Depressed over Daisy
You know, seeing open source projects like Daisy make me just want to stop JSPWiki development altogether. It's simply just too good, and I feel like there's no way I can compete.
Daisy will be a winner.
Update and a bit of soul-searching:
Heh. Thanks for your kind words, Steven. FWIW, I'm not quitting JSPWiki development, but frankly, I was in awe while looking at what Daisy has accomplished. It really fills a gap that has been in the software space, and it has learned quite a few lessons from Wikis.
The thing is, Daisy being Java makes it far more interesting to corporations. Individuals prefer to deploy PHP or other light-weight apps that can be easily installed on web hotels, and so far the JSPWiki niche has been in corporate intranet deployments. Something like Daisy will surely eat into that niche, and it makes me think if I should refocus my attentions elsewhere. Find perhaps a new focus for JSPWiki, or something.
The other thing is that I have quite a lot of ideas I would like to put into reality. JSPWiki's code base is (still) pretty healthy, and there's much life still in it - in fact it seems that jspwiki.org is finally running on its own without my constant watch. There are some professional developers contributing very good quality code, and many people seem to like the whole project. But since nobody is paying me to work on it (any volunteers? :), I am using something like two hours a day on it. Which amounts to quite a lot of work over the years, but I still know that I can't match the power of professionally employed developers working 8/5 on an OSS project. And that sort of makes me sad, because I would like to match the quality - to have an even race, so to speak.
It's kinda like seeing your neighbour buy a new, powerful Ferrari, while you still drive an old, crumbling Fiesta because you don't have any money. You kinda feel happy for him, but you also feel jealous. You kinda want to deride him for it, and want to say mean things, but at your heart you still know that you would do the exact same thing if you could.
Daisy's really good. I'm just a bit jealous at the people who get to work on something like that full-time. In my current dayjob I get to do little hands-on stuff. I mean, it's interesting in every possible way, and I like many things about it, and the people I work with are some of the smartest people I've ever met, and I would have the opportunity to drive many things, but still I find that my heart is not completely into it.
After all, I'm a tinkerer at heart. I get delight on the beauty of code; I enjoy the feeling of making things 'click'. I like to simplify things so that other people find use in them - maybe because that solicits feedback. The beauty of open source for me is that you can't hide anything: when you put it out there, people will see it for what it is really worth. It's like a painting, or sculpture: it's naked and visible for anyone to see and judge - you don't hide parts of it under a blanket and just show the good bits. And getting positive feedback on something like that is one of the few things that can really make my heart tick.
|
More info...
Comments?
Back to weblog
|
| "Main_blogentry_180605_1" last changed on 20-Jun-2005 16:41:52 EEST by JanneJalkanen. |
Comments
Eläpäs masennu, sua ja JSPWikiä tarvitaan!--ex-enderiitti, 18-Jun-2005
No way dude, do you realise how completely beyond the grasp of any normal user Daisy is? JSPWiki is great. It has some rough edges, sure, but at its heart, it's a great system/
--Phil Wilson, 20-Jun-2005
When reading Janne's post last Saturday, I didn't know how to react on it: whether to laugh or to cry. I still don't know. read more ... -- Steven Noels
--157.193.121.51, 20-Jun-2005
I had a quick look at Daisy, it does indeed look very interesting. It has the appearance of being the Swiss Army knife of Wikiworld, its a CMS, a WYSIWYG editor, a Wiki on high octane. Looks cool, and it looks complicated.
On the other hand I'm a fan of JSPWiki. It's simple to install, easy to learn, easy to use and get day to day things done. And it's hard to make a mess and hurt yourself (JSPWiki, the Finnish butter knife?)
I read Steven's article and I agree, for Janne's efforts (along with a few other people) JSPWiki is pretty amazing. I'll take Steven's word that there are a boatload of people working on Daisy. I'm sure if Janne had the time and lots of other developers JSPWiki would have had all the latest features. I hope that the Daisy team gets a chance to build out what they want.
I'm a fan in using small tools that do what you want. I've watched in amazement the number of "features" that (Microsoft / Openoffice / Staroffice / etc. ) word processors have gathered in the last years. Most of which people don't use. (All of you that still use Notepad on a daily basis, I'm talking about you :-)
So good luck to Daisy, we need a all things to all people Wiki, but I'm perfectly happy with JSPWiki (*) and will still use / recommend it to others that need a simple Wiki.
(Minor rant: Do you ever think if we got all the virus / adware / crack writers and masters together and got them to spend 1 hour a day on software that would help people, what we would end up with? )
(* Well it would be *really* perfect if I could have nested plugin bodies ....)
--Foster, 20-Jun-2005
@Foster: the current "boatload of people" working on Daisy is a single person, i.e. Bruno. But that person indeed doesn't have to care about anything else but working on Daisy. It's amazing what concentration and dedication can buy you when working on a software project. It's the challenge of us as a small (3-person) business to accomodate Bruno's concentration.
--Steven Noels, 20-Jun-2005
Now, what is simplicity? Simplicity is the shortest path to a solution.Ward Cunningham
For me JSPWiki is the shortest path to a solution.
I learned so much about the world of blogs and wikis throughout the last year by following Jannes blog and the JSPWiki development, that I don't knowh how to thank You, Janne, and all the others who share their knowledge by open source development and their weblogs.
Well' I guess if experience is the currency you pay for driving an open source software product (i.e. use it, take part on development) than I certainly can't afford a Ferrari. So I am a Fiesta driver, like most of the other young developers out there. And I'am perfectly happy with it. So far JSPWiki took me everywhere I want.
See you at Wikimania!
-- Christoph Sauer
--Christoph Sauer, 21-Jun-2005
Like other comments here I love JSPWiki and decided to take a look at daisy. I installed it, played with it during 2 hours and wrote a blog entry about my feelings: http://francisoud.blogspot.com/2005/09/daisy-vs-jspwiki-winner-is.html
Feel free to add comments ;)
Good luck.
Simple is beautifull.
--benjamin Francisoud, 08-Sep-2005
The jspWiki community is too fundamentalist. It is close on itself. That is cute to solitary wiki seekers. You can say to that people: "on my way or the highway".
But if you want corporations pay attention to jspwiki you, all the community, must solve your asshold attitude.
you can say to a person "we do not care about jetty", "we do not like maven, so go to hell with your suggestion about adopt it", etc, etc, etc.
the product is good, but it needs A LOT of improvements. Your attitude about the way you deal with innovation sucks. We can use or not jetty. But there are a lot of people using it and jspWiki is not compatible because you are dealing in a bad way with the request object! And you are proud of it!
Come on! that code is not even compatible with server specification!
Now we are evaluating daisy. We do not know if we will adopt it. We like jspWiki. But the community actitude sucks. They are an adoption barrier. They just are not corporation compatible.
Accept it: you just can not pretend that a corporation adopt and invest time and money helping to code a product if the product's community say "change your servers", "change your build systems", and things like that.
--Pablo Alcaraz, 12-Feb-2009
Pablo, I don't have the slightest clue what you are talking about. JSPWiki should run perfectly fine on Jetty (and most other containers as well, but obviously our testing ability is limited). It is also used in many, many corporations across the world. And strangest of all - I cannot simply find any requests or emails or even wiki edits, except for this rant. Perhaps it's your attitude which needs fixing, or you are mistaking JSPWiki for some other project?
--JanneJalkanen, 15-Feb-2009