The JXTA Migration

Posted by bondolo on June 29, 2007 at 12:01 PM EDT

For the last couple of weeks the JXTA project has gone through the difficult process of moving. Moving an open source project is, in most ways, easier than moving in the real world. For one thing, we haven't had to bribe our friends with beer and pizza in order to get them to help. Seriously though, it's been a significant amount of work for everyone involved to move all of the JXTA projects from jxta.org to dev.java.net and I believe that everyone has done a fantastic job.

Moving any web-site, particularly one with thousands of subscribers, is a tenuous business. The first fear is always "Will people follow?" and the related question "Will people be able to find the new site?" When your project has been running for a long time there are inevitably many links from all over the Internet. These links are incredibly valuable. They are how search engines such as Google decide that your site is worth indexing. Unfortunately, you won't be able to get everyone to update their links so there's more than a little anxiety while you wait for users and the search engines to find you again.

I personally believe it is important for the JXTA project to move forward boldly though. The Java.net community and site have a lot to offer for the JXTA project. We've already started to take advantage of some of the Java.net features that were unavailable to the JXTA.org site including discussion forums, subversion, greater control over style sheets, improved scalability, blogging, more RSS support, etc. There's probably a dozen more features we could use that I've not mentioned!

I'm very confident that moving to Java.net will be a good move for the JXTA community and for the JXTA technology. We've already had great interactions with other Java.net projects and the other Java.net community leaders (including their helping us steal and adapt their style sheets for the JXTA projects. Thanks Shoal!) I also believe that the current JXTA.org community will come to love our cozy new home.

The new home of JXTA on the web : jxta.dev.java.net