Dear community,
As you may have noticed, my involvement in JSweet has diminished to almost nothing, and I no longer have the time to maintain it. After dedicating several years of my life to it, my profound wish is that JSweet can persist in being beneficial to as many individuals as possible.
I am immensely proud of JSweet and how it has assisted numerous projects, users, and organizations in transpiling Java code to JavaScript.
JSweet is a significant part of my efforts toward more responsible software, aiding organizations in limiting software obsolescence. For instance, thanks to JSweet, SweetHome3D successfully ported a major portion of its legacy Java code to JavaScript, overcoming Java Applets deprecation. Collaborating with Emmanuel Puybaret, we established an efficient online version of SweetHome3D, which is also available as a mobile app and widely used.
JSweet is efficient: it can transpile extensive projects and produce efficient code compared to other transpilers. This is crucial to me, as I am deeply committed to optimization as a key aspect of eco-design, reducing the cost and impact of software, especially when deploying in the Cloud. JSweet is easy to extend: anyone can fine-tune the transpiler’s behavior to adapt or patch the resulting code to a particular context, which is essential to such a transpiler.
I extend my gratitude to all community members and contributors, particularly Louis Grignon, who played a key role in various aspects of the project, such as creating and maintaining the Maven plugin, porting to Java 11 (JSweet 3), and providing substantial assistance with the transpilation server and JSweet services in general (Artifactory, Sandbox, …).
My new project, Daquota.io, aligns with the goal of reducing the impacts and cost of software, making it consistent with JSweet. However, managing two projects simultaneously is beyond my capacity, and I believe that placing JSweet under the care of an organization would be beneficial. Numerous improvements are needed to enhance it further, such as supporting all Java compiler versions and platforms, which is feasible but requires dedicated work and testing, as always.
I believe JSweet holds tremendous potential applications, particularly in the education domain and for building Java-based symmetrical services (code that functions both client-side and server-side). However, once again, an organization of the right scale and size would be better suited to leverage JSweet in such contexts.
Naturally, I would prefer to keep JSweet Open Source, and if a foundation or a consortium is interested in taking over, that would be wonderful. In any case, we need a new maintainer or organization to ensure that a dedicated team can keep the project alive with the appropriate level of maintenance. Of course, I will be glad to help with the transition if the conditions are gathered for me to allocate some reasonable time.
If you know anyone who could help find the right person or organization, please let me know. You can contact me at: info@cincheo.com or directly on my LinkedIn account.
Cheers and keep up with responsible coding!
— Renaud Pawlak – creator & owner of JSweet.org – and on the behalf of Louis Grignon (co-creator and co-maintainer of JSweet)