How to become an Apache committer

I knew there are different possibilities to become an Apache projects committer. In some cases, you've got to earn it hard, in other cases its easier.

Recently I have learned the easiest way, though: You simply have to be the member of the right project. In my case this would be RAT or Plexus. Done nothing, and having two more entries on the profile.

But while we are at it, in it's extremely good that these are joining the ASF. Or should I say "coming home"? I never understood Roberts decision to build RAT at Google. At least, I was unable to see any advantages. Yet another bug tracker to learn, another code repository to maintain, and a completely different way of releasing distributables. Same goes for Plexus at Codehaus. I agree that it makes sense to host the Mojo project at Codehaus: In that case it is most possibly more important that new developers can easily be added.

In both cases, I am personally happy about the decision. In the case of RAT, this will make it much easier to integrate the RAT core and the rat-maven-plugin. And if Plexus will be called Apache Composer, then I'll possibly be able to use it in projects at work as a lightweight alternative to Spring. (It is always easier to ask for use of "Apache Something", compared to "sf.net/projects/foo", or "bar.codehaus.org".

While we are at it: How about moving the Maven issue tracker to issues.apache.org, where it belongs?

A cobbler should stick to his last.

Yesterday I felt really sick and decided to stay in bed. It turned out to be an excellent idea and I could really use some hours of additional sleep below two blankets. (Initially, I had three, but when Hobbesy joined me, she demanded her usual underlay.)

Inevitably, after some hours I felt much better and started to get bored. So I picked up the Digital Fortress by Dan Brown and started to read. I quite liked his previous books. I understand that a novel author has got a poetic license and didn't mind when I found him using his before.

This wasn't the case in the digital fortress. It may be that he was covering an area of my expertise, but my impression is that he simply understands much more of history (Angels & Demons, and the Da Vinci Code), or natural science (Deception Point) than of computer science and mathematics. In fact, the reading was amusing at best. The idea that you can catch the exponential powers of a "million bit key" by a linear increased number of CPU's. The impression that a firewall can be "weakened" by consecutive attacks like a true wall. But the best one was most possibly the "X Eleven transport protocol".

Well, I hope that Mr. Brown returns to his last when the Solomon Key is published. :-)