Interview - Bob McWhirter of the Codehaus

The Codehaus has quickly emerged as a place to find some really useful open-source tools such as the Groovy programming language, the DamageControl continuous build system, AspectWerkz and Nanning for AOP, and of course PicoContainer, which now forms the backbone of JIRA.

They also use JIRA for their issue-tracking, and have done some really interesting work integrating Confluence with their public website.

Mike Cannon-Brookes conducted this interview with Codehaus founder Bob McWhirter by email, late at night.

The Codehaus

Give me the two minute elevator pitch on codehaus. What does it do, how did it start etc? What's your role?

I've been active in the open-source community for ages, and had hosted my own projects under the auspices of The Werken Company. Others, such as Martin van den Bemt and his Xulux project, were also using my server for their projects. So, in early 2003, we rebranded the open-source efforts on my server from Werken to the Codehaus to make it clearer that
not all of the projects were my own.

What exactly is a a despot, and how does one become one? Are you always right?

The dictionary claims something along the lines of "a ruler with absolute power." This is to be contrasted with other communities that do a lot of voting. We've got infrastructure despots, such as myself, who decide, without taking a vote or consensus, that, say, we're going to install Confluence. Every project has its own despot, who is responsible for making any final decisions for it. The power structure allows for for things to happen quickly and for project leaders to retain the strength of their vision for the project. Our ideaology of project despots go hand-in-hand with our doctrine of project autonomy.

Of course, I'm always right. See point #10 in the Codehaus Manifesto.

What makes codehaus different to other Open Source projects? (from a technical perspective, and from an organisational perspective)

From a social stand-point, the abovementioned attitudes towards project leadership and control is our biggest differentiator. Some people like it, some people don't.

From a technical perspective, we tend to be early adopters of new infrastructure bits'n'bobs. We were on the early end of the adoption curve for Jira, Confluence, and FishEye, along with being the source of DamageControl.

What did you do before codehaus?

I baked a lot of bread. Also, I contributed to various Apache projects over the years. My last known Real Job was with Baan of the Netherlands, doing logistics work. Since then I've just consulted with various cients.

Looking 1, 2 and 5 years out - what does the future hold for codehaus?

Considering I had no idea we'd be where we are now, I'd hate to even venture a guess. We're not big with planning at the haus.

The Codehaus and Atlassian

I hear you have been using JIRA for a while now. What do you use it for at codehaus? Has it changed or helped your development process?

Pretty much every Codehaus project (and several non-haus projects) use Jira for issue tracking. Personally, I use the 'roadmap' feature on a daily basis to guide the development of Drools. A common refrain is "If it's not in Jira, it doesn't exist".

The Codehaus was also one of the first places to publicly use Confluence. How do you use it, and what does it do for you?

We'd previously used MoinMoin as our Wiki, but like most wikis, it tended to devolve into complete chaos. Confluence has been great for keeping better-organized and prettier documentation, instead of the wiki-sneeze we previously dealt with. Confluenza then makes it possible to use the Confluence content as the actual project website.

Lurking within the depth of codehaus is TimTam - what's a chocolate biscuit doing at codehaus?!

Zohar joined the haus and brough TimTam with him. To be honest, we'd have to ask Zohar about TimTam, as I know very little about it.

Zohar spake thusly:

What on earth is a Confluenza?

Confluenza is my 700 line ball of Perl that takes content from Confluence and makes a pretty website out of it. It glues together several pages from Confluence to construct a single production page with a navigation, customized headers, etc. Basically a poor-man's sitemesh customized for Confluence. It uses the wicked-cool XML-RPC interface of Confluence to do the dirty deeds. Many of the project sites at the Codehaus are generated by Confluenza, such as PicoContainer.

If you had to pick, what are your 2 favourite JIRA or Confluence features?

Number 1 on my list is the Jira roadmap screen. It provides a very nice view of a project. My second favourite feature would be Scott Farquhar, as he's just a great guy.

Are there any features in particular you're 'hanging out for'?

Multiple dashboard tabs in Jira! [New in JIRA 3.0 --ed]

J2EE and Open Source

If you had to pick one Open Source project (not from codehaus!) that has made an impact on J2EE over the last 2 years, what would it be and why?

There's projects outside of Codehaus? I personally have come to depend on Apache-Maven, though, it's definitely a topic of many debates. Maven just makes it easy to do all of the normal project stuff without having to give it much thought. I mostly work on open-source projects that adhere to a pretty standard form, so Maven has been a godsend.

What is your favourite codehaus project?

I love all of my children.

I see some projects are codehaus are Ruby. Languages other than Java - love 'em or hate 'em?

I probably write as much Perl as I do Java these days, so pragmatically, being a Java-only community would be dishonest, I think. DamageControl is obviously Ruby, while Neo is for .NET. Then we've got new languages like Groovy which compiles to Java bytecodes, and Boo which compiles to whatever .NET uses.

Codehaus has always been strong about 'business friendly' Open Source software. What's your personal 'Open Source' position? Is the GPL evil or just misunderstood?

I think the GPL is perfectly fine for things you can use out-of-the-box, such as Linux, XMMS, or other application-type things. The Codehaus, though, tends to attract people who use building blocks to construct larger applications, typically for business. In that context, the GPL is pure unadulterated evil. The LGPL, while many times misunderstood, I think can satisfy the needs of both business and open-source idealists.

In Closing...

Can we have the next hausparty in Australia?

Sure. I'll need a pair of first class tickets. You have my address, right?

Any last parting words? Anything else you want to plug?

Please, spay or neuter your pets.

*Any questions I didn't ask that I should have?*

I think that about covers it. Thanks for your time, and feel free to drop
by our IRC channel anytime.