Introduction, new maintainer for kaffe

[Michael Gibson]

Very happy to hear that kaffe is alive again.
I think it can be a great product when maintained and active developed.

Best regards
Michael

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Pick" <jim at kaffe.org>
To: <kaffe at rufus.w3.org>
Cc: <kaffe-announce at rufus.w3.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 12:02 AM
Subject: Introduction, new maintainer for kaffe


> 
> 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.  :-)
>