Hi all,

I'll comment on a few snippets of what Stefano said, apart from that I tend to agree with most of what's been said by others.

Le 30 sept. 05, à 23:57, Stefano Mazzocchi a écrit :

Do we have to choose one option or the other? I prefer to stay silent on that one ;-)

For me Cocoon today is:

- An übercool integration platform: combine widely varying data sources easily and safely while keeping your code and system structure clean.

- A great help in structuring and implementing complex apps which include some form of web interaction (but the web part might not be the most important).

- The best tool that I know today to build long-lived systems, which might are meant to be actively developed for years and as such need a very clean, modular and open structure to be maintained at a reasonable cost and stay manageable.

- A collection of components written and assembled by some of the brightest programmers around, and it shows, although as with all bazaar developments finding your way is not always easy.

- A framework to build powerful tools: Forrest, Lenya, Daisy...

These things have little to do with what client technology is used, of course the most evident way is to use Cocoon to present traditional web pages, but that's only one option.

This is good to know and might help Mozilla gain more importance as a client-side platform.

If this happens (and if it does not other client-side technologies will have the same effect), it might diminish the importance of Cocoon in our projects, and make *some parts* of Cocoon obsolete. That's fine, things evolve in our world.

This is slowly happening, but the machinery that you're speaking about is not the most important thing in Cocoon, it's just part of it.

From a researcher's point of view I fully agree - the mystery of Cocoon is gone, and it's good for those of us who are implementing applications or systems based on Cocoon.

IMHO, in the last few years Cocoon has moved from "interesting and mysterious research project" to "solid and mature (web) applications platform" with the (web) in parentheses on purpose.

For many of us I think we're not so much excited about new things anymore, we're "just" using Cocoon to build exciting new things, from a practical and business point of view. And I think this includes many more people than are visible on our mailing lists, as many companies tend to be secretive about the kind of strategic projects where Cocoon is used.

So, obsolete certainly not.

But the modularity is so good that Cocoon is in a state of flux while being used to build solid and durable systems.

For me that's where Cocoon is today: more mature, slightly less exciting, but more capable than ever. We "just" have to stay on our toes to keep it fit.

-Bertrand