Someone rightly asks if the jfor project is dead. No releases, no answers on the mailing lists, nothing happening.

The answer is easy if you consider that the community is more important than the code (citing Stefano Mazzochi from the top of my head): currently there's no jfor community.

In the last few months, I've been answering most or all messages on the jfor mailing lists. Either the few subscribers that are there don't read the lists anymore, or they don't care, or I'm too quick (not).

Developer's contributions have also been very thin, also because being the sole more-or-less active committer makes it hard for me to integrate them quickly. The lack of need for jfor improvements (no itch to scratch) in my current business also worsens the situation, and it might be similar for other people: although very limited, jfor is good enough for many uses. It is too good and too bad at the same time, I guess.

Stefano is right. No community, no project.

So if anyone's interested in becoming famous (not) in Open-Source, new committers for jfor would be welcome. There's also the integration with FOP which has not happened yet, for similar reasons.

And if you need something that jfor doesn't provide: show me how good you are at coding, and nag me to become a committer. You might become famous one day ;-)

So, is jfor dead? Maybe. It depends on whether the jfor community is alive, and I'm not ready to be a community of one.

Update (2003-12-04): The recent nomination of Peter Herweg as a FOP committer is good news. Thanks to Peter the integration of the jfor code into FOP has made good progress already, and being a committer will make it easier for him to go forward.