Seam 3 is a very different beast than Seam 2. In some ways, I liken it to the relationship between Maven 2 and Maven 1. Both the Maven projects are build tools that are founded on the same principle, a software project management and comprehension tool that leverages an extensive ecosystem of plugins that tie into a unified build lifecycle. But Maven 2 is built on a different foundation than Maven 1, making them, in the end, very different solutions.
Seam 3 relinquishes the context and dependency management and event notification responsibility to CDI, something that evolved out of the Seam 2 core. Seam 3 is also focused on extensibility punctuated by container portability. While you can expect similar convenient APIs and integrations in Seam 3, and a bridge module that allows you to use or emulate Seam 2 components, pragmatically speaking, it's new project that is going to be organized and governed very differently.
Having established that Seam 3 differs from Seam 2 is several fundamental ways, mixing Seam 2 and Seam 3 information is massively confusing for developers. I'm referring specifically to the forums and the wiki. The driving force here is to establish a new "space" for Seam 3. Let's set that point on the table and move to the next force.
Seam and Weld are projects brought to you by JBoss and its valued community. Yet, for some time now, these projects have isolated themselves from the JBoss community by being hosted outside (
seamframework.org) of the JBoss community umbrella (
http://community.jboss.org). The creator of the
seamframework.org software is no longer with the team and the rest of us must assume the responsibility of keeping it up to date. The problem is, any work we spend on
seamframework.org takes away from our ability to improve Seam and Weld, review patches, analyze issues or write documentation. It's an unnecessary drain. What makes it even more ridiculous is that we have a entire team, the JBoss Community infrastructure team, that works full time on providing a collaboration site to host projects, discussions and documentation. A resource we are not currently leveraging.
Although it's a bigger discussion, we are reconsidering the use of the JBoss Community for technical reasons. Lately we've identified some pain points with
that will immediately be solved by using Jive SBS (the Java-based software behind
).
In short, we are concerned that we are lacking proper tools to effectively manage and grow the Seam and Weld projects and community.
As simple as it sounds, there are still some considerations to take into account before deciding to return Seam and Weld home to the JBoss Community. That migration will require more planning. However, what Lincoln and I suggest we can do as a first step is to take advantage of the need to create a new space for Seam 3 and initiate that space in the JBoss Community. In addition to the technical benefits, this would give us:
- a clean break for Seam 3, avoiding muddling with Seam 2 discussions and information
- a proving ground to decide how we like the JBoss Community collaboration platform, considering a full migration of seamframework.org in the future
- a chance for Seam community members across the board to establish their JBoss Community accounts
- a better experience, in our mind
We propose:
- Creating a Seam 3 space at http://community.jboss.org with a user discussion forum and wiki
- Creating a development subspace with a wiki (no discussion forum)
In the short term, we'll still use the seam-dev mailinglist for development discussions (though we can consider enabling the discussion forums in the development subspace if the e-mail bridge can be activated).
Would the majority of you be agreeable to this approach? It really will provide a lot more clarity for Seam 3 and will show that we are sincere about reuniting with the JBoss Community. Understand that this move will not take away from the focus on portability in any way.