Blogging Roller

Overall I think java.net looks like a great start, lots of potential there. I think the site could benefit from better navigation because it really is difficult to figure out where things are and how it all fits together. Other than that, the site looks great and there is lots of interesting content there. I'm still exploring.

The open source project hosting looks really cool and it seems to include the same set of project hosting and management features as provided by SourceForge, plus project wikis and blogs. I wonder if Roller would benefit from java.net. It would be a royal pain to switch over from SourceForge, I'm sure, so I really wonder if it would be worth it. What SourceForge features are missing from java.net? I guess this is just the SourceCast vs. SourceForge question. Would a new home there be worth the relocation expenses?

I offered to install Roller for Sun, but noooooooo, they had to go and steal (from O'Reilly) some rinky-dink little blogging package. Sheeesh! Are those blogs for real? They are all identical, no themes. Some of them look a little forced, as in "you will blog now please employee #76654, get to work." The others look and feel like the O'Reilly blogs, you know, the ones where the author is maintaining two blogs: one personal blog and one O'Reilly blog which is generally not worth subscribing to. All the interesting stuff shows up on the author's personal blog and, occasionally, an article or two shows up on the author's O'Reilly blog.

On top of all that, they didn't bother to tie into java.blogs. Shouldn't java.blogs be a federated site? Or, at least a linked site?

Whatever. I'll get over it. Maybe some of those blogs will be successful and truly worthwhile, who knows. At least Gosling's blog looks genuine.