Introduction, new maintainer for kaffe

[Mark and Janice Juszczec]

Jim

Welcome aboard, I'm glad to hear someone is taking the reins and not letting 
a good idea fall by the wayside.

Mark

>
>Jim Pick wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>I'd like to introduce myself.  My name is Jim Pick.
>>
>>I have volunteered to take over the reigns of the kaffe project from
>>it's original author, Tim Wilkinson.
>>
>>I've been following Kaffe's progress since about the time I first got
>>involved in free software (around 1996).  In the past, I've been an
>>active Debian maintainer, and I also ran LinuxHQ.com, KernelNotes.org,
>>and Kernel.org for a while, amongst other things.
>>
>>I know Tim quite well, as I moved to Berkeley, California (from
>>Canada) to work with him and Peter Mehlitz at Transvirtual about two
>>years ago.  Tim is currently involved in the process of starting a new
>>company, having left Transvirtual at the end of November last year.  I
>>still work at Transvirtual though, and I'm still good friends with Tim
>>(we usually meet for coffee in the mornings).  It was during one of
>>those morning coffees that I asked Tim what was happening with
>>Kaffe.org, and whether or not he was planning to do any more work on
>>it.
>>
>>As I suspected, he stated that he really doesn't have time to do
>>anymore work on it (especially since he no longer works at
>>Transvirtual).  He stated that he'd be happy if I took it over.  I
>>also checked with the new CEO of Transvirtual, Chris Herron, and Peter
>>Mehlitz, if it was OK with them if I did some work to try to get the
>>Kaffe.org project moving again, and they thought it was a good idea
>>and were very supportive.
>>
>>I've announced my intentions to the core team, and they all seemed OK
>>with the idea -- I asked if anybody else wanted the job, but there
>>were no takers.  So I guess I've got the go ahead to do this.  :-)
>>
>>I've also taken over development of Transvirtual's internal,
>>proprietary version of Kaffe (now called KaffePro), so I'm in the
>>situation where I can spend a lot of time thinking about JVM
>>implementations.  :-)
>>
>>Anyways, here's what I'm planning to do:
>>
>>1) Setup a new machine and website for kaffe.org, so everything can be
>>   centralized on one site.
>>
>>   Transvirtual has donated a machine and rackspace for it, and I've
>>   already set it up.  I've already moved the DNS and the ftp site
>>   onto it.  The current website is looking pretty old and
>>   out-of-date, so I'm going to replace it with something simpler.
>>
>>   I'm hoping I can get the CVS archive from Ean Schuessler at
>>   Brainfood so I can set it up on the new machine.  Also, down the
>>   road, it would be nice to migrate the mailing list to the new
>>   machine so Daniel Veillard doesn't have to maintain it.
>>
>>   I thought about using SourceForge, but I decided against it.
>>
>>2) Make a new release as soon as possible.
>>
>>   Version 1.0.6 came out in July, 2000, and there hasn't been a
>>   release since (although there has been CVS activity).  I'd like to
>>   do a minimal amount of testing, and see if we can get it out,
>>   perhaps as early as next week.
>>
>>3) Clarify the relationship between Transvirtual and Kaffe.org.
>>
>>   As a long-time kaffe-watcher, I would like to see Kaffe.org be a
>>   very open project, which incorporates code from, and interoperates
>>   with all the other free virtual machine projects out there.  I
>>   definitely see Kaffe.org as being an independent project that isn't
>>   controlled by Transvirtual.
>>
>>   Transvirtual is willing to donate time and code to the project to
>>   make it successful.  On the other hand, it would be best if
>>   everybody was comfortable with the fact that my employer is
>>   actively developing a proprietary version of kaffe, called
>>   KaffePro, which is designed to address the needs of the commercial
>>   market for clean room Java virtual machine implementations.
>>
>>   As a commercial software company built on developing Intellectual
>>   Property, Transvirtual needs to be selective about what it does
>>   and does not contribute to the project.  You can expect that
>>   Transvirtual won't hold back bug fixes from the free version, and
>>   will not prevent others from contributing to the project.
>>
>>   Transvirtual, as a company, was founded with Kaffe as it's primary
>>   product, so you can expect to see Transvirtual continue to use,
>>   maintain and protect the Kaffe trademark for it's own purposes.
>>   It is important to Transvirtual that Kaffe.org is successful, but
>>   also that it is clear to the public that Kaffe.org's JVM
>>   implementation is separate from Transvirtual's KaffePro product,
>>   even though they share a common heritage.
>>
>>   (whew, glad that's over, I'm afraid I was starting to sound like a
>>   lawyer)
>>
>>4) Start active development on a new major release of kaffe.
>>
>>   I've got a lot of ideas for what should be done with it.  But I'll
>>   discuss those separately because I'd like to see some contributions
>>   and some debate.  :-)
>>
>>Anyways, this email has been long enough.  I'm looking forward to
>>working on kaffe and Kaffe.org - it should be fun!
>>
>>Cheers,
>>
>>- Jim
>>
>>p.s. If you're reading this, and you're going to JavaOne this year in
>>     San Francisco, let's get together for beers.  :-)
>>
>
>--
>Jean-Eric Cuendet
>Linkvest SA
>Av des Baumettes 19, 1020 Renens Switzerland
>Tel +41 21 632 9043  Fax +41 21 632 9090
>E-mail: jean-eric.cuendet at linkvest.com
>http://www.linkvest.com
>--------------------------------------------------------
>
>




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