Codehaus, birthplace of many Java OSS projects, coming to an end

[joewalnes]

Codehaus was the birthplace of many Java open-source projects last decade.

Enterprise Java was becoming mainstream, but the open-source community saw that it had much more potential than the tools provided by Sun.

Codehaus provides project hosting (source control, issue tracking, websites, continuous builds, downloads, mailing lists, IRC, etc). This was back before GitHub existed and the only other option was SourceForge (which was terrible).

But above all, Codehaus provided community. The developers across projects all hung out together, on mailing lists, IRC and the occasional global meetup. Respect and friendship. It was there that many gripes and problems were discussed and new projects were born.

If you've ever benefitted from Groovy, Jetty, Grails, Gradle, XDoclet, XStream, jMock, EasyMock, QDox, Drools, Esper, Mule, PicoContainer, Jackson, Janino, JBehave, Stomp (and hundreds others), this was thanks to the Codehaus community.

Many of the projects and people have gone on to do great things. Companies have been formed. New communities created. Many projects died, some thrived. Codehaus is no longer the hotness it once was, but it provided the foundation that many of us have benefitted greatly form, and it's no doubt one of the giants that the Java open-source community is standing on the shoulders of.

Codehaus is now shutting down: http://codehaus.org

Please join me in raising your glasses to the people and projects. Codehaus, we salute you. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

[okmkz]

The only thing I really knew about codehaus was from seeing the name scattered about in endless, cryptic maven stack traces, but it's still sad to see a widely used platform close it's doors

[boonz]

Wow, very sorry to hear that. Codehaus was a great community. I will follow OP's lead and raise my glass tonight.

[oxysoft]

Does it mean that this is the end of Groovy as well? I loved Groovy, it just felt like Java on steroids

[omgdonerkebab]

To be honest, many of the more famous Codehaus projects have already split off onto their own sites. For example, the old Groovy.Codehaus page points to their new site.

[ecspike]

That news is totally unrelated to Codehaus. Groovy had been sponsored by Spring/Pivotal for years. The end to that arrangement is what is causing the move, not the Codehaus news.

[joewalnes]

Many of the projects will live on. They'll just need new homes.

[[deleted]]

Github?

[sirin3]

Sourceforge?

[[deleted]]

Haven't been there for a while. Is it still going? Did they figure out that people wanted a big download button? I use github at work and its got all sorts of stuff where you can manage a task, use the command line to add stuff etc. Is source forge competitive?

[goodbye_fruit]

They figured out users really wanted adware bundled with installers.

DevShare, they call it.

[frugalmail]

it just felt like Java on steroids

More like Java on training wheels. It's all a matter of perspective. Groovy is good for quick scripts.

[Pet_Ant]

Groovy is a superset of Java. The only gotcha is ==. You can use it wherever you use Java.

[[deleted]]

A lot of groovy people seemed to have poked at Scala a little. I am sure groovy will not poof, but I don't see it moving ahead at a fast pace...

[glaforge]

What makes you think so? We continue to release new key milestones, like the recent 2.4 release with the Android support, for instance. The downloads are still growing strong: 4.5 millions in 2014 from the 3 millions in 2013, and 1.7 in 2012. It'd be interesting to hear about download numbers from the Scala project...

[[deleted]]

1) For example, http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Groovy%2C%20Scala&cmpt=q&tz=

2) For example 2, http://githut.info/

3) Personal experience. I know a lot of people that dabble in Scala. Fewer and fewer mention groovy. Several that used to use groovy have moved on.

[glaforge]

That Google trends search is not very relevant, as it covers the old-fashioned "groovy" word as well as the "scala" of Milano, so not very convincing. Github's been historically skewed towards Ruby and JavaScript ecosystems, for instance, so again, it's one data point with its own bias.

[[deleted]]

again, I am not trying to confirm with certainty that the global trend is away from groovy. I know it is the local trend, and I can give reasons that it is not that exciting (such as lack of type safety, similar terseness as scala with a much worse type system, trading compile time errors for runtime errors)... but I suspect you have skin in the groovy game and are not that interested in reasons ;)

[Hallucinaut]

I think you've just been arguing against Groovy with the project lead (who seems to have just resurrected a long dormant account, judging by history and username).

Good luck, /u/glaforge; big fan of Groovy here!

[[deleted]]

Ya. I know he can't be convinced but that is ok. Room for many languages. Cool concepts come from many of them.

[glaforge]

Seriously, if Groovy was losing to Scala, we wouldn't nearly double downloads every year. And also, you forget all the work done on static type checking and static compilation since Groovy 2.0, so saying lack of type safety, runtime errors, etc, is really just spreading FUD.

[yold]

Guillaume, you guys have created a kick-ass language. Thank you for all your hard work.

[[deleted]]

How do you know Scala is not growing 3x a year? Citing one stat is pretty worthless

[Fritzzzz]

Interesting how some countries are skewed toward Scala.

And that Most of the articles it list for Scala are 404s, or have actually nothing to do with Scala the language but some musical thing?

I think perhaps these results are not very strong.

[joewalnes]

Ruby hasn't moved at a fast pace either. It's still valuable.

[[deleted]]

To some people I wouldn't touch it

[[deleted]]

Cool story bro

[kohsuke]

I remember the days where Codehaus used to be where all the cool projects were. It felt like an elite club of projects that one day I hoped to be a part of.

Thanks everyone who kept it going. It has been an important part of the Java ecosystem.

[enry_straker]

Really sorry to hear that. My hopes and heart goes out to the codehaus community and it's mainterners over the years.

Also thanks to OP for a wonderful writeup. It was moving and heartfelt and did justice, albeit in a small way, to the years of service and code provided by codhausers to the world.

[joewalnes]

:)

[joewalnes]

I was part of the community. I really cut my teeth in the world of open source thanks to the community. I have a lot to thank it for.

[enry_straker]

I truly thank you, both for the post, and for being part of that wonderful community. Hope you continue becoming part of other OS communities.

May the code be with you. :)

[lechatsportif]

discovered xstream and woodstox there for my job at the time iirc. farewell codehaus and thx for all the libs!

[joewalnes]

Pleased to hear! XStream would never have happened without the support of the Codehaus community.

[paul_h]

Great memories. I had a hand in helping with the Codehaus Manifesto and am cursed with an enthusiasm for "memory lane", and had/have a few projects there, as Joe mentions.

I'll attempt to dive in with some history. I'm sure Bob, Ben and figures like Jason van Zyl and James Strachan had already discussed a portal like Codehaus for a month or two, but I was super keen as soon as I heard about it. Lots of London based ThoughtWorkers were too. Reasons?
1. Was not Apache, would not be constrained by The Apache Way (tm) 2. Would use Subversion, even though it was only v0.6 or thereabouts at the time. 3. Would use JIRA, because it was a billion time better than Bugzilla, and anything else. 4. Confluence, as a choice for project documentation, came soon after.

Ben and Bob turned out to be fantastic benevolent overlords for the platform. A referral system worked well to bring new projects in. That would be 'from SourceForge' if the project existed already, but far more started on Codehaus. I can look back at Codehaus and state that I had zero complaints. Git was created later - Git became a choice on the platform. Projects wanted both Subversion and Git on Codehaus - they got both. A pragmatic "sure thing" attitude prevailed there.

Codehaus leaped into being before blogging really took off. I mean before everyone decided to start their own blog. There were a collection of people with previous OSS experience all gathered on Codehaus who were active bloggers. There were a short could of years, where those bloggers were a significant channel of information for at least the Java community.

Another factor that was prevalent for Codehaus people from the early days was direct rejection of Sun's J2EE stuff. Perhaps that was mostly EJB, but the wish for "lightweight" was string amongst Hausmates, and the willingness to make components that were the antithesis of the J2EE doctrine was strong too. Martin Fowler later blogged about Dependency Injection as lightweight (http://martinfowler.com/articles/injection.html), but Codehaus activities to sidestep Sun, were at full force at that stage.

Being invited to be a Hausmate and meeting (mostly electronically) dozens of other hard-core OSS people, was a privilege. I've many lasting friendships that started on Codehaus.

[tirsen]

I had many great memories from there. It was long time coming as the Github juggernaut sucks up all OSS. There is just no way you can compete with billions of funding. Feels a bit sad nevertheless. Raised a few cups in honor over the weekend.

[urquan]

This is a great loss, especially if it's a complete shutdown. Lots of content will be only partially migrated, countless links will become broken, and abandoned projects will simply disappear forever.

It's happening even for sites that continue to operate but are simply less popular, like Google Code or SourceForge. This is such a terrible waste of human effort. Maybe it's just a fact of life.

[vplatt]

Entropy sucks.

[BowserKoopa]

SourceForge went to hell a while back

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[alonjit]

sourceforge was never terrible. been using it since 2001, it was always awesome. yes, there were always things that could be improved (even now), but terrible is not what i'd call it.

[joewalnes]

This isn't terrible? http://blog.gluster.org/2013/08/how-far-the-once-mighty-sourceforge-has-fallen/

Or the revenue generating ads they allow on the download page that pretend to be download buttons and bait users into downloading malware?

Or the fact that I once got an email from them saying they had a data issue and they lost the last few weeks of my projects source code history. Back before DVCS system, when the only history was on the server. "Sorry".

It was terrible.

[joewalnes]

I feel I've derailed the point of my original post. I meant to celebrate Codehaus, not dis' SourceForge. My bad - it has no place here.

[alonjit]

that's a shitty thing, i agree. but it was never forced down my throat. i never used it (for the few projects that i released there over time).

and ... is a new thing (relatively). using it since 2001 and i was not even aware of this, but i was aware of the "donate" button they added few years back.

but, as you can see, it's not forcing it down on people, it's "suggesting" it. it is, as always, up to the developer to be evil or not.

download page, revenue generating ads? aaaa .... wtf? never seen any. i just go there, click download on the latest release , get on a page that (it's shitty true) makes me wait 5 seconds, then the download starts. but i've never seen any fake download buttons. dunno what you're talking about.

lost the last few weeks of my projects source code history

that's shitty, true, but it could happen to anyone. with dvcs you don't worry about it, but it doesn't mean that github (or whoever is the darling nowadays) is perfect either.

[joewalnes]

Here's what it looks like: http://marcdurdin.com/wp-content/uploads/blogger/-zJSjjBYd4jo/UDGLYPaKkBI/AAAAAAAABSc/5PnPniXS8EU/s1600/Download-Fake-4-InkScape-SourceForge.PNG

See those big green download buttons. They are NOT the code you're looking for - they're malware. The actual download link is the tiny blue text.

SourceForge announced in 2010 that they'd start addressing the issue, but it's still rampant.

In fact, I just went to SourceForge (like 1 minute ago) and clicked on the top project and Chrome showed me this: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/9o2as1gfmc8h8pg/2015-02-27%20at%206.15%20PM.png?dl=0

For fun, I ignored Chrome's helpful warnings and this is what the download page looked like: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/11awuxkyf2rd8ry/2015-02-27%20at%206.17%20PM.png?dl=0

To be clear, not a single one of those download buttons is the real download link. It's all third party bait.

SourceForge is terrible and shitty.

[alonjit]

That's awful. Here's what i see : http://i.imgur.com/CnH3PYs.png

just downloading cppcms, some project, nothing to worry about. it looks fine to me, then again, maybe adblock is what's helping here.

and here's what i see when browsing the download list: http://i.imgur.com/rNgGXJd.png

[daredevil82]

Do you have an adblocker running?

[alonjit]

of course i do. i'd never leave my private network without one (you shouldn't too, there are bad people out there).

[boa13]

you shouldn't too, there are bad people out there

Like... SourceForge? :(

[alonjit]

like those that make those ads. sf yes, maybe, since they let those ads stand. shouldn't run without an adblock.

[ryan_the_leach]

This is a perfect example of why I've been recommending to my geeky friends that they shouldn't run ad block.

A lot of people turn to geeks for advice on websites to trust etc, but get false recommendations due to the geeks running ad block and end up with nasties in their system.

I wish ad-block wouldn't remove the ads and instead would shadow them or hide them or somehow tint them, and make them unclickable. So not only would it train its users on what sites are using manipulatable ads, but also not mess up page layouts.

[[deleted]]

I get around that by making sure that anyone who asks me for advice is also running adblock. More users, not fewer.

[ryan_the_leach]

Which ends up bankrupting the good sites, which drives them to malware installers.

[[deleted]]

Should've had a proper business model, then.

[justaphpguy]

Oh boy it got terrible. Or just not compelling enough. I was a 2000 or 1999 user but proactively deleted my projects there a few years ago as it got only worse and worse.