Tapestry: Rolling toward TLP

Our friends at Tapestry have taken the first step to move out from under the Jakarta umbrella. In an unanimous vote held on Tapestry dev@, the community voted to request that the ASF board install Tapestry as a top-level ASF project.

Of course, being a top-level project makes no practical difference to Tapestry users. It will be same team, same license, and same infrastructure. The difference is that Tapestry now has both more autonomy and more accountability. As a TLP, it would be easier for Tapestry to grow and add subprojects of its own. And, as a TLP, Tapestry will report directly to the board, rather than through the Jakarta Project Management Committee.

Like Struts Action and Struts Shale, Tapestry is an open-source framework for creating dynamic, robust, highly scalable web applications in Java. Tapestry complements and builds upon the standard Java Servlet API, and so it works in any servlet container or application server. Tapestry is a fine framework with a feverent following.

Tapestry is also one of the oldest frameworks for Java. Tapestry 1.0 was released in May 2001, a month before the initial release of Struts. Even then, the Tapestry approach stood out from the other new frameworks. Some say that Tapestry is closer to ASP.NET than frameworks like Struts. The first preview of ASP.NET was unveiled in July 2000, and ASP.NET 1.0 shipped in February 2002. By mid-2001, several Java frameworks were available, including Barracuda, Expresso, Maverick, Struts, and Turbine, among others

While some of these frameworks have faded away, I’m glad to see that, like Struts, our old friend Tapestry is also moving forward, stronger than ever.