Creating A Commons For Web Components

Preamble

Jakarta Commons works (surprisingly) well as a space to develop small, independent bricks. Web application developers have need of similar components which are not general libraries but coupled tightly to the needs of their environment.

For example:

• Filters
• Session, Request and Response utilities
• Servlets
• Taglibs
• Browser recognition
• File upload
  

These would be compact libraries coupled only with their environment and not to any particular web application development framework. Small, tightly focussed components with minimal dependencies would be favoured.

Jakarta Commons is not the right place to develop these kinds of component but a new subproject similar in style and substance to Jakarta Commons would fill the need well.

Development Required

A Jakarta Sub Project needs a name and a charter together with some guildlines. It also needs a community of developers. Apache projects are community lead and it's appropriate that the community helps to develop the name, charter and guidelines.

• DraftCharterForWebComponentCommons
  

Name

Ideas (alphabetic, feel free to add):

• Commons Web
• Jakarta Web Parts for Java (JWP4J) (Note: potential conflict with Sun as well as 'Java Web Parts' sf.net project)
• Web App Commons
• Web App Components
• Web App Modules
• Web Bricks
• Web Commons
• Web Components
• Web Libs
• Web Parts (Note: potential conflict with Sun as well as 'Java Web Parts' sf.net project)
• Web Tools
• Weblets
• Web Artifacts
  • League
  • Confederation
  • Bloc - "The Web Bloc"
• What about something less definite and more "code word"? What about not having the word "web"? "Arctic" or "Telsa" or something completely meaningless but catchier than "Web .*$"
• Apache Silk (silk is what webs are made from)
  • Since this is looking like the likely choice in our currently ongoing vote, I'd like to fill in a bit of history for the name. We get asked all the time where Tomcat, Struts, and other project names came from. I (Yoav) suggested "Apache Spider Web" for this project because I thought the other names were too normal, too corporate, and a bit boring. Noel thought Spider Web was a bit ominous and had negative connotations, but that idea inspired his Silk suggestion, which everyone (including me) loves. There, now we actually have a documented history for how a project got its name before the project is popular
    

This will probably need to be settled on the list. WebCommonsNameRequestForComments (create as needed).