Re: [Fwd: [xsl] Upgrading Saxon XSLT 1.0 support addressing known limitations]

["M. David Peterson" <m.david.x2x2x@xxxxxxxxx>]

I absolutely agree with Ken on this.  If there is any doubt in
anybody's mind as to the fact that development "communities" rarely
work out let me lend my own experience that there is only one way to
guarantee anything and that is to make one person responsible for the
delivery -- yourself.  Thats not a cut on anyone!  OSS projects need
both a developers talent and time and when the driving factor for
developing a project has nothing to do with money and everything to do
with need its a matter of luck to coordinate schedules and accurately
produce results based on this schedule given that most of us have day
jobs and do development of OSS projects in whatever spare time we can
muster up.

If Dr. Kay is willing to ressurrect the development of this project
such that we can have a 1.0 processor that handles any and all of the
remaining question marks then we would all be fools to not find a way
to generate the funds to make that happen.  I have an email in to Ken
already that offers to help in any way I can in both dollars and
promotion.  I've sent this from a different email account that I
havent checked yet today but undoubtedly he has responded with what it
is he thinks I can do that might be useful.  Without a doubt I will be
pushing this to the max from xsltblog so if you happen to subscribe to
any of the XML feeds you will undoubtedly here more about this soon...

Cheers :)

On 4/18/05, G. Ken Holman <gkholman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> At 2005-04-18 10:02 -0400, Elliotte Harold wrote:
> >To be honest, I'd be a lot more interested in doing the work myself or
> >as part of a team than in paying somebody else to do it. I've been
> >considering that for a while now. So far it's been easier to fix Jaxen's
> >XPath and rely on Xalan for XSLT than to fix Saxon, but that may not be
> >true forever, especially if performance becomes a concern.
>
> But to me Xalan has far more egregious errors with respect to attribute
> sets in the import tree than those to be fixed in Saxon.  So it isn't just
> performance, it is conformance.
>
> >Even if we managed to raise the funds to pay Michael Kay to do 6.5.4, what
> >happens when we need 6.5.5?
>
> I'm not convinced that after so many months of stability in 6.5.3 with so
> very few problems that we are going to quickly need any 6.5.5.  And if we
> did, then it might become a business decision for someone to get a 6.5.5
> version created.
>
> >I think we'd be much better served by an
> >active Saxon community than by hiring one programmer, no matter how
talented.
>
> Not for my immediate needs, Elliotte, which is why I'm undertaking to do
> this right now and as soon as possible.  I have a business need to get
> attribute sets in the import tree to work, which is why I'm contributing to
> an effort to get it done.
>
> I see the problem with "an active Saxon community" is the lack of
> accountability.  And I think that it is more than Mike's great talent, it
> is his intimate knowledge of the details and his assets of regression tests
> and techniques that I'm willing to help pay for.
>
> Development communities can be very useful, but I've been let down by being
> unable to make a business decision to include an open tool when there is no
> accountability for the reporting and handling of problems.
>
> I've privately funded other developers for specific features of open-source
> tools in which they are the lead because of the business decision that I am
> willing to pay someone for something to have it now and have it work with
> confidence because they are they author.  If I can bump up a new feature's
> implementation with some monetary incentive, then it is worth it to me.
>
> My appeal is just to share the burden and the benefit of some improvements
> to an already great tool that many people are using.  If I can convince
> people to support this upgrade, then as they take advantage of features of
> XSLT they haven't used they won't trip over these oversights than can be
> addressed in short order.
>
> And, if I cannot raise enough to bring the shared cost to what is
> affordable to me, then I'll have to make a business decision otherwise and
> abandon the effort to get it fixed.
>
> . . . . . . . . . . . . Ken
>
> --
> World-wide on-site corporate, govt. & user group XML/XSL training.
> G. Ken Holman                 mailto:gkholman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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>


--
<M:D/>

:: M. David Peterson ::
XML & XML Transformations, C#, .NET, and Functional Languages Specialist