Dear THREDDS and netCDF-Java community,
By now, you have probably read John Caron’s note announcing that he will be
leaving the Unidata Program Center in August of this year. John has been
one of the prime movers in the development of THREDDS over the past fifteen
years, and we at Unidata will feel the loss of his talent, dedication, and
leadership deeply.
John’s efforts have helped make THREDDS a linchpin technology, used not
only in Unidata offerings but in a wide variety of other geoscience
settings around the world. Unidata’s commitment to maintaining and
advancing THREDDS in support of this community is largely due to John’s
efforts to make THREDDS a valuable and useful product.
Although he won’t be in his office at the Program Center, the Unidata
THREDDS team is looking forward to continuing collaboration with John as we
work on near-term projects (we’re aiming to release THREDDS 5.0 later this
year with improvements to configuration, scalability, and feature
collection types), new features like GeoCoverage (a new take on GeoGrid),
ongoing maintenance of netCDF-Java and TDS 4.6, and our long-term goals of
expanding the community of THREDDS users and developers.
It’s difficult to overstate John’s contributions to the THREDDS and
netCDF-java community over so many years. While we’re saddened that he
won’t be participating in Unidata’s day-to-day development activities,
we’re looking forward to building on the solid foundation that’s in place
as John moves on to other projects.
Best wishes, John!
The THREDDS (CDM/TDS) Development team and everyone at the Unidata Program
Center.
On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 4:42 PM, John Caron <caron@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Dear THREDDS and Netcdf-Java community:
>
> After a long time of wrestling with this decision, I will be leaving
> Unidata on August 7 to explore other opportunities. My intention is to
> continue working on THREDDS for several more years in some other context,
> possibly as an independent consultant, working directly for other
> organizations to create custom solutions and deployments of the THREDDS
> technology stack.
>
> Unidata will continue to provide the home and core engineering support for
> THREDDS. The THREDDS group (Christian, Dennis, Ryan, Sean) is in the
> strongest position it has ever been to carry this work forward. Unidata
> continues to be institutionally committed to the THREDDS project, both in
> supporting and maintaining the current releases, and in development of new
> capabilities.
>
> Over the past year, we have significantly strengthened THREDDS with unit
> testing, Coverity defect scanning, Github hosting, Jenkins and Travis
> continuous integration, Gradle build management, and Jira issue tracking.
> These software engineering practices are essential to turn the usual morass
> of scientific code into a sustainable project that can survive the
> departure of the founder(s).
>
> This transition is also an opportunity for THREDDS to continue evolving
> into a community supported project, in which many organizations contribute
> features and fixes that benefit one and all. Only with ongoing community
> support can a software project of this magnitude, based in a
> publicly-funded organization, grow and thrive.
>
> Where does THREDDS and Netcdf-Java fit into the technology landscape 16
> years after they began? The software industry has unambiguously chosen
> Java as the server-side technology for large, long-term, complex software
> projects. The reasons for this include the strong-typing of the Java
> language, portability across key hardware platforms, the richness of the
> Java Virtual Machine (JVM) languages, the comprehensive Java development
> tools, and the maturity and efficiency of the JVM implementations. THREDDS
> and Netcdf-Java gain long term viability and sustainability by leveraging
> this core Java technology.
>
> On the client side, Java has been less successful, partly because it
> cannot easily be linked with non-JVM languages such as C, and partly
> because the needs of scientific programmers don’t fit Java’s strengths as
> well. With Python gaining momentum throughout the geosciences, THREDDS
> will be providing, along with the current library used in Java clients, new
> ways for python clients to make use of TDS servers and the CDM Java
> software stack. More details will be coming later this year.
>
> When I leave Unidata, I will be leaving THREDDS in the best shape it has
> ever been in. I am confident in the software, the Unidata THREDDS team,
> and the larger THREDDS community to take this project successfully
> forward. I will take some time to regroup after this transition to decide
> what is next, and how I can best support the project.
>
> Thank you for your ongoing commitment and patient support over these many
> years.
>
> John Caron
>
>
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