In the post “Total Bummer: Pivotal Drops Groovy“, I briefly wrote about Pivotal’s decision to drop Groovy and hoped that Groovy would find a new home. I was pleased to read the announcement that the Groovy project intends to join the Apache Software Foundation. My experience is that some of the best maintained, best supported, and best documented open source projects are those with a corporate sponsor or those associated with the Apache Software Foundation. I have benefited tremendously from several Apache projects over the years including Ant, Struts, Apache HTTP Server, Apache Commons, Camel, Log4J, Lucene, Apache POI, Apache FOP, and Tomcat. The Apache Software Foundation also houses several other highly popular projects including Hadoop, HBase, Apache Cordova, MyFaces, and Solr.
Groovy already enjoys some associations with Apache projects. For example, Groovy bakes in Ant support and Commons CLI support (Groovy’s CliBuilder). The Apache page listing projects grouped by programming languages includes a “Groovy” section that lists Apache Camel and Apache OFBiz.
According to Guillaume Laforge, there were discussions about Groovy’s next home with several organizations including the Eclipse Foundation, the Software Freedom Conservancy, and the Apache Software Foundation. Matt Raible has provided follow-up to this post in a question-and-answer format with Laforge in the post Groovy Moving to Apache. Of particular interest to me is the expanding on the “gray areas” Laforge alluded to. These “gray areas” include differences and limitations associated with the Apache Software Foundation such as process, repository control, and potential corporate funding of an individual project.
One of the several advantages of using Apache projects is the liberal Apache 2 License. Groovy was already available under this license and obviously will continue to use that license as part of the Apache Software Foundation.
Like all projects introduced to the Apache Software Foundation, Groovy will begin in the Apache Incubator. Grails is not at this time slated for the Apache Software Foundation, though that could come in the future. Cédric Champeau briefly mentions Groovy and Apache in his post Who is Groovy?
| Reference: | Excellent! Groovy Intends to Join Apache Software Foundation from our JCG partner Dustin Marx at the Inspired by Actual Events blog. |
