From: Craig Randall
Sent: 5/30/2007 7:45:19 PM
Newsgroups: jetbrains.omniamea.eap, jetbrains.omea.reader, jetbrains.omea.pro, jetbrains.omea.dev
Subject: When will the source finally become open for Omea?Omea Team-
Many months ago Jetbrains announced that Omea was going open source. However, to date the source is still entirely closed. There has been very little explanation about the lack of follow-through (timely or otherwise) concerning progress (or challenges) in achieving the publicly announced goal of making Omea an open source project.
When you read through a significant number of posts since the Omea announcement, it’s obvious that the Omea community is loyal. But all loyalty has its limits, and I fear that Jetbrains is pushing this community to the point of writing off the announcement as vaporous. That is really unfortunate and completely unnecessary. From my correspondence separately with you, I know that there is still passion around Omea (i.e. the core dev’s at Jetbrains).
So, what say you? Can you give your long-suffering community a definitive answer about when you will finally make Omea fully open source?
-Craig
It’s also been almost six months since version 2.2 was released. So regardless of the critical environment around open sourcing your product, you need to convince your community that, regardless of open/closed, Omea is alive and well, receiving its due care and feeding one way or another.
You made Omea free (as in free beer); now, please liberate Omea.
Sincerely, your languishing advocate…
Update 3/14/2008: JetBrains has finally released Omea under GPL v2, and the community can participate in its ongoing development (!!). More in a separate post…
17 responses so far ↓
1 Jeff Loftus // May 31, 2007 at 3:10 pm
A few weeks ago I posted a topic in the Omea Pro forum regarding JetBrains’ lack of communication to the user community. Nobody from JetBrains ever responded. As you mentioned, it’s been six months since an official release, and almost three since the last EAP (Early Access Program) release.
Clearly, JetBrains has little concern for the time and energies Omea users have invested in this product. As evidenced by JetBrains [evident] willingness to release the product’s source to the wild, the company has no intention of marketing it for profit, and as such, they’ve apparently no interest in or motivation for supporting Omea.
This should make it all the more important that the developers who have invested THEIR time in the product do whatever possible to release the source, so the application survives the ever evolving needs of the users.
Thanks, Craig, for voicing this issue yet again … hopefully someone from JB will hear our pleas.
Jeff
2 Craig Randall // May 31, 2007 at 3:28 pm
According to Michael Gerasimov, the main outstanding issue is licensing. At least that was the sticking point when he last replied to me via email back on 2/2/2007. Certainly it’s important to get the license right, but I don’t see how this needs to consume almost four months (from that email)–let alone the amount of time since late last fall when my email thread with Michael and David Booth at JetBrains began.
I wonder what Omea’s creator, Dmitry Jemerov, thinks. After all, Jetbrains acquired his “Syndirella” software, but Dmitry has been working on IntelliJ for some time now…
3 Barry // Jun 12, 2007 at 9:26 am
Put me down as one of the folks extremely disappointed in what has happened to this innovative and promising product. I wrote a post a while back called “Curse you, Jetbrains” in a sort of tongue-in-cheek to express how upset I was as a user and customer that Omea’s development ground to a halt.
Knowing that there are talented developers waiting impatiently for it to be open-sourced, makes the inaction even more painful. There was so much promise in the product.
I’ve stopped trying to find the perfect “all in one” product an am using a combination of services from Google and 37 Signals now. None of it has the potential that Omea had to help me pull together and manage all the information objecets I have to deal with on a constant basis.
4 Jeff Loftus // Jul 3, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Well, *sigh*, <shrug/>, and other such one-word commentaries we’ve come to associate with resignation.
I mean really, wtf, it’s been just about four months now since the last build, and no indication from JetBrains that anyone really cares.
Ordinarily, I’d just <shrug/>, and *poof*, be off with it. However, as to me Omea is so indispensable and haven’t found anything else that quite does what it does, I just can’t let this go.
Quite infuriating it is.
5 MikeW // Jul 4, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Hi Craig,
Thanks for the reminder today. A seriously great application but with dreadful performance with a rather full DB.
My first wish is for someone to spend a day running a code profiler on it, adding whatever indexes that need to be added and fix whatever code is behaving so badly.
That’s my wish regardless of open source or not!
Michael Walsh
6 Jeff Loftus // Aug 4, 2007 at 5:01 pm
OK, so yet another month comes and goes.
I’m flustered enough to go run to a competing product, but there just aren’t any that fill the bill.
I can understand there are licensing woes to overcome, but in the meanwhile, why can’t they just give us a build? I mean really.
7 Craig Randall // Aug 4, 2007 at 8:23 pm
It’s truly sad, indeed! No new build… What’s worse is the form sent by JetBrains to some of us separately via email back on 7/9/2007 has nothing to do with open source. It continues to emphasize a closed system, under the lock and key of the entity that has done extremely little with the software for quite some time. So, even after submitting the paperwork, you have no build, Jeff? To be honest, that’s why I refused to sign and return it. It simply added insult to injury.
8 Jeff Loftus // Aug 5, 2007 at 2:38 am
Right, NDA signed and returned three weeks ago, and not a word from JetBrains.
9 Jeff Loftus // Aug 10, 2007 at 10:18 am
Well, through a little tooth-pulling, Craig, you managed to get some nominal comments from Dmitry regarding Omea’s open-sourcing.
This is a positive step, but frustrating still that this information was not offered to the community unsolicited, but rather extracted from the context of some unrelated thread.
A step nonetheless.
10 Craig Randall // Aug 11, 2007 at 7:36 am
True. For the (more public) record, here is Dmitry’s reply and mine to his:
>
> Hello Craig,
>
> Up until a few weeks ago, the main thing holding the
> open-source release was the lack of decision from the
> upper management on which exactly license Omea will
> be released under. Now the decision has been finalized,
> and right now we’re mainly waiting for Michael
> Gerasimov to return from vacation before taking the
> next steps in the open-sourcing process.
>
> Note that, although I’ve indeed been a project lead
> of Omea for a long time, right now my involvement with
> Omea is very limited, and not part of my day job.
>
Hello Dmitry,
Thanks for your reply. Could you please share *what* license has been selected for Omea open source? Do you know if Omea code will be offered, for example, as a SourceForge project or be project from the JetBrains site?
I realize that you’ve been working more on IntelliJ for awhile now, but knowing the background of Omea (aka OmniaMea, aka Syndirella) and your role in that, I’m glad that you confirmed a continuing interest in Omea’s success and usage.
Regards,
-Craig
11 Craig Randall // Aug 11, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Dmitry’s (refreshingly responsive!) reply (via Omea newsgroups):
Hopefully there will be an ETA provided regarding this “official” announcment–ideally online and in the Omea newsgroups.
12 Jeff Loftus // Sep 11, 2007 at 4:53 am
And *poof*, another month goes by without so much as a peep from JetBrains.
13 Jeff Loftus // Oct 30, 2007 at 11:35 am
I’ve been aggressively looking for some alternative product. I’ve had enough of the rhetoric and disrespect.
If you should find any app worth compare, please do let me know.
Thanks
Jeff
14 Craig Randall // Nov 15, 2007 at 9:53 pm
The silence is deafening and for me to continue to crane my neck to listen further, well…shame on me.
So, I’m trying to move on. Here’s my game plan:
(1) Pause all feeds in Omea to create a static database of content. _X_
(2) Import my current OPML into NetNewsWire and actively keep up with my subscription there (i.e. no longer in Omea). _X_
(3) Write an Omea plugin to export my Omea database into, say, PDF for archival, search, etc. ___
(4) Uninstall Omea and forget about it. ___
I have a bead on #3…just need to make the time to crank out the tool. Then…salvation!
Sad, but true!
15 Jeff Loftus // Jan 15, 2008 at 10:48 am
Craig, there was finally a positive comment made today by Dmitry in the Omea.Pro group.
Jeff
16 Craig Randall // Jan 15, 2008 at 7:19 pm
For the record, here is what Dmitry posted earlier today to this newsgroup:
To these comments I simply say that this is exactly why, if I were JetBrains, I would have released the product to its community sooner rather than later.
Regardless, it’s nice to know that Omea lives.
Aside: FeedDemon and NetNewsWire are now free (but not yet open source).
17 Omea is open to the community // Mar 15, 2008 at 4:20 pm
[...] took almost ten months since I posted my open letter to the Omea crew, but they have [...]