Is aptana discontinuing Jaxer?

[gauravchandra]

Hi,

I don't know whether this is the right forum to ask this type of question but here goes - Is Aptana discontinuing Jaxer?

The reason I ask this question is that I recently found that Aptana does not list a direct link to Jaxer on home page, in the top navigation or drop down of Develop link. To navigate to Jaxer page, I have to click the Support link > Jaxer > About Jaxer.

Earlier I used to navigate to the Jaxer page from the drop downs easily. Now I have to search for a link to Jaxer page.

Please don't tell me Aptana is discontinuing Jaxer . Please put the link back to my favourite technology in the navigation.

Gaurav

[tangent]

I, too, am getting a little antsy, now that Firefox 3.5 is out. I thought a stable release of FF with the new JS interpreter was all that was holding off on a new version of Jaxer. I didn't expect a new Jaxer version the day after FF 3.5 came out, but I also didn't expect crickets.

I am presently sitting on a finished Jaxer-based site, afraid to publicize it for fear it will be swamped by load. A new release of Jaxer with a smaller memory and CPU footprint would ease my mind greatly.

[gauravchandra]

Hmmm! Their silence on this is making me jittery!

Hey Aptana guys please clear our confusion please.

[gauravchandra]

Aslo, check this page http://www.aptana.com/cloud and look for the platforms supported - php and rails only !!!!

AND this is their text on development servers heading - "Save time and avoid differences in server configurations for you and your team by using the PHP and Ruby on Rails environments in Aptana Cloud right from the start to develop your apps." No mention of Jaxer.

Earlier they listed Jaxer, php, rails and java also. Man there is something fishy.

[tangent]

Jaxer is also not mentioned in their $8 million funding event press release.

I did some research into alternatives, and am not super-happy with what I find. I like the way CouchDB is done, but it'd be a near-100% rewrite of my app. Ejscript also looks nice, but I haven't studied it enough to know how big a deal it would be to port my app. Helma seems popular, but I just hate the whole Java stack. Everything else I can find seems either inappropriate for my sort of application, or isn't yet developed to the state where I can make use of it yet.

If they're really going to discontinue it, I hope they pass it to Mozilla.org, rather than just let it die or hope for someone to fork it.

[nlsmith]

I did some research into alternatives, and am not super-happy with what I find. I like the way CouchDB is done, but it'd be a near-100% rewrite of my app. Ejscript also looks nice, but I haven't studied it enough to know how big a deal it would be to port my app.

Jack (http://jackjs.org) looks promising; perhaps something built on top of it would be good. In fact, I've been working on porting Narwhal to Jaxer, but that might have some problems if Jaxer stagnates.

Helma seems popular, but I just hate the whole Java stack.

Why's that? Have you tried Persevere (http://persvr.org/) or Helma NG (http://dev.helma.org/ng/)?

Joyent might be able to take over where Aptana Cloud and AppJet fell short with their Smart Platform, though it's brand new and I haven't tried it. It is based on SpiderMonkey.

You might also want to ask around on the ServerJS Google Group for suggestions.

Nathan

[gauravchandra]

Atleast somebody from Aptana replied. Nathan atleast you tell us whether Aptana is continuing with Jaxer or not? I saw the alternatives but I find Jaxer to be better than them.

Is or is not Aptana discontinuing Jaxer? I don't want to start making commercial applications to find later that there is no support or the technology does not exist. Jaxer is by far the best server side javascript solution. But should I rely on Aptana for it?

[vanilla]

He isn't from Aptana, he is just a community member that got awarded with a "team" status due to his value to the Aptana community.

I see no reason why they would discontinue Jaxer, They bought Jaxer.com they created a JavaScript framework for it and build the amazing Jaxer platform, you must be nuts if you discontinue this.. It would also make the whole Aptana cloud completely useless.. What would aptana cloud be with out Jaxer? It would just just "another" web hosting that is just integrated with Aptana.

Because it's not mentioned in the press release it doesn't mean Aptana would be discontinuing the support / product.. It doesn't mention pydev either etc

So personally I wouldn't be to worried about this..

[nlsmith]

So personally I wouldn't be to worried about this..

Agreed. Even if Aptana stops support for and development on Jaxer, it's an open source project so others in the community could keep it alive as long as there is interest. I'm certainly interested, as Jaxer is a great JS platform.

Nathan

[tangent]

I just hate the whole Java stack.

Why's that?

"Hate" is overly strong. More correct is to say that it's not my mostest favoritest technology. It's not enough to make me not use something if there's nothing else better -- I do use Aptana Studio, for instance -- but when I have choices, it's enough all by itself to move a technology onto the B list.

They bought Jaxer.com

Domain registration costs $8 a year. Even if they had to buy it away from a squatter, it was probably a trivial expense.

they created a JavaScript framework for it and build the amazing Jaxer platform

No question, Aptana have put a lot of effort into this project, but a smart businessman knows when to cut his losses. If Jaxer isn't paying off as well as Aptana's other bets, it's more worthwhile for them to pay attention to those other things.

This wouldn't be the first promising technology to get canned before it had a chance to really take off. Even with $8 million in the bank, Aptana can't play the Microsoft game, just hammering at it with their billions until they finally start to make something decent.

Because it's not mentioned in the press release it doesn't mean Aptana would be discontinuing the support / product..

A single data point has no predictive power. But we have many data points, which seem to describe a very clear predictive function.

[pcolton]

First of all, I apologize for the delay in responding.

With our recent funding closed, it has given us a chance to look closely at everything we're doing and make sure that we stay very focused on the things that developers, our customers, want most (and of course keep the company going).

We have spent a tremendous amount of money, energy, and effort on Jaxer, and we're not about to kill it. What we are doing, however, is embracing the community even more. Even though Jaxer is an open source project, Aptana has been the only developer. We are in the process of setting up jaxer.org (not live yet) and asking the community to join in on the development (and other) efforts.

I'll make an announcement here when it is live, stay tuned.

Thanks,
Paul Colton

[tangent]

Thanks for replying, Paul. Much of the problem here comes down to an information vacuum, so this helps a lot.

As someone who runs an open source project and who has been using F/OSS programs for a few decades, I have to wonder if kicking Jaxer out of the nest to see if it will fly on its own might be a little premature.

Jaxer seems like a pretty big project to keep running, what with the frequent changes to the underlying Mozilla platform, and what all still has to be done. Even on developer-focused software, the ratio of users to contributors is very high, like 1000:1. And among contributors, the ratio of occasional patch providers to active developers is like another 10^N fold difference. (Hard numbers can be found in Producing Open Source Software, for one.)

Compare something like GCC, where the user base is in the millions, so you can still expect dozens of frequent contributors even with tiny ratios of heavy contributors to everyone else.

I'd be surprised if the number of Jaxer users is high enough to to expect even one external full-time developer. If that's right, the best you can expect is lots of small patches. Aptana would still have to shoulder the bulk of the load, else it's as good as killing it.

[gauravchandra]

Thank you Paul for replying. It really helped me in stop getting worried. I am glad that Aptana is not going to discontinue Jaxer. Now I can happily work on the projects using Jaxer.