Liam Magee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I have been a long-time silent listener on this list, and use Tomcat 3.1 in
> a production environment. I have been greatly appreciative of the hard work
> gone into the software to date, and respect that its development is on a
> volunteer basis. But I fully concur with the sentiments of this posting -
> for the past couple of months it's been completely unclear as what the
> development path and release schedule for Tomcat looks like (3.2?, 3.3?,
> 4.0?). I would like to continue to use Tomcat, and eventually have time to
> get more involved in its development, but the lack of any obvious plan and
> schedule leaves companies like ours considering whether we need to fall back
> to commercial offerings to get any kind of reliability or accountability for
> the direction of releases. Again, I respect that the basis of this project
> is volunteer-driven, but it is possible to get a balance between the
> democratic impulses of OSS and a more rigorous project management approach
> to 'deliverables'?
Let me wear my "foundation member" hat for a while, try to make a point of
the current situation, and explain something that is obvious for long-time
developers, but might not be so clear for newcomers.
First of all let's clear up a long time issue (I reply to webmaster@jakarta
too, and this question keeps popping up) What is Tomcat?
Tomcat, the Jakarta Apache flagship product, is (as the web site states) the
Reference Implementation for the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages
Technologies.
Let's try to explain this a little bit: Tomcat is NOT a servlet engine and
it is NOT a JSP engine/compiler; Tomcat is the union of those two separate
technologies.
Some confusion have arised in the past because in the 3.x tree Tomcat is the
name of BOTH the servlet engine AND of the full distribution. But,
recognized this problem, in the new 4.x tree we changed things to make
better understand this distiction: "Catalina" is the servlet engine,
"Jasper" is the JSP engine/compiler and "Tomcat" is the union of those two.
What does this mean? This means that, at the end, you will be able to
download Catalina (if you need only servlets), Jasper (if you want to use
JSPs on ANY servlet engine, even on Allaire's JRun hopefully), or Tomcat (if
you want to use the full distribution from Apache).
Why all this confusion? Why do we need Tomcat? Can't we just have "Catalina"
and "Jasper"? No, we can't... Because Tomcat (the full product) is the
reference implementation of the Java Community Process' JSR-53, so, one JSR,
one specification, one name, one distribution...
(Ok, I have to save this one for all the webmaster@jakarta emails).
Now, to explain a little bit how we are organized, let me say that we're far
from the time when we were a bunch of kids playing at Java.Apache.ORG with
JServ. Now we are part of the Apache Software Foundation, and because of
that, we have to obey to some rules. Most of our self-imposed regulations
were derived by the invaluable experience gathered by the HTTPD project (the
web-server) and that was absorbed by all other branches of the foundation by
osmosis.
We have a voting process, a vetoing process, a list of people who have the
right, and the due (I would like to underline this!) to vote on issues. This
all is clearly described in our "Guidelines" page, please READ it, because
that's the LAW in this community. Once an issue is found (a new release, a
new codebase, anything that needs a general agreement), all the committers
(people with access to the CVS) are asked for a vote. And when a decision is
took, it's a responsibility of those voting committers to maintain what was
promised. (Yes, if you're a committer, you have responsibilities in front of
the community... Again, we're far from the old JServ days).
Now, to sum up what happened in the last few months: Some of us (in
particular Craig, me, Jon, Remy and others) weren't feeling comfortable with
the Tomcat 3.x (Servlet Engine) codebase. Craig, the main author of what
would have become JServ 2.0, asked the permission to create a new
propositive servlet engine, we voted, and the "Catalina" proposal was
created.
When Servlet 2.3 and JSP 1.2 came along, this community was asked to vote
again, on what codebase would have been used for this new reference
implementation: we had to choose between Tomcat 3.x (Servlet Engine) and
Catalina, and we decided to adopt Catalina as our next-generation servlet
engine.
In those last few days, I've seen emails going around with a "Tomcat 3.3"
label stamped upon them, and that's when I started to wonder, and get
confused. This community didn't vote for a Tomcat 3.3 release, nor we were
asked what we were thinking about such a thing. Puzzled, I started asking
around, and, aparently, what was clear in the past (Tomcat 3.2 release and
then Tomcat 4.0) was all screwed up.
For what concerns me, Tomcat 3.3 doesn't exist as an Apache Project. It was
not voted upon, and it is in direct contrast with what this community
decided. Just to give you an example, try to go on new-httpd and tell the
developers that you're going to write an Apache Web-Server 1.4.1, completely
ignoring what was voted upon as Apache 2.0... I bet that my colleagues will
either laugh or your flameproof-vest will not last for more than 12
seconds...
Also, this community, has the responsibility to its commitment towards
Tomcat 4.0 because other entities are relying on it:
- Cocoon 2.0 desperately requires it
- Avalon has already integrated it
- OpenEJB is planning to use Catalina as servlet engine
- Sun Microsystems wants something to be distributed in its J2EE platform
- Olliance, Exoffice and others choose it as their primary platform
- The JCP needs a Reference Implementation for the JSR-53 specification
So, for whoever is interested in the future of Tomcat, the guarantee of the
Apache Software Foundation is that Tomcat 4.0 _is_ the future "Reference
Implementation for the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages Technologies". This
was voted by the community and this is what we're going to do. If any of the
developers currently involved don't want to follow this direction, they're
more than welcome to create a new proposal that will be evaluated for Tomcat
5.0, but, before that, the master plan stands still. ("Rules for Evolution
and Revolutions" is still valid... Read it...)
And with that, I consider the matter closed... Flames are welcome...
Pier
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
