[erlang-questions] Misultin EOL

[Steve Vinoski]

On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 3:59 AM, Ulf Wiger <ulf@REDACTED> wrote:
>
> On 17 Feb 2012, at 00:06, Michael Truog wrote:
>
> With yaws the concern seems to be more about the code being regarded as
> legacy, not actively developed, and not modular (and whatever other reasons
> that seemed to make mochiweb
> appear necessary).
>
>
> I think this is no longer true. My impression is that yaws development has
> picked up again, Looking at the change log for the releases in the past year
> or two [1], it is obvious that it is being actively maintained. This is also
> apparent from the github stats [2]. And yaws now comes with generic support
> for the various forms of JSON RPC (1.1 and 2.0), HAXE, SOAP, and even
> WebSockets. One of the few things I miss is WebMachine support. :)
>
> [1] http://yaws.hyber.org/
> [2] https://github.com/klacke/yaws/contributors

Very true, Ulf. And we'll get you that webmachine support soon.

And Michael, another way anyone can see how active yaws development is
is to simply look at the commits:

https://github.com/klacke/yaws/commits/master

This approach would seem vastly preferable to spreading inaccurate and
irresponsible rumors on this mailing list about yaws not being
actively developed. I've been using yaws for the past 5 years, much of
it in a production embedded system, and it's been actively developed
for all 5 of those years. Yaws is now in its 11th year of active
development.

Regarding yaws modularity, I keep hearing this rumor that it lacks in
that regard, yet nobody has yet pointed out any specifics. If someone
were to point out things they think are too intertwined, then Klacke,
Christopher Faulet, or I -- those with commit rights to the yaws repo
-- could at least consider fixing them, as could anyone else with an
interest in providing a patch. But in the absence of anything
concrete, it's hard to take action.

Note that the production embedded system I mentioned earlier doesn't
use SOAP or haxe or websockets or numerous other yaws features, and in
fact doesn't even include them, plus it runs embedded within a larger
application, not as a stand-alone server. If it truly lacked
modularity, or if it weren't usable in a library-like fashion, none of
that would be possible.

Earlier in this thread we have this gem from Loïc:
> I'm sad to see Misultin go, this was in my opinion the only other project that had enough
> momentum to introduce innovation in Erlang web servers.

Wow. At best, this is simply ignorant on several fronts. At worst,
it's insulting to Klacke, Bob Ippolito, me and others who've put a lot
of work into their Erlang web servers and continue to do so. Hell,
Erlang wouldn't be where it is today without all the features Klacke
put into it, and I doubt Erlang web systems would be as far along as
they are now without Klacke's and Bob's continued contributions and
deployments into real products in years where most of us hadn't even
started using Erlang yet. Part of the reason Roberto has taken this
new action regarding misultin is that he wants the Erlang web
community to become more cohesive, reusing each other's work instead
of competing with each other, but irresponsible statements like this
one from Loïc don't help Roberto's cause at all. If we truly want the
Erlang web dev community to become less fractured so it can grow,
taking cheap shots at each other won't get us there.

Yaws exists and continues to exist because people continue to use it
in real-life production systems. Klacke, Christopher, and I all have
day jobs, so whatever time we put into yaws is based on what users are
asking for. What makes it real interesting and fun is to fit new
features like websockets into a system without it being an ugly hack
and without breaking everything else that's already there, and we
intend to continue to do exactly that.

Perhaps worst of all about parts of this thread, though, is that from
what I've seen over the past few years, those spreading these
unfounded rumors about yaws being old and creaky and slow and legacy
and not actively developed and not usable for their projects never
once contacted Klacke or me or the erlyaws mailing list about
questions or issues with the system. They've never attempted to
contribute to the system with features or patches. I therefore suspect
that they just listened to the same recurring unfounded gossip and
made up their mind that way. Unfortunate, if true. But surely it's not
asking too much to request that, going forward, people at least do
their homework, try things out, and maybe ask some questions before
stating "facts" that simply aren't true about yaws, or mochiweb, or
any other such systems?

--steve