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On The Edge! -NEW-
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Hello All-

    To those of you who either don't know me, or don't care, feel free 
to hit DEL now; for those of you who get past that initial warning, 
thanks   I wanted to announce a fairly significant career change for me. 
While this is typically something kept to personal email, the nature of 
the company I am starting with, as well as my role, made me think 
posting to some significant lists (cocoon-users, cocoon-dev, 
jdom-interest) was appropriate. For anyone who I upset or offend, please 
forgive me - and to anyone who replies (which is welcome!), please 
//please// don't hit "Reply All" on your mail client... please... OK   
This is a one-time deal, let's not increase noise anymore on the mailing 
lists. Of course those of you on the Enhydra lists can't make me go away   

   So I've been doing what most of you have been doing for several years 
now - working a decent, albeit sometimes boring, job for 50 hours a 
week, and then coming home and staying up until dawn working on open 
source projects like Cocoon (http://xml.apache.org/cocoon 
<"http://xml.apache.org/cocoon";>), JDOM (http://www.jdom.org 
<"http://www.jdom.org";>), Turbine (which I co-founded with Jon Stevens 
at http://java.apache.org/turbine <"http://java.apache.org/turbine";>), 
JBoss, JOnAS, and most recently Enhydra. That works for a while, until 
your wife starts to catch on that maybe you're a little too busy for 
that big vacation, and you stay in front of the computer staring at it 
so long that your dogs think you're a fire hydrant (not good...). I've 
also been fortunate enough to write "Java and XML" for O'Reilly and 
Associates (coming out at JavaOne - 
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/javaxml 
<"http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/javaxml";>). But I'm tired, and getting 
close to burn-out. Fortunately, this is the point where Lutris 
Technologies, the sponsor of Enhydra (http://www.enhydra.org 
<"http://www.enhydra.org";>) came along in my life. Over the last month 
or so, I've been talking with some really great folks at Lutris 
Technologies, and have just accepted a full-time position at the 
company, as "Enhydra Strategist." And I've never been more excited   

    I won't market Lutris here - that's not my job there anyway   I will 
simply say that Lutris is not only the founder and supporter of Enhydra, 
a completely open source application server (soon to be J2EE 
compliant... drool...), they really "get" open source. They frequent the 
lists, they have contacted me about items like JDOM, and have really 
convinced me that they aren't in open source primarily for any status or 
financial gain, but because they understand it is //THE// revolution of 
the Internet age, and want to be a part of that - in fact, support and 
guide it in any way they can. To that end, they hired me   as well as an 
existing group of really sharp guys.  

   My role is what I think is relevant - as "Enhydra Strategist" I am 
charged with the rather hefty task of being a visionary (one of many at 
the company, really!), and guiding the Enhydra app. server into the 
newest in standards, programming paradigms, and technologies. All those 
questions about Enhydra and Cocoon fitting together? We (yup, you, me, 
and Lutris) have the ability to clarify and answer those questions. 
Cocoon at some point needs an EJB container, and wants to get help 
meeting them in the middle? I can help! JDOM wants to make its way into 
production systems, like XMLC? This is the place. What I'm trying to 
emphasize is that this is a unique position, in that cooperation between 
the various open source communities can result in something I feel is 
not yet possible - complete, distributed, mission-critical systems in 
Java, in completely specification-compliant ways. EJB servers and 
containers, JMS, JNDI, XML, XSL, and the list goes on - I want to 
emphasize that Lutris, Enhydra, and myself are committed to this, not 
from a "brand it as Lutris" point of view, but as a "let's do some cool 
stuff(tm)" point of view. From the Enhydra side, I'm involved with the 
tough questions like "Is the whole greater than the parts" (a subject 
from the Enterprise mailing list many of you have been following), and 
"can I use XSL with XMLC for multiple presentations?" I'll be working 
directly with Mark and Wayne, the two engineering leads (on XMLC and 
Enhydra Enterprise, respectively) to try to solve your problems, and 
meet your specific needs in an even more responsive manner.

    Additionally (as if that isn't enough!), Lutris has set aside one 
day a week for my writing. While the "Java and XML" book is complete, 
that's just the beginning. I'll be hosting an "Expert's Corner" on the 
enhydra.org site which you'll see soon, showing off some cool tricks, 
and answering the tough questions that keep me up at night (cheerfully!) 
- this isn't "me, the expert", but rather a place for "experts" to see 
some neat solutions to tough problems. I'll also be working on my 2nd 
book that O'Reilly is publishing, tentatively called "Enterprise 
Applications in Java." Guess what that's about   Seriously, this will 
cover using J2EE in distributed systems, in a very honest way (don't 
like JSP? You may really like my book   ). It will look at JMS, XML for 
communication, presentation, and meta-data, EJB, JSP, XSL, XMLC, and a 
host of other technologies. I'm sure Enhydra will show up more than once 
or twice   After that? Well, there are some plans for yet another book, 
and this may be what so many of you on the Enhydra lists are waiting 
for... stay tuned <wink />

    So that's the gist of it - as of today, I'm working full-time on not 
just Enhydra, but open source - on providing a stable, incredibly useful 
and intuitive platform for application development. It will be 
extensible, and pluggable - in other words, if you want to use Cocoon, 
great! We'll help. You want to use JDOM, SAX, and DOM all together? 
Great. We'll help. You have some crazy idea for using XSP and EJB in a 
new and interesting way, and you're looking for that application server 
to help? You've come to the right place. I hope you'll all take 
advantage of using me as a sounding board, as a communication channel to 
the very top of the Lutris chain (I'm pesky, and persistent!), or just 
want some good discussion on open source and what it all means - don't 
hesitate to drop me an email. Until I hear from you personally, I'll be 
showing up on the various mail lists, keeping patches and suggestions 
coming even faster than in the past, and trying to build an incredible 
revolution with open source software, Java, and XML. Hope to hear from 
you soon.

   And finally, thanks for your patience, and not being upset at this 
rather off-topic posting to the mailing lists.

--
Brett McLaughlin, Enhydra Strategist
Lutris Technologies, Inc. 
1200 Pacific Avenue, Suite 300 
Santa Cruz, CA 95060 USA 
http://www.lutris.com
http://www.enhydra.org