My take is that the problem we are discussing is a lack of 'community'
rather than technical viability.  I think that is fairly easy to
demonstrate, just in the responses to this thread; a number of people have
indicated they struggled with and fixed various issues; the documentation is
sparse; they have systems in production that work.  However, none of these
issues have been fed back into the fledgling community, depriving it of the
oxygen necessary to grow.  For example, I'm not aware of efforts to address
the documentation, to report the bugs or solutions to the build issues, to
stepping up and offering to host or release test binaries, to offering to
create sample code to help the next person get started, etc.  A few
high-profile companies have been using this technology for a number of
years, but they have almost no visibility in the community; there doesn't
seem to be a sense of communal ownership.

From my point-of-view, I'm resisting the temptation to take it all on
myself.  I don't want to be the single "point guy" for this technology.  I
simply don't have the time to host binaries and personally answer the
support queries that this would entail.  I have previously mailed to this
list a Python script that can create a .XPI file with Python and pyxpcom
binaries suitable for use with recent Firefox versions - but it passed
without much comment, and more importantly, without anyone taking the ball
and running with it.  A number of people contacted me privately for the
script so they could package something up for people they knew, but AFAIK,
binaries have never been made available.

Don't get me wrong: I understand the commercial realities faced by people,
and that not every project has scope for "community" work.  I'm not trying
to be critical of anyone, but am trying to highlight that the problems we
face are more social than technical.  The technical curve *is* huge, and
more so for the brave souls who venture in early and help update the docs
and examples for those who follow - but the technology is not intractable,
and given its scope, it is unrivalled in the open source world, and probably
the entire world.

Ian most recently wrote:
>  But despite the fact that this seems like a good direction, it hasn't
>  happened yet because the setup is rather complex (as mentioned by you
>  and several other people).  Probably just reaching the level of Hello
>  World with PyXPCOM in the OLPC environment would be the biggest hurdle
>  (or at least from there there would be much more satisfying work to be
>  done).  Could you help get us to that point?

I am more than happy to help anyone get to that stage.  I am in the #pyxpcom
channel on freenode almost 24x7 - however, I think people can forget that
not everyone lives in the US, so its not uncommon to find someone looking
for help at 2am (my local time), and give up by 6am.  Another active user on
that channel is a Kiwi, so in a similar time-zone to myself.  I make an
attempt to answer all messages to this mailing list that relates to build or
other 'low-level' issues and do not object to personal emails on this stuff.

So in summary:
* Please do spend some time investigating this tech - it really is fantastic
and unrivalled.
* Please help grow the community in whatever way possible.
* Please don't be shy about contacting me :)

Cheers,

Mark

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