Changes for DWR

This is very good news for DWR and for Ajax on Java.

The short version is that DWR is now part of the Dojo Foundation and that I now work for SitePen. This means that I'll be working nearly full-time on DWR rather than spending part of my time stuck in a big enterprise with Word as my IDE churning out technical architecture documents.

There are a whole bunch of questions that I just know I'm going to get asked:

Does this mean that DWR is going to become part of Dojo?

No. DWR will remain totally independent. There are some bits that I'd quite like to steal (JS compression for example) but you won't need to use Dojo if you want to use DWR or the other way around.

What's going to happen to Getahead and the DWR website?

For some time you've been able to visit www.directwebremoting.org and get redirected to the DWR website. We'll be moving the DWR website over to Dojo Foundation infrastructure and making use of the new domain at the same time. I'll be keeping my blog at Getahead for now at least. Consulting deals that Getahead would have done in the past will now be done by SitePen.

Who are SitePen?

SitePen employ a bunch of cool hackers: Alex Russell and Dylan Schiemann and many other Dojo people, Kevin Dangoor (Turbo Gears), and many more. They offer support packages for Dojo and now DWR, but also develop complete solutions.

What's happened to the TIBCO deal?

It's not gone away. I'll still be working to enhance DWR's Reverse Ajax proxy APIs, which from the next version of DWR particularly should aid DWR/GI integration.

Kevin Hakman from TIBCO is quoted on the official press release:

"Development teams, both small and large, have quickly discovered the benefits of using DWR in conjunction with leading Ajax libraries like Dojo, TIBCO General Interface, Scriptaculous, and others. DWR joining the Dojo Foundation is a great win for the DWR community," said Kevin Hakman, director, TIBCO Software, Inc. who has been a corporate sponsor of DWR's development for more than a year. "The close alignment of these projects, and the anticipated integration points between them, will serve to further simplify creating Ajax applications for Java developers."