Spring Desktop and RCP...

[LievenDoclo]

Let's start off with the bad news.

Peter, the current project lead, has decided to step down as project lead for Spring RCP and Desktop. His current activities stop him from actively being able to contribute to the project and lead both projects. I thoroughly understand his choice and thank him for the work he has done for Spring RCP and Desktop, which has been great. He'll keep supporting and monitoring the project, as he and I share the same conviction: that RCP and Desktop are a great contribution to the Spring portfolio and the way to build robust Swing applications.

As of today, I'm currently picking up Peter's tasks as project admin and lead. Jan, the former project lead, and I have been active the last few weeks preparing some major additions to the RCP framework and he will also be supporting the project further on.

As a result of the current administrative problems, Jan and I have decided not to take on Spring Desktop as well. This means that there is no concrete lead for Spring Desktop at the moment. Developing a framework AND developing it's successor is a task nor Jan nor me can make the time for. Since the last commits for Spring Desktop occurred months ago, the project is as such on-hold. If there are people who are convinced that they can make the time to actively develop or even lead the project, or if there is a company who is willing to invest in the new framework development (as happens behind the scenes for many open-source projects), please don't hesitate to contact us. We're really sorry about this decision, but managing both projects is impossible to combine with the day-to-day work all of us have to combine.

As for RCP, the project will absolutely be developed further. As I mentioned before, Jan and I will be adding a lot of stuff to RCP in the coming weeks. And we're not talking peanuts here. Our former employer has decided to donate all Spring RCP code developed by them, which constitutes a substantial amount of code, which has been used in enterprise applications. We're currently looking to integrate the code into the current RCP codebase. We hope to be able to attract more people to the framework by expanding its codebase. We already want to thank Schaubroeck N.V. for their decision!

Other areas we'll be focussing on is documentation, of which in another topic you've seen a teaser. Tackling the current JIRA backlog (at 112 issues at the moment) is also something we'd like to do. In general, we want to introduce a fresh gust of wind in the project and renewed momentum. Jan and me are convinced we can make RCP a out-of-the-box usable enterprise framework for Swing applications.

All I can say is a great deal of thanks to Peter for his effort so far and I hope that the community agrees with our current predicament. It's not an easy decision, but we can't risk seeing Spring Desktop's current inertia affect Spring RCP's development. My goal is to get some movement back into the project. I am willing to spend a great deal of my spare time in the project and hope the effort of all involved in the project will lead to a better codebase and framework as a whole.

If you have comments, please don't hesitate to state them.

Despite the news, have a great evening!

Lieven

[Saboutai]

To bad to hear this.

But i agree with your descision.

It's better to focus on one project and actually make progress, than to focus on 2 and accomplish nothing.

[jwray]

Hi Lieven,

sorry to hear you all had to make this tough decision. That said, I don't think anyone will fault you for it. Finding the time to donate to such a project is very tough, I know I can't commit to it, and I for one am very appreciative of the work Peter, Jan, etc. have put into Spring RCP.

There was talk a while ago about SpringSource putting resources onto the project. Do you know where that went?

Jonny

[LievenDoclo]

Yeah... about that...

We had a Springsource contact, but as soon as Peter stopped committing, so did the support from Springsource. It's a pity Springsource isn't committed in putting some support into the project, but in a business point of view, I can understand their predicament. RIA's and the web are just more popular at the moment. I have no doubt that when their clients start asking for Swing applications, they'll suddenly show a lot more interest in the project, but for now, it's practically non-existent.

For now, we're going to do the best we can (even more than before). If Spring RCP gets more popular, the support from Springsource's assets will follow. In a way, at the moment, it may not be such a bad thing, since this allows us to make decisions quite independently.

At the moment, not a lot of developers are active anymore, it's true. But then again, that makes decision-making very easy . I for one want to thank you for your commitment in the past, and I hope you'll maybe find some time in the future to do some more integrations with Jide.

[jwray]

Yeah, its a pity and I feel that's the way it has been since the start. Driven by customer projects, which as you say, makes total sense from a business point of view.

In fact, I personally have a similar problem on a smaller scale. I don't work on Swing applications all the time, nowhere near actually. I'm also doing web interfaces, server side stuff and integration projects. Makes the job fun but it also means I can't commit as much time as I'd like to the Swing based stuff. For example, there's a number of things I'd like to do with the JIDE integration but until I actually need them for a work project I don't have the time. I'm sure I'm not the only one in the same position, seems a very common dilemma.