Scott, whether it's polite or not, the honest fact is that Groovy has been 
losing mindshare for some months now because so little information is 
coming out of the JSR committee.  And what little that has come out has 
been highly fragmented in nature.

Creating a language standard does not involve saying it in code, fixing 
bugs, or providing javadoc.  The JSR is not about the implementation 
sitting on the codehaus servers, it's supposed to be about creating a 
language standard that can have many implementations.

I think a number of people and organizations are legitimately upset because 
they expected a language standard, conducted in a professional and 
organized manner, and that's not what they're getting.  Indeed, the core 
Groovy experts can tell such upset people to go bugger off or 
contribute.  But that is rarely an approach that results in a widely 
accepted standard.  It is the right of the contributors to ignore 
criticism, and even take on your attitude.  But meanwhile, the user base 
continues to erode rather than expand as it should.  Meanwhile, confidence 
in the project is soaring to all-time lows.  Decision makers are deciding 
what scripting languages their company should standardize on, and Groovy is 
being summarily kicked out of the running.

I think it's OK for people to love Groovy's potential and be disappointed 
in the reality.  I think it's OK for individuals to get upset when they 
hear for the seventh time  "Oh, that's somewhere in James' head".  And 
above all, if the standard seems to be progressing in a haphazard, 
pseudo-random fashion, I fully support people's ability to vote with their 
feet.  And that is _exactly_ what scores of people are doing.

If the expert committee wants to see Groovy to succeed, they might want to 
listen to the criticisms - not just mine but the lot of them.  If they want 
it to succeed, they should be alarmed when an expert committee member can't 
find out what's going on in his committee.

I work for a large multinational financial services company, and people 
there think I'm freakin' _nuts_ for even considering Groovy.  And nothing - 
absolutely nothing - coming out of the JSR work is changing their 
minds.  Quite the contrary, it confirms all their objections.

You speak of professionalism.  Do you honestly, without reservations, 
believe that the JSR is being conducted in a professional manner?  Is the 
output of their work something you'd standardize a multinational company 
on?  Is it something that you'd want to have in production controlling and 
running multi-hour jobs with millions of dollars riding on the line?

That's what Groovy _should_ be.  That's what many people desperately want 
Groovy to be.  Can you honestly say that's what it actually is?  Given the 
output of the JSR committee  over the past few months, based on the 
evidence available, do you believe that this is what is going to be delivered?

         -Mike

At 06:15 PM 12/13/2004, Scott Stirling wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I just wanted to say congratulations and job well done to James for 
>standing up to such a beating on the recent BileBlog denouncing Groovy and 
>the people working on it.
>
>The BileBlog, while sometimes funny, is also foolish, unprofessional and 
>immature. It's a loud cry for attention. Unfortunately, some influential 
>people got behind the most recent entry and used it as a platform to "say 
>what they really think" about James and Groovy. A cowardly, juvenile, 
>ganging up of men supposed to be professionals and leaders in our online 
>community.
>
>I think the strength of the negative feelings expressed can only be seen 
>as a sign of how much people are interested in Groovy and seeing it be a 
>success, however crudely and unconsciously that concern is expressed.
>
>I couldn't believe people who supposedly cared so much about Groovy would 
>whine about the fact that they could only hear some of what happened at 
>the London conference on mp3s. You can't win with men who have descended 
>to standing behind a name-calling, profanity-spewing satirist (I hope I 
>don't give too much credit to Hani calling his blog a satire) and try to 
>make rational arguments or ask for a rational response. James really took 
>one for the team today.
>
>If big shots want to say something about Groovy, let them say it in code. 
>Fix a bug. Provide Javadoc. Ask a calm question on the dev list. Tomcat 
>and Ant never would have made it this far if it wasn't for an active 
>developer community making constructive contributions an on-going basis -- 
>oh, and using the dev list for development (CVS check-ins ought to go out 
>to an email list here too). Outsiders bitching about things should be 
>asked to pitch in or take it elsewhere. Too bad James got caught in a 
>storm on the blog. But, like I said, at least it shows that people are 
>concerned about Groovy, even if they don't do anything concrete to help it.
>
>Thanks,
>Scott Stirling
>Framingham, MA
>