Correct me if I'm wrong, but maybe the whole focus of 3.3 / 3.2.x thing, is
that neither of them will be all that they could be because the resources
are so limited and divided.
Of what value would enhancing JServ to the point of technical perfection, be
right now when it is clearly not the direction things are headed? To me, if
someone said, "i want to make all these great changes to JServ" I'd be like,
"ok sure, but no one is going to use it since it's old school. Why not help
out the people on 3.2.x or 4.0?" HOWEVER! 3.1 and 3.2.1 are being used by
LOTS of people, so lots of people would benefit by releasing a killer 3.2.x
or 3.3 or 3.9 as Pier puts it. In this regard, I can totally agree with the
general idea of "making 3.2.x better!"
But, and forgive me if everyone understands and realizes this, all of these
changes will come at a price - namely slower development of the agreed-upon
"future of Tomcat." If committers didn't think TC 4.0 was the future, and
didn't want to work on, then why all of the +1s?
As well, there will be less time for the necessary bug fixes and performance
enhancements for the 3.2.x line, the introduction of even more bugs that are
fixed even more slowly as more code is changed/added/removed. Sure "they
will come in time" but will they? During all that time, I end up with a
functionally-equivalent container that's more technically sound underneath,
but with more bugs (because the old ones are there while all of the new
changes were taking place, and the newly-introduced ones as well). So how
is the user better off at the point that 3.2.x/3.x is released?
So at the end of all of this, we have slowed development of 4.0 while we end
up with a functionally equivalent container to 3.2.1, but with more bugs,
and more people's time having to be spent fixing those bugs instead of
contributing to 4.0, which I'm sure will be all the rage, as 3.2 is.
This also goes back to a philosophical question - How many big "changes"
(architectural or not) before someone is "happy" with the code? I worked
with a developer who chronically rewrote the things he worked on "to get
them perfect." As a result, he never progressed, continually outputting
things that were functionally identical, just written differently. Do the
end-users care? Nope. Even for a 5-10% performance enhancement? Who's to
say...
Anyways, just my 2c. I don't really care who does what or when or whatever,
or how perfect the code is or what. "I want" a container NOW that has very
little bugs, and works the way it should (adheres to the spec, etc.).
Personally, I don't care if it's spaghetti or what, so long as when I
install it, it's easy to configure, does what it should, and does it well.
Yeah, and I think anyone who spends time contributing to open source, at
work or not, is a Good Person(tm) =) So know that people everywhere,
everyday, appreciate the efforts and expertise of people like Costin, Craig,
Pier, Larry, Henri, Remy, Sam, Pottymouth-Jon =b, James, and I'm sorry I
can't remember all of the committers off the top of my head.
Good day,
- Rob Slifka
