WhoWeAre - struts1 - Git at Google

 Who We Are
 ==========


 Craig R. McClanahan -- Committer
 ---------------------------------

 I've been involved with servlet and JSP technology since around 1998.  It
 started out that I needed a way to build some web applications for several
 projects, and liked Java a lot better than the alternatives.  I also liked the
 price tag of open source software, and started using Apache JServ -- later on,
 getting involved in the project (like many people, I was whining about the
 twelve months it took to get from version 0.9 to version 1.0, and my son said
 "Dad, you know Java -- go help them finish it!" -- so I did :-).

 For quite a while, I was participating a lot on the JSP-INTEREST and
 SERVLET-INTEREST mailing lists (http://archives.java.sun.com), especially on
 the topic of good architectures for web applications.  I was disgusted with the
 hash that many beginners created when they used (or abused) scriptlets in JSP
 pages, and built (for my former employer) a pretty comprehensive framework that
 could be considered ("Struts 0.01 without the custom tags").  It was
 proprietary code, but I was able to describe the concepts, and there started to
 be a feeling on the lists that this "Model 2" thing was pretty cool -- but
 there were no good examples to look at, so it was mostly hand waving types of
 discussions.

 Over the same time period, I got involved as an individual contributor in the
 Java Community Process (http://java.sun.com/jcp), and joined the expert group
 that defined the servlet 2.2 and JSP 1.1 specs.  Sun was impressed enough to
 offer me a job as the technical lead on the team within Sun (currently five
 other individuals) that works on Tomcat (http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat) --
 the architecture for Catalina, which is the servlet container part of Tomcat
 4.0, is also mine -- so I am in the really nice position of getting paid to
 work on open source software :-).  And, participate on the expert groups for
 Servlet 2.3 and JSP 1.2.  And, speak at various conferences, including
 ApacheCon and JavaOne.  And, talk to groups within Sun about using Struts and
 JSP/servlet technology.  And ... (there's some really interesting things being
 considered for the future).

 The original design of what came to be Struts has been in my head for a long
 time, since those interesting mailing list discussions, but the first version
 of the actual code was written on my laptop on a Memorial Day weekend vacation
 trip (end of May, 2000) to the Oregon coast -- in between watching the surf and
 having the house shaken by a windstorm at night.  Since then, it has gathered
 attention and popularity as we approach our first official release, and it
 delights me to see my "baby" grow up so well :-).  Of course, it is no longer
 just me -- there have been incredible numbers of good ideas from all over, and
 a peek at the TODO list for 1.1 says that even more good stuff is coming in the
 future.

 One motivation factor was Jason Hunter's article about the Problems with JSP
 < http://www.servlets.com/soapbox/problems-jsp.html >. Jason and I get along
 fine, even though we have different preferences about presentation
 technologies.  Besides being the author of a very popular book about servlets,
 with a second edition coming soon, Jason is also the representative for the
 Apache Software Foundation on the Executive Committe of the Java Community
 Process.

 Personally, I live in Portland, Oregon (even though my team at Sun is mostly in
 Cupertino, CA -- staying here was part of the job deal :-).  I like to support
 Oregon sports teams (Oregon State Beavers, Oregon Ducks, Portland Trailblazers)
 and work on cool software.

 I figured out I was getting pretty old when I realized that 2000 was the 25th
 year I had been paid to work in some aspect of software development :-).  I've
 got a son who is a full-time software developer (primarily in PHP so far, but
 I'm going to corrupt him with Java eventually :-), and a daughter in college.
 I'll happily let the other committers speak for themselves.


 Kevin Duffy -- Developer
 ------------------------

 That's a lie. Craig stole my ideas!! It was me who started Struts..who just
 took it from under my nose and finished it!

 nah..just kidding. Craig has inspired me to learn alot about servlets, jsp,
 and so on. So much so that I started my own "lite-weight" framework that is
 very similar to Struts, only no where near as robust. Mine simply has a
 controller servlet, which like Struts keeps a hashtable of action class
 instances, maps them via a .xml config file (yet another Craig idea). There
 are three differences between my small framework and Struts .5 (not sure
 about the 1.0 version..haven't followed it since .5).

 1) Auto-population of beans works with nested objects and does not require a
 "tagging" interface..therefore any javabean can be used (which is really not
 a big deal if you design them properly anyways).

 2) Action classes implement "executeCommandXXX(ActionContext context)"
 methods which return a String that the ControllerServlet uses to lookup the
 mapping then forwards to the JSP page mapped to that String. The
 ControllerServlet uses reflection with a "command" attribute to call the
 method in the action class. Therefore, if a request comes in with an
 attribute "command=Search", the action class method executeCommandSearch()
 is called.

 3) I added an XSL ControllerServlet which replaces the last part of the
 ControllerServlet (extends it). Instead of forwarding to the JSP page, it
 reads in the JSP output (via URLConnection), then applies an XSL (also
 mapped in the xml config file for now), rendering HTML output. This is all
 done automatically and the only difference is that JSP pages would create
 dynamic XML and then an XSL would be written.

 I have to thank Craig for most of what I am able to do with the MVC stuff,
 and a few others on the list who have contributed. I created my small
 framework because Struts had a big following and there were a few things I
 didn't need, as well as would liked to have seen changed. To change them
 would mean the many thousands of people using it could also be affected. I
 probably should have just modified the source ;)

 Anyways..Craig is the man! He has been a big inspiration to myself (thanks
 Craig). I only wish I could work on his team!! Hey..and I live 20 minutes
 from Cupertino too! ;) (hint hint)


 Ted Husted -- Committer
 -----------------------

 My primary interest in Struts is to put it to work writing lots of
 real-life Web applications:-) To do that effectively means having good
 documentation and code samples at my fingertips, so that's been my focus
 with the Struts product so far.

 I've been writing software for hire since 1984, but only recently jumped
 on the Java bandwagon. My initial interest was with electronic
 publishing, and started by converting my various print projects to
 electronic media. The "Information Superhighway" was still the private
 stomping ground of Universities and government agencies then. The rest
 of us had to make do with diskettes and bulletin boards.

 Between 1985 and 1994, I created and marketed several software products
 for publishing on disk, the most popular being "Dart" and "Iris". In
 1992, Dart was awarded the Digital Quill for software excellence,
 featured in PC Magazine (February 1992), and bundled with McGraw Hill's
 bookset,"Paperless Publishing" by Colin Hayes (McGraw Hill 1994). Dart
 won a second Digital Quill in 1993. Several titles that used Iris for a
 publishing system have also won awards and been widely distributed,
 including "Hermitville USA." I was also fortunate to find kindred souls
 on CompuServe and America Online, who helped me pioneer resources areas
 in 1993 and 1994 for the nascent electronic publishing industry.

 I finally cut loose on the Internet in 1995, launching Epub News, an
 electronic newspage about electronic publishing. After taking on several
 private contracts, I opened the Husted dot Com Website (www.husted.com)
 in 1996. I've drifted away from electronic books, but have noticed that
 several products are now making their way into the consumer mainstream
 -- as usual, I was twenty minutes into the future:-)

 My favorite all-time project is the Hitchhikers Guide to Science
 Fiction. This was one of my earliest hypertext projects (it started as a
 print-book idea), and I had a lot of fun bringing it forward onto the
 Web. (Now, if I only had time to bring it current and dress it up!)

 My favorite all-time client is is WXXI Public Broadcasting Council,
 where serving as the station's Webmaster. WXXI provides public
 broadcasting services for television and radio, and we are working to do
 the same online. Along with providing companion Web sites for every WXXI
 production, we stream both our AM and FM signals, in both Real and
 QuickTime, with online archives in the works. It's a long journey, but
 we've taken the first steps. I'm responsible for most of the regular
 updates to the site, and much of the overall layout and design. We're
 grateful to have won the PBS award for best Web site in our market for
 two years running.

 Our most ambitious projects at WXXI have been Spring Marketplace 2000
 and the NY Election Finder. For Spring Marketplace, we put our annual
 auction fully online for simultaneous telephone and Website bidding. On
 NY Election, we offered not only the usual election-finder application,
 but collected voter registration records from around the state, so
 people could also check their registration status and polling place. I
 developed the Web-enabled database applications for both projects.

 Currently, I'm expanding the WXXI online auction software into a
 complete package for hosting online auctions as fund-raisers; this is
 to be an open-source project called Gavel, and will, of course, rely
 heavily on Struts.

 ###
	Who We Are
	==========


	Craig R. McClanahan -- Committer
	---------------------------------

	I've been involved with servlet and JSP technology since around 1998. It
	started out that I needed a way to build some web applications for several
	projects, and liked Java a lot better than the alternatives. I also liked the
	price tag of open source software, and started using Apache JServ -- later on,
	getting involved in the project (like many people, I was whining about the
	twelve months it took to get from version 0.9 to version 1.0, and my son said
	"Dad, you know Java -- go help them finish it!" -- so I did :-).

	For quite a while, I was participating a lot on the JSP-INTEREST and
	SERVLET-INTEREST mailing lists (http://archives.java.sun.com), especially on
	the topic of good architectures for web applications. I was disgusted with the
	hash that many beginners created when they used (or abused) scriptlets in JSP
	pages, and built (for my former employer) a pretty comprehensive framework that
	could be considered ("Struts 0.01 without the custom tags"). It was
	proprietary code, but I was able to describe the concepts, and there started to
	be a feeling on the lists that this "Model 2" thing was pretty cool -- but
	there were no good examples to look at, so it was mostly hand waving types of
	discussions.

	Over the same time period, I got involved as an individual contributor in the
	Java Community Process (http://java.sun.com/jcp), and joined the expert group
	that defined the servlet 2.2 and JSP 1.1 specs. Sun was impressed enough to
	offer me a job as the technical lead on the team within Sun (currently five
	other individuals) that works on Tomcat (http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat) --
	the architecture for Catalina, which is the servlet container part of Tomcat
	4.0, is also mine -- so I am in the really nice position of getting paid to
	work on open source software :-). And, participate on the expert groups for
	Servlet 2.3 and JSP 1.2. And, speak at various conferences, including
	ApacheCon and JavaOne. And, talk to groups within Sun about using Struts and
	JSP/servlet technology. And ... (there's some really interesting things being
	considered for the future).

	The original design of what came to be Struts has been in my head for a long
	time, since those interesting mailing list discussions, but the first version
	of the actual code was written on my laptop on a Memorial Day weekend vacation
	trip (end of May, 2000) to the Oregon coast -- in between watching the surf and
	having the house shaken by a windstorm at night. Since then, it has gathered
	attention and popularity as we approach our first official release, and it
	delights me to see my "baby" grow up so well :-). Of course, it is no longer
	just me -- there have been incredible numbers of good ideas from all over, and
	a peek at the TODO list for 1.1 says that even more good stuff is coming in the
	future.

	One motivation factor was Jason Hunter's article about the Problems with JSP
	< http://www.servlets.com/soapbox/problems-jsp.html >. Jason and I get along
	fine, even though we have different preferences about presentation
	technologies. Besides being the author of a very popular book about servlets,
	with a second edition coming soon, Jason is also the representative for the
	Apache Software Foundation on the Executive Committe of the Java Community
	Process.

	Personally, I live in Portland, Oregon (even though my team at Sun is mostly in
	Cupertino, CA -- staying here was part of the job deal :-). I like to support
	Oregon sports teams (Oregon State Beavers, Oregon Ducks, Portland Trailblazers)
	and work on cool software.

	I figured out I was getting pretty old when I realized that 2000 was the 25th
	year I had been paid to work in some aspect of software development :-). I've
	got a son who is a full-time software developer (primarily in PHP so far, but
	I'm going to corrupt him with Java eventually :-), and a daughter in college.
	I'll happily let the other committers speak for themselves.



	Kevin Duffy -- Developer
	------------------------

	That's a lie. Craig stole my ideas!! It was me who started Struts..who just
	took it from under my nose and finished it!

	nah..just kidding. Craig has inspired me to learn alot about servlets, jsp,
	and so on. So much so that I started my own "lite-weight" framework that is
	very similar to Struts, only no where near as robust. Mine simply has a
	controller servlet, which like Struts keeps a hashtable of action class
	instances, maps them via a .xml config file (yet another Craig idea). There
	are three differences between my small framework and Struts .5 (not sure
	about the 1.0 version..haven't followed it since .5).

	1) Auto-population of beans works with nested objects and does not require a
	"tagging" interface..therefore any javabean can be used (which is really not
	a big deal if you design them properly anyways).

	2) Action classes implement "executeCommandXXX(ActionContext context)"
	methods which return a String that the ControllerServlet uses to lookup the
	mapping then forwards to the JSP page mapped to that String. The
	ControllerServlet uses reflection with a "command" attribute to call the
	method in the action class. Therefore, if a request comes in with an
	attribute "command=Search", the action class method executeCommandSearch()
	is called.

	3) I added an XSL ControllerServlet which replaces the last part of the
	ControllerServlet (extends it). Instead of forwarding to the JSP page, it
	reads in the JSP output (via URLConnection), then applies an XSL (also
	mapped in the xml config file for now), rendering HTML output. This is all
	done automatically and the only difference is that JSP pages would create
	dynamic XML and then an XSL would be written.

	I have to thank Craig for most of what I am able to do with the MVC stuff,
	and a few others on the list who have contributed. I created my small
	framework because Struts had a big following and there were a few things I
	didn't need, as well as would liked to have seen changed. To change them
	would mean the many thousands of people using it could also be affected. I
	probably should have just modified the source ;)

	Anyways..Craig is the man! He has been a big inspiration to myself (thanks
	Craig). I only wish I could work on his team!! Hey..and I live 20 minutes
	from Cupertino too! ;) (hint hint)



	Ted Husted -- Committer
	-----------------------

	My primary interest in Struts is to put it to work writing lots of
	real-life Web applications:-) To do that effectively means having good
	documentation and code samples at my fingertips, so that's been my focus
	with the Struts product so far.

	I've been writing software for hire since 1984, but only recently jumped
	on the Java bandwagon. My initial interest was with electronic
	publishing, and started by converting my various print projects to
	electronic media. The "Information Superhighway" was still the private
	stomping ground of Universities and government agencies then. The rest
	of us had to make do with diskettes and bulletin boards.

	Between 1985 and 1994, I created and marketed several software products
	for publishing on disk, the most popular being "Dart" and "Iris". In
	1992, Dart was awarded the Digital Quill for software excellence,
	featured in PC Magazine (February 1992), and bundled with McGraw Hill's
	bookset,"Paperless Publishing" by Colin Hayes (McGraw Hill 1994). Dart
	won a second Digital Quill in 1993. Several titles that used Iris for a
	publishing system have also won awards and been widely distributed,
	including "Hermitville USA." I was also fortunate to find kindred souls
	on CompuServe and America Online, who helped me pioneer resources areas
	in 1993 and 1994 for the nascent electronic publishing industry.

	I finally cut loose on the Internet in 1995, launching Epub News, an
	electronic newspage about electronic publishing. After taking on several
	private contracts, I opened the Husted dot Com Website (www.husted.com)
	in 1996. I've drifted away from electronic books, but have noticed that
	several products are now making their way into the consumer mainstream
	-- as usual, I was twenty minutes into the future:-)

	My favorite all-time project is the Hitchhikers Guide to Science
	Fiction. This was one of my earliest hypertext projects (it started as a
	print-book idea), and I had a lot of fun bringing it forward onto the
	Web. (Now, if I only had time to bring it current and dress it up!)

	My favorite all-time client is is WXXI Public Broadcasting Council,
	where serving as the station's Webmaster. WXXI provides public
	broadcasting services for television and radio, and we are working to do
	the same online. Along with providing companion Web sites for every WXXI
	production, we stream both our AM and FM signals, in both Real and
	QuickTime, with online archives in the works. It's a long journey, but
	we've taken the first steps. I'm responsible for most of the regular
	updates to the site, and much of the overall layout and design. We're
	grateful to have won the PBS award for best Web site in our market for
	two years running.

	Our most ambitious projects at WXXI have been Spring Marketplace 2000
	and the NY Election Finder. For Spring Marketplace, we put our annual
	auction fully online for simultaneous telephone and Website bidding. On
	NY Election, we offered not only the usual election-finder application,
	but collected voter registration records from around the state, so
	people could also check their registration status and polling place. I
	developed the Web-enabled database applications for both projects.

	Currently, I'm expanding the WXXI online auction software into a
	complete package for hosting online auctions as fund-raisers; this is
	to be an open-source project called Gavel, and will, of course, rely
	heavily on Struts.

	###