler.
if that happens, then that may be all that's needed to kick start the
project.

- robert

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