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Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2009 18:03:37 +0200
Message-ID: <c7fc82820902280803m6e302c85w2e59841a0142dc0d@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: The current state of ESME
From: Vassil Dichev <vdichev@apache.org>
To: esme-dev@incubator.apache.org
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Hello Dick,

This deserves a lot of thought, and similar conclusions have crossed
my mind, but here's my first reaction:

-Scala and Lift
We're really in the beginning, Scala and Lift's popularity is just
beginning to grow. I heard there are a lot of Scala-related
presentations which were accepted for JavaOne this year, so people are
starting to pay attention, it would take some time before more
developers consider using it. Lift version 1.0 was released just
recently and interest is starting to grow.

-the corporate environment
A big institution has an enormous amount of inertia. From personal
experience: many SAP colleagues don't even use instant messaging
because they don't see the advantages. In my current job, out of
almost 1000 employees, only me and one more colleague are consistently
using Yammer.

Microblogging in the corporate environment is in the phase of being
used bIy early adopters, so features are what matters at this point.
ESME's goal from the start was to be scalable, stable and extensible
in a powerful way, not having more features from the start. Many folks
have expressed an interest in ESME, but have a "waiting to see what
happens" attitude. I suppose when it comes to serious usage, ESME
could stand a better chance- once it has reached a stable release.

My first guess is that ESME is a bit ahead of its time, but that's not
necessarily a bad thing. After all, there were no other Scala projects
in Apache before it. I suspect a surge of interest in Scala- and Lift-
in the following months as several Scala books are out of beta and the
buzz about Scala grows after a lot of presentations about it.

So what can we do about it? First of all, I think a wider adoption of
Yammer and laconi.ca is not a bad thing, as the bigger barrier for
ESME in the enterprise is the acceptance of the concept of
microblogging and its benefits. Then we can focus on the unique
advantages of ESME- scalability, robustness and the ability to be
extended in powerful ways.

I'd also like to point out that lack of features is not necessarily a
disadvantage. Twitter's selling point was the explicit lack of
features- they sort of grew organically during usage of Twitter.

My 2 cents,
Vassil