Today, I came across a post on the Adobe Forums about how to call a DLL from an Adobe Flex software application. In this message thread, someone mentioned using Merapi. There was a fear that The Merapi Project had died, stalled out or was inactive. There was also a reply that pointed folks to a possible "light at the end of the tunnel", a blog post I put up on the Roundarch Blog about the project and some of our plans.
I responded on the forum, and part of the way through writing things thought that it probably made sense to post my response here as well, so that there was no miscommunication around Merapi. It also makes sense to explain what we (Adam Flater, myself, our employer (Roundarch) and the community are doing with Merapi.
The following should answer your questions about the status of the Merapi Project, our personal involvement in the project, Roundarch's sponsorship of the Merapi open source effort, our ongoing process to create a more robust commercial platform (The Merapi Platform) and other items that we've, quite frankly, have been too busy to share with the Flex, Flash and Web development community.
The post started out with me answering the question about how the Merapi open source project has died and that ever since Adam Flater left the project, things haven't been released, and the project had died. Let me start there, and as you will read... I explain the rest.
What is going on with the Merapi Project?
Adam didn't leave the Merapi Project, however with workload for client projects and doing the engineering of Merapi pretty much solo, he didn't have a tremendous amount of time to dedicate to the project and getting releases out, not to mention all of the other "business stuff" that goes along with developing a technology. That's where I got involved to help him out.
Together, we've been cranking on maturing Merapi over the last year, and a few months ago, Adam found a way where he could dedicate his time to building out the Merapi open source project, and also work to develop a platform for Merapi-like things (Connecting web technologies and desktop/hardware).
Recently, Adam took a position at Roundarch (Where I also work). In his position as Evangelist and Architect, his responsibilities include focusing his time and effort on getting the open source project in a place where it could be released, and working with the rest of our clients who have some "outside the box" types of needs for projects.
What Does this Mean for Merapi?
What does this mean? It means that after almost a year of working on Merapi in his spare time, that Adam can now focus on making Merapi what he had always intended.
We recently helped the folks at Tesla Motors with the prototype Model S car (which will change a lot in the next 2 years). In order to do this, and to also enable a couple of other projects, we had to do a ton of custom development and move Merapi to other platforms outside of just AIR and Java. This is great news for the overall community. Why? Because Adam and I have convinced Roundarch to sponsor the open source project, and to allow us to forge ahead with some of our own proprietary "version" of Merapi that includes additional functionality, etc. I, personally, have been working with Adam on Merapi for a year and a half and have had countless conversations, meetings and reviews with Adobe, Microsoft and other major players in the Web and desktop software business.
I was doing this prior to joining Roundarch, and now that both Adam Flater and I are employed by the company, it made a lot of sense to use some of our time to focus on the project as opposed to trying to build out something that we feel is this important in our nights and weekends. A lot of folks have commented that the project stalled, was dead, etc. That was never the case. The issue was time: We didn’t have enough to dedicate to doing things right.
Roundarch is sponsoring the project, meaning they are paying to have our team members work on things that can be leveraged by the community. Merapi is a very cool thing, and as Jeff Maling, president of Roundarch told me "It is important to get the open source stuff out there so that the industry as a whole can use it to move forward".
There has been some confusion in the community about what Roundarch's involvement in Merapi means. We published a press release about "Roundarch's Merapi" being used to power the connectivity between the vehicle hardware and touch-screen of the Tesla Model S. A handful of people took this to mean that Roundarch "owned" Merapi and that nobody else would be allowed to use it. That is absurd and simply not the case. What it means is that the work that Roundarch is sponsoring has finally given us the time to put our heads down and finish up our open source release code, which will be put on Google code in the coming weeks. (by June at the latest). The final tasks for us are to do a code review and to figure out how to license it, both things that are in process right now.
So, there you have it. The open source Merapi project is due for release very soon. As some of you may know, we've had things in a closed-source private alpha stage for about a year. We did this so that we could get things perfect before opening it up to the community. Right now, several folks (not from Roundarch) are also going to be involved in the "steering/oversight" committee for the open source project. It is our intention to give back to the community in the same way that Roundarch sponsors conferences, the community, local user groups, etc, etc.
The Merapi Platform - What is it?
To clarify things, we have also developed "The Merapi Platform". You might also hear this referred to as "The Roundarch Merapi Platform".
This platform pushes far beyond the open source Merapi Project. At Roundarch, we work on many interesting and challenging technology and design problems. We have a need for a technology that our clients can use that provides the simple object bridging that Merapi has (for AIR/FLEX and Java), along with other capabilities that we've realized make a ton of sense.
I am the Co-Director of Roundarch "Labs", where we are developing this stuff, and we plan to contribute back to the open source Merapi Project as appropriate. We also plan to continue to develop out the full platform, which will include tools, libraries, and other things that will make building these next-generation applications faster and easier, and will provide some value for our own clients. This also includes the ability to integrate other platforms/technologies such as .NET (VB/C#, etC), Python, AJAX, Flash, MS Silverlight, etc, etc.
The long story made short: The Merapi Project is alive and well. Adam Flater and the rest of the Roundarch Labs team are working diligently on things and the open source Merapi Project will be available on Google Code sooner than later. We've invested a very hefty amount of time, effort and money in this, and based on the needs of our clients, have decided to move beyond just sponsoring the open source project by creating a full commercial platform that can be used to push way beyond what the open source code will provide.
All things evolve, and at Roundarch, we are dedicated to making sure that the Merapi open source effort gets the support that it needs to be successful. Until we finalize our own roadmap and answer our own questions about how we will license, sell, use, or do services around the fully integrated platform... stay tuned. I don't have those answers yet, and trust me.... I wish I did! We are working out all of the details and as soon as we have them, we will release that information to the community.
Answering some Questions
A couple of other questions have surfaced about Merapi, including "Is Merapi the same things as "Artemis"? For those not in the know, Artemis was an early prototype of software code that would could pass data between the Adobe "Apollo" Alpha (which became Adobe AIR) and Java. The Artemis project died when Adam and I both left our previous employer. Nobody picked it up. They could have done that, but the passion behind the technology remained with Adam. When Adobe released AIR, it was time to throw out the old and start fresh with a new approach and a full re-write of the framework.
And Especially Thanks to our Friends and Supporters
First off, I'd like to thank Roundarch for their generosity, understanding of why the support of open source is so important, and for giving us the ability to help push the concept of bridging the Web and desktop / software and hardware. Roundarch has provided Adam and I an opportunity to not only support the release of Merapi as open source (finally!), but given us the opportunity to develop additional technology that we believe will help change the way that we use the Web and develop both Web and desktop software.
We'd also like to publically thank Andrew Powell who works at Universal Mind. Andrew has been working with Merapi since Adam pushed out the first alpha code and has been a great advocate for the technology by speaking at conferences, blogging, creating sample applications, etc. Andrew will work with Adam on the open source AIR/Actionscript Merapi Project and help to steer those efforts.
In addition, we should throw a huge digital hug over to Andrew Trice, who works for our friends at Cynergy Systems. He has also been working with Merapi for quite some time and has created some of the most talked about Merapi demos out there. He's a fantastic guy, good friend and absolutely brilliant.
Juan Sanchez created the original Merapi Project logo. Juan is a key player on the Degrafa open source project and works for our friends at EffectiveUI. Juan is a very talented jack of all trades and and really nice guy.
Lastly, when we started to make Merapi something real, we ran ideas past a whole slew of folks in the industry. Forgive me if I forgot you, and email me if you'd like to be added to the list. This list includes Rich Tretola (O'Reilly insideRIA/Herff Jones), Josh Holmes (Microsoft), Louie Penaflor, Mike Labriola, Jeff Tapper, Mike Nimer, Ryan Stewart, Greg Wilson and Holly Shinksy (Who are using Merapi in the Tour de Flex application by Adobe), Ted Patrick, Rhazes Spell, and others.
Final Words?
Adam, the management team at Roundarch and myself are the types of folks that embrace new technology and believe that the Web can provide so much more than it currently does, including providing new and interesting ways to publish and consume data. We think it is the future, and that's why have been working so hard at making this happen.
If you’d like information on The Merapi Platform, or what our plans are with the open source Merapi Project, email Adam (aflater@roundarch.com) or myself (dmeeker@roundarch.com). We’d be more than happy to discuss them with you.
Also, check out the Roundarch Blog for updates over time. There is a lot of great stuff up there.
7 comments:
This whole thing is a PR mistake in which Roundarch overstepped the line when choosing the language used in the Tesla press release and the blog post. And yet there's still no ackowledgement of the line that was crossed. The original blog post about the Tesla still says "Roundarch's Merapi Project" and "Merapi, a technology produced by Roundarch".
So let's be perfectly clear: the press release and the blog post were and still are misleading. I _understand_ why it's a good PR move to try to make the project sound like Roundarch owns it. I get it, it sounds good, it sounds like Roundarch has some magic patented software that nobody else does. But it's just wrong, it's deceiving, and it's offensive to any developers who were involved in the project over the past year or any developers who have been following it who have all been told that it's an open source project.
The response I was looking for was something along the lines of "Look, we know we screwed up by trying to make it sound like we owned Merapi. Our PR guys thought it sounded too good to pass up, so we decided to fudge the truth a bit for a soundbite. We'll change the blog post to make the wording more accurate." (and since the blog post has your byline and is not an official press release I can only assume you wrote it yourself).
But instead the explanation given is that since Adam has been working at Roundarch for a whopping 2 months now suddenly Roundarch has invested so much into the development that it should be able to brand Merapi as its own, that you guys didn't do anything wrong or say anything deceiving, that you're going to keep the public material posted that says Roundarch's Merapi, you'll also keep the Roundarch branding on the official Merapi project page (merapiproject.net) and everyone should just chill out.
A simple "whoops, we screwed up, we understand why you're upset" would go a long way here, instead of calling the concerns absurd and brushing them aside.
Doug,
Thanks for your post. I am going to start at the end of your comments and move back to the beginning. It seems to make sense. You make some valid points, and my attempt in this blog post was to address the points that we've heard from Andy and others about things. I guess it would be easier to have had "all the points" up front, so they could be addressed in one single scoop! I actually posted this before Adam was able to post his own blog entry. We addressed different items, and I feel that his post covers what mine does not. I apologize for that, because It is my own fault for not coordinating better with him.
So, here we go:
Doug: A simple "whoops, we screwed up, we understand why you're upset" would go a long way here, instead of calling the concerns absurd and brushing them aside.You are right. I should have probably just apologized for the message in the press release being misunderstood. But we certainly did not brush anything aside, nor call them "absurd". I believe the "absurd" comment you are referring to was based on a twitter post that I made. Ahhhhh. You have to love twitter. What was "absurd" to me was not the situation itself, rather the fact that Andy and Adam and I had not talked about the situation, and 3rd parties were posting things about it. My comment of "absurd" was regarding the fact that other people were talking about something that they didn't have any information or understanding about and it seemed as if people were throwing fuel on a fire that didn't even need to be burning.
If I was misunderstood, that is my fault. Twitter is, by nature, a terrible platform for discussing things like this and it is clearly very easy to misinterpret things. It is not the right vehicle for this type of communication.
In terms of brushing things off. As soon as Adam realized that Andy was upset, we all got on the phone, discussed everything and came to a mutual understanding and when we finished the call, we all had the feeling of "all good".
There was no intention to brush anything off. And aside from everything else that we have to take care of on projects, for clients, etc... we've spent most of Friday and today discussing the issues with people to make sure that things are understood properly.
The response I was looking for was something along the lines of "Look, we know we screwed up by trying to make it sound like we owned Merapi. Roundarch does not OWN Merapi. Roundarch has been generous enough to support the final crunch of development of what will be released to the community as Open Source project.
Again, it was not the intention of Roundarch (as a company) to give the impression that they owned Merapi. "Roundarch's Merapi" was the terminology in the press release, and when I look back, we should have used what Andy, Adam and I agreed would be more appropriate, which is "Roundarch Merapi" or the "Merapi Platform", etc.
(and since the blog post has your byline and is not an official press release I can only assume you wrote it yourself).Of course I wrote this blog post myself. I also wrote the initial press release about the project. Once we wrote the press release, it went through a very long process. Our review, a review with our PR firm, a review with the client communications team, a look by attorneys, etc, etc. It took close to 3 weeks to get the press release together. Adam and I both read the release, and honestly, didn't think that it would bother anyone who has advised on the project or has been involved with Adam over the last year and a half.
I suppose we have been so consumed in working on Merapi-related things that that was a big mistake, because we definitely never anticipated that it would create such a reaction in the community. If anything, we were more focused on doing actual work than worried about the press release. My point is that we fully plan on releasing Merapi as Open Source and that has always been the plan. In fact, it was something that the management team at Roundarch insisted on. Maybe I just assumed that those close to the project understood this. The Web site has stated it for a while now, and the only hold up is a code review. It would have been sooner had project work not interfered with scheduling.
But instead the explanation given is that since Adam has been working at Roundarch for a whopping 2 months now suddenly Roundarch has invested so much into the development that it should be able to brand Merapi as its own...
The branding on the Web site, along with the Web site copy, is intended to convey the fact that Roundarch has agreed to sponsor the project. On the Web site, Adam and I "are" the project team. We both work at Roundarch, and Roundarch has agreed to pay for the time required to get the Open Source release completed and distributed through Google Code. It was a project sponsorship, not ownership.The Merapi Project has been in "closed source alpha" since the Web site launched. People were complaining left and right about why we wouldn't release the code and why it was taking so long. I asked Roundarch to help us get things completed and released to the community, and in doing so slapped a logo on the Web site.
...that you guys didn't do anything wrong or say anything deceivingI really do apologize for this being interpreted this way. I think it is safe to say that anyone who knows or works or has worked with Adam, Roundarch or me would be hard pressed to call any of us deceiving or would judge any of our characters in that manner.
We are just guys working hard to get the damn code written and again, I apologize that the wording of the release has created such confusion.
It is truly a lesson for me, and as others in the industry have stated, it is an interesting lesson for software projects as a whole.
... that you're going to keep the public material posted that says Roundarch's MerapiWe've (I think) made it pretty clear that this isn't the case. Through this blog post, and the post that Adam is currently putting together and in the actual "Merapi" press release that we are putting together regarding the Open Source release of the project. I think once you and the rest of the community read that, this entire situation will be null and we can go back to doing good work for clients and being friends. :-)
...you'll also keep the Roundarch branding on the official Merapi project page (merapiproject.net) and everyone should just chill out.I am all for having people chill out. I guess, I am a pretty chilled out person myself, and feel that conversations are always best had as opposed to arguing. In terms of the branding? We are going to probably get rid of the Merapiproject.net Web site when we do the open source release and post the code out on google code.
Roundarch will probably put some demos of Merapi and information about the other platform stuff we are doing on the Roundarch Web site. (Not the current site, but a new site that we have in development). It would live in the "Labs" section and would be displayed along with all of the other interesting new technology stuff that we are using to solve problems.
The reason for me saying that the public Web site will "go away" is simple. I just don't have time to maintain it. When this happened on Friday, I thought about how much time I've spent in the last 15 months or so. Not only did I build the site, but I've had to deal with about 20 hacking attempts by random idiots trying to cause havoc, I have emailed back and forth with probably 500 or so of the 1600 people that have signed up for the private alpha. I have spent countless hours approving accounts, offering technical support, helping people change their screen names, updating the strung-together bug tracker, message board, user sign-up and content admin apps that are all running. It's a real pain the butt, and is far too inefficient for me to keep doing. We talked to Andy and agreed that just throwing it on Google code made a lot more sense.
The whole purpose of the Merapiproject.org Web site was to inform new people about the project and build some traction. It did that. But it's way too much to manage. At least for me. I'd rather spend my time doing the other Merapi-related things that I've been doing since I got involved: dealing with software companies, defining roadmaps, pontificating the concept every day, pitching developers on why they should care, and working with Adam to define what demos would be good for different talks while he has been cranking away at nights and over weekends to get the source code "just right".
Lastly...
"This whole thing is a PR mistake in which Roundarch overstepped the line when choosing the language used in the Tesla press release and the blog post. And yet there's still no ackowledgement of the line that was crossed. The original blog post about the Tesla still says "Roundarch's Merapi Project" and "Merapi, a technology produced by Roundarch"."
I am hoping that you now understand that if you are to blame anyone, than to blame me. I didn't see the issue with what was posted because (now I see) I am probably way too close to the project on a daily basis to understand that anyone would take issues with what we wrote.
The line that was crossed was my mistake, and done so not with any motives other than getting things done and being a little oblivious to the fact that things would be taken the way they were.
With that, I am sorry.
I will make sure that when "the official" press release about Merapi being made open source, or anything else related to the project is more well stated and will not lend itself to be misinterpreted.
It is important, however to understand that what we've used on the project related to the press release as well as what we are in development on for another project is a very different "merapi" than what has been released in the closed-source alpha. Merapi with .NET? What? Similarly to "redhat linux", "Roundarch's Merapi Platform" or "Roundarch Merapi" or whatever else is exactly that... not the original code.
The wording is semantics that are clouding a lot of this conversation. The fact is that we will be releasing Merapi as open source, and that Roundarch will be creating a commercial Merapi Platform that will suit the proprietary needs of clients. We could call it "clown pants" for all it really matters... we stuck with Merapi because our commercial efforts will help to fun the open source release and support and thought that the alignment of the names was a GOOD thing, not a bad thing.
I look at it now, and think that maybe "Clown pants" would have been a better choice. :)
I will end here.
Not everyone has motives to take over the world, dominate the industry or crush the competition. Some of us just love what we do, work hard at it, and find that it usually pays off for the betterment of ourselves and those that we produce work for. Roundarch certainly doesn't have those motives, nor do Adam or I.
With that, I apologize (it's official).
I hope with this, we can move past this situation and focus on what is actually important: Spending our time to get the Merapi Project Open Sourced and available and getting back to the work we do for our clients.
Thanks for taking the time to call this stuff out. It is dialogue of this nature that helps to clarify situations and helps us all to be better communicators.
I say this to you because it was only two weeks ago when you, Adam and I worked hand in hand to discuss and debate the BlazeDS licensing discrepancies with people from Adobe.
Going back to my original post, should anyone have comments, questions, concerns, etc... you can email Adam or I.
Dave, and Adam
I guess for me it comes down to whether you guys want this to continue as a community project or not? Because right now it seems you don't, or at least these discussions/press releases seem to be saying that in a roundabout way.
I'm glad Roundarch is backing the project, it's true that given the security restrictions of AIR, that EUI didn't pursue Artemis any further. But that doesn't mean we won't once AIR 3.0 comes out. That's going to be a game changer for this type of 3rd party technology. So do you think we should contribute to Merapi when the time comes, or should we collaborate with others for a branded free solution?
These are the questions that matter for me going forward.
First of all, I definitely agree that the whole thing has been blown way out of proportion. I've always thought it was a bad PR move, but not more than that, I certainly never thought you guys intended to not release the source code or had actual devious intentions. And I think any buzz in the twitterverse or wherever about that was really just people being sarcastic (obviously in a critical way, but sarcastic nonetheless).
And yeah, you've seen me rail on Adobe about BlazeDS licensing, so you can tell I have a thing for calling out whatever I see as BS :) I haven't even been involved in contributing to Merapi, so I don't know how I became so vocal, I guess I just like these kind of arguments.
It's all good, there was a messaging mistake, people got all pissy, and now we're cool. I appreciate the long reply. Now we can all go back to normal life.
@sean
Check out my latest post: http://htxt.it/KEfp
For a lot of reasons, Merapi will be a great choice for this type of solution.
That said, I've always felt competition is a good thing. So, either way it's a positive thing. We'd obviously love to have more contributors on Merapi, especially talented developers like you.
Sean, Good questions.
On the point of us wanting it to be a community project... of course. That is the point of open sourcing things. To this date, there has not been much of a community, and that is a shame, because Merapi would be much further along by this point.
Granted, with the work that we've been able to do the last couple of months, things have been greatly accelerated. If we didn't want it to be a community project, (and that was an option) than there would be no mention of an os release.
It is hard for us to tell who is using Merapi's closed-source Jar and swc builds unless those people communicate with us.
In the past year, we've talked to a ton of people who are outside of the "ria community insider" group that you, adam, doug, and I know quite well. The feedback from these folks, and the ways that they are using Merapi are what made us decide to get the Merapi project out in open source and to not only support it, but to contribute to it.
For some of the type of work that Roundarch does, it is necessary to have some sort of proprietary vehicle that we can use as well. It isn't a matter of wanting to keep things to ourselves or not wanting to continue sponsorship of the open source project. It is just a product of the reality of building software for clients that have proprietary needs. Some software needs to be locked down, and there are very legitimate reasons for that.
Adam, the rest of the team at Roundarch, myself and folks like Andy, Doug and others all agree that the value for developers like yourself is not in the framework, rather the work you produce on top of it, extensions to it, and the integration with other platforms and technologies.
If the open source project exists, it provides a bigger footprint of the technology for everyone to leverage.
What most folks in the community don't realize is that the work done on Merapi over the last year or so isn't simply limited to writing and testing code.
We've had countless meetings about Merapi, what is happening with other software platforms, how it relates to plans by Adobe and other companies and how it will need to adapt over time, including (as you stated) when AIR 3.0 comes out. I get the impression through some of the conversations I've had about Merapi that a lot of folks don't understand that for more than a year, we've spent a ton of time working behind closed doors to get things to the point where they are at today.
In terms of AIR 3.0 and the future, It is our intention to support the open source project along the way, and make sure that Merapi adapts accordingly and stays current with Java and AIR.
Not only is AIR 3 something to consider, but there are other considerations such as Google's native code execution, what Microsoft is doing, etc, etc.
When you ask if I think you should contribute to Merapi when "the time comes", or if you should collaborate with others for a branded free solution, I'd say that it's a shame that you'd have to wait for AIR 3.0 to find Merapi compelling enough to get involved, and secondly that of course you should participate.
The more smart people that contribute to the open source project and do so in a way that supports the growth of the technology instead of using it in breach of how it is licensed, the better!
Collaborating on a new "free" branded solution is always an option, but it almost seems that sticking with what is being planned for an open source Merapi, as your go-to solution, makes a lot more sense.
Not only would that require time and energy on the reinvention of the approach, but you'd be losing the benefits of the trials, testing, scenario research and optimization that are the ingredients of a hot cup of merapi java.
Not to mention, by that point, Merapi will have been tested by a thousand or so users and will have gone through (I assume) a lot of community contributions.
Those are my thoughts anyway.
Thanks for your responses Adam and Dave.
Dave regarding something you brought up. "I'd say that it's a shame that you'd have to wait for AIR 3.0 to find Merapi compelling enough to get involved".
I've had this conversation with Adam and Tony in the past, but to recap, my feeling is that Merapi only works in a very controlled environment otherwise the chance of failure is too high. On the other hand, AIRs biggest strength is working in uncontrolled environments. If I have a controlled environment, it would make little sense to build an AIR app. I feel the 2 methodologies to deployment are opposed to each other right now. There are obviously exceptions to these rules but as a principle it stands.
But AIR 3.0 will change this and I'm looking forward to being able to generically bundle Merapi with a distributable app for extended functionality.
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