[JDEV] Plans for the future

[Dave Smith]

Greetings..

Well, the silence has been long, I know. Seems like I really only use
this mailing list to apologize for not using the mailing list.. :) I
thought I would just take a few moments and catch everybody up with
where I am at, in terms of development, and where I hope to go.

To begin with, I'm hoping to have added time on the weekends due to
the way that development is proceeding in Jabber.com -- we've got a
lot of good engineering practices in place and development is getting
past that frenzied, "get-it-working" point. This is totally due to the
excellent management people that have come on board -- it just goes to
show that with the right upper-level people in place, you can actually
be _more_ productive. :) I'm proud to say that I work for Jabber.com,
and I believe we will go far. The nice thing about being more
efficient at work is that you have more time to play. :)

So, on my Open Source agenda for the next few weeks --

* Jabberoo cleanup and documentation
  For the record, I will be DOCUMENTING jabberoo -- yes, you heard me
right. :) I have decided to use doxygen and just get the beast
documented. There have been a lot of people asking for jabberoo; I
haven't forgotten you guys. :) The last few weeks, I've been working
on learning autoconf/make & libtool -- as an exercise, I rewrote all
the config and build scripts in jabberoo from scratch. Autotools are a
happy thing when used properly. Another goal of this jabberoo rework
is the addition of socket code (so you don't have to always role your
own) and implementation of support for Win32.

* Vacation
  I'm taking a vacation. For a week. With no computer. Far away from
'net access. I will not work. I will learn to speak French. I will not
think about politics, Open Source, or code -- ok, maybe about code. :)

* JAM -- Forwarding the vision
  Once I get jabberoo cleaned up and out the door, JAM will become my
next priority. I want to get the vision document roughed out no later
than 1 month from now. I'd like to start sequence diagrams sometime
after that. This is going to be an interesting area of development
since I'm not yet sure how we fit in the overall vision for
Jabber. The Jabber Foundation also introduces some interesting
dynamics to the development from JAM -- again, I'm not sure what these
are, but I've got a feeling something is lurking beneath the surface.

So, there are my plans. Will I keep to them? Who knows. :)

Diz