Live data from Hacker News

Retiring Wave

git-wip-us.apache.org

71–80 of 98 posts

Re: Retiring Wave

#71
post #64
post #15

I remember the headlines about Google reinventing email with Wave, the world without emails.. I guess it will never die, long live the emails :p.

For the below-25 crowd email is quite dead : they only read it when asked via proper chat or “social” channels, and send one as last resort. For the older gen email is near dead due to spam. In few years it will be new telefax.

I don't see that, only if you're talking to a kid maybe. But everyone still has emails, I think WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger did gain space on communications taking space from email in daily usage but email still has its space, ask anyone if they have email.

Re: Retiring Wave

#73
post #67
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the below-25 crowd email is quite dead : they only read it when asked via proper chat or “social” channels, and send one as last resort. For the older gen email is near dead due to spam. In few years it will be new telefax.

People have been claiming that email is dying since the mid-90s. And here we are, with the only messaging protocol that's available to everyone on the internet: email.

I believe you can take space from email like these messenger apps for the mobile phone but to say that's dead or going to die I think it's a mistake to make this type of statement. Try to enroll in these social media networks without an email, they require you to have an email, try to enrol anywhere they ask you for an email confirmation. Email is not dying it's just changing the purpose.

Re: Retiring Wave

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Wave could have been a killer product, but for a key mistake that is a bat light for failure — it was positioned as a replacement for email. Email is the ultimate killer app and ultimate whipping boy.

The “key mistake” was that all of the technical parts were poorly architected and horribly buggy, and then they tried to scale up the user base using a massive amount of marketing hype before their product or infrastructure could handle the load. As a result all the hyped-up customers were confronted by a terrible user experience, felt burned, and left. Without a completely different technical implementation from top…

The operational transforms were integeated into Google Docs later for multi-person editing (the Wave team was merged into Google Docs), and it works quite well.

Re: Retiring Wave

#75

Will never forget the launch event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ

I remember it for the amount of demos that went wrong. It takes courage or desperation to demonstrate a project in that state.

Also, somewhere in there is a quote by the project lead that I still remember today, something like this: "There aren't many companies that can afford to mess up a demo. [pause] We're not one of them." The last part sounded like a panicked attempt to backpedal on what he just said.

Re: Retiring Wave

#76
Why don't apache update web interface. It's just not fun anymore, I get all retrograde feel to it, but in 2018 it's plain annoyingly ugly and hard to understand what's going on on the page.

Re: Retiring Wave

#77
post #41
post #9

While the Apache Foundation hosts a lot of great projects, it also looks to me like a place where big projects go to die. I'm thinking of the whole Apache Open-Office fiasco, among other things. Looking at their list of projects sorted by number of committers[0], event at the top I don't get the idea that most of those have a lot of momentum. Do I just have a completely wrong impression? I'm curious if there's someth…

> Do I just have a completely wrong impression? You have a completely wrong impression. Projects in the wild die all the time, and the process is not necessarily neat and tidy. At the ASF, projects must be actively retired, and there are a sequence of actions which must be taken to move the project into the "Attic". Retirement gives all stakeholders a defined close of business. All software projects have a life cycle…

Everything you said there supports the parents notion that ASF is where big projects go to die. You just called it retirement.

Re: Retiring Wave

#78
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, no, your impression is correct. Apache is and always has been a bit of an open source graveyard. There's counter-examples but even they have me worried. Airflow, originating from AirBNB, is now Apache Airflow: https://github.com/apache/incubator-airflow -- And I've been super hesitant to throw weight at it because of that, even though it looks actively maintained.

What you are seeing as "dying" is actually "widespread adoption and maturity", only you've moved on because you're "latest and greatest." Nothing wrong with that, but doesn't mean anything has died. Only your interest has.

So Wave, say, is now a mature and widely adopted product?

Re: Retiring Wave

#79
post #23

Google Wave was really the spark that inspired me to "build a startup." With that said, it was a mess. It was a schizophrenic product that couldn't decide whether it was a developer platform or replacement for email. It had "everything" in the worst of ways. It really was a Frankenstein; I distinctly remember threaded conversations that wouldn't collapse, weird and inconsistent results when contributing to the same "…

Google Wave could have been a killer product, but for a key mistake that is a bat light for failure — it was positioned as a replacement for email. Email is the ultimate killer app and ultimate whipping boy.

>Google Wave could have been a killer product, but for a key mistake that is a bat light for failure — it was positioned as a replacement for email.

So, the same reason Slack is now failing miserably I guess?

Re: Retiring Wave

#80
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Wave could have been a killer product, but for a key mistake that is a bat light for failure — it was positioned as a replacement for email. Email is the ultimate killer app and ultimate whipping boy.

>Google Wave could have been a killer product, but for a key mistake that is a bat light for failure — it was positioned as a replacement for email. So, the same reason Slack is now failing miserably I guess?

Positioned is the operative word here. Slack isn't positioned as a replacement for email. It might become that, it might even already be that to some, but nobody is buying a Slack subscription as part of a plan to turn off the Exchange server.
Post reply on HN