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From: Jan Lehnardt <jan@apache.org>
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Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 01:43:57 +0800
Subject: Apache CouchDB is Alive and Kicking
To: dev@couchdb.apache.org,
 user@couchdb.apache.org
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Apache CouchDB is Alive and Kicking

  =93The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.=94 =97 Mark Twain


In the past days at the end of November 2011, a few news items hit the
tech scene that suggested that the Apache CouchDB project is done for.

We, the Apache CouchDB team, are writing to you today: do not worry,
the project is alive and well.


Canonical and Ubuntu One

In 2009 Canonical decided to base the data sync feature of their Ubuntu
One project on Apache CouchDB. Its goal was to allow seamless synchro-
nisation of personal data between different computers and devices and =
their cloud hosting service. A use-case that seemed perfect for
CouchDB at the time, and we consider that still to be the case.

Individuals from the CouchDB team have worked closely with the =
dev-elopers at Canonical to help making Ubuntu One a success. At some
point in the past, these individuals developed patches to adapt CouchDB
to certain Ubuntu One use cases. These patches diverged from the main
CouchDB code base.

Over time, it became harder and harder to reconcile these changes with
the main CouchDB code base, so fixing bugs and rolling out new features
from more recent CouchDB release took a lot more time and energy.

At some point in the near past, we presume, Canonical decided to not
pursue this any further. And we respect that decision and we wish them
best with their development of their new U1DB, which is a database-
agnostic API that takes after CouchDB's API, but is tied closer
to their particular feature set.

We'd like to thank Canonical for officially endorsing this part of the
message.


=93The company behind CouchDB=94

During the development of Ubuntu One, Cannonical worked with Couchbase,
who happen to employ some of CouchDB's committers. In a recent an-
nouncement, they erroneously described Couchbase as the company behind
CouchDB. We'd like the set the record straight by saying that this isn't
the case. CouchDB is an Apache Software Foundation project and has no
corporate sponsor.

We are fortunate enough to have a number of companies who employ our
committers or sponsor individual people to work on the project. These
people, however, contribute to the project as individuals, regardless of
their involvement with Cloudant, Couchbase, Enki Multimedia, Iris Couch,
or any other corporate entity.


The Future

Apache CouchDB will continue to build great database technology and
release stable, mature and trustworthy releases for our developers to
build great applications on.

We want to thank everybody for their support and look forward to a great
future!

On behalf of the The Apache CouchDB Project Management Committee,

Jan Lehnardt,
Chairman
--=20