[jsword-devel] Future Direction for BibleDesktop

[Adam Thomas]

Hi all,

Recently I began thinking about the current state of BibleDesktop, its 
community, and the vision held by the leaders of the project. I want to 
contribute more to the project but find myself struggling to sacrifice 
the time on a project that seems to be unknown to the masses and have 
outdated goals. As a result a few questions came to mind that I would 
like to pose to the project's community members.

BibleDesktop appears to be THE reference implementation for JSword to 
both act as a functioning application and a JSword API testing sandbox. 
I think thats great and it makes complete sense to do that, however I am 
saddened to see the mission statement and roadmap "vision statements" 
fall behind. Maybe the website isn't getting updated to reflect the 
latest goals or vision? I simply would like some clarification on 
whether BibleDesktop is going to be moving forward any time soon.

The Future Direction page has statements such as "Able to use any 1.4.2 
Java runtime, with GJC being a specific target". Really, even with the 
release of OpenJDK and newer Open Source platforms that are supported on 
Mac, you still want to mess with GJC?

I also understand the current or old reasons for using JDK 1.4.x, but 
especially since Sun has moved that version into its effective 
end-of-life phase wouldn't it be wise to attempt migration? Sun made me 
register on their site simply because I was attempting to download an 
outdated JDK. I think they made me register so they could track how many 
people are still actively using the outdated JDK. Regardless of their 
reason, do we really want to be hanging on to that platform? I'm not 
advocating bleeding-edge, or even leading-edge, simply somewhat current 
would be nice and still allow the maximum number of users to take 
advantage of BibleDesktop.

I am also very saddened that BibleDesktop does not appear in the 
repositories for Linux distros like Ubuntu by default. Last time I 
checked there wasn't a .deb package for BibleDesktop. GnomeSword and 
BibleTime both steal the show for users who don't realize that 
BibleDesktop is out there as an alternative. I'm not saying we are in a 
competition, but simply saying wouldn't it be nice to allow users to use 
our product? They can't use it if they don't see it in the repository 
listing.

I am not expressing these concerns in anger, but rather trying to "feel" 
the community for their perspective and visions for this project. I 
would really like to rekindle my interest in developing for this 
project, but currently can't get the motivation since to me it feels 
like the BibleDesktop application is growing stagnant. I realize many of 
the decisions were made in an effort to reach users running old machines 
on a variety of platforms, but who says we have to throw away what we've 
already built?

Maybe I am totally out of place saying this and nobody else agrees with 
me? Maybe I should go off and start my own project that meets my vision? 
However, I would really like to contribute to THIS project since you 
guys have already done so much great work and I don't think that 
building a new car is the solution when an oil change and tire rotation 
is all that is required.

Let's make BibleDesktop a well known reference implementation and 
further more let's make it a well known application to end users! I'll 
certainly help, but it won't work if I am the only one with this vision.

Warm Regards,
Adam Thomas