Although I'm not sure he's in the aggregators yet, the Spry team's Donald Booth has started posting at the Spry team weblog here. There's been escalating discussion of Spry in the recent weeks, and it's great to see Don turning on the mic to talk about the framework, and following up his Hello World post with some insight as to the goals and rationale behind Adobe creating YAAF (Yet Another Ajaxian Framework), and the compromises and tradeoffs they've made so far. Spry will be developed independently of the 'traditional' Adobe products, which will definitely help it be more ... ahem, spryly developed outside big 18-month product cycles.
Recent weeks have seen some some great feedback from DOM Scripting guru Jeremy Keith, which have been quite constructive to the team- several of Jeremy's issues are being addressed by the Spry team as we speak (including the namespace doc 404 being corrected - more details forthcoming on Don's blog, of course).
I find the comments in Roger Johansson's related posts almost more illuminating than any of the prior comments (well, if you filter out the 'we hate big companies' noise, of course). It's clear that better and more accessible/progressively enhanced demos may be required, another good point the team is hearing loudly and clearly. But one unspoken point that I'm reading between the lines - particularly in comment threads - is that there's a feeling that Adobe, as a large and rather cumbersome company used to monolithic product releases, has simply dumped a new framework onto the masses with no intention of reacting to these suggestions, criticisms and requests. As the guy who's responsible for launching Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Labs to the world, I can personally say that the internal view of software development - and transparency of process around it - has taken a dramatic shift from what you're used to seeing from such a big company, and you're only now seeing the first of it.
I hope Don's postings help shine a light onto the fact that Spry is far more than just a one-shot, fly-by-night framework foisted onto the web designer/developerati and subsequently ignored for 18 months at a time, and in fact is an independent team and effort at Adobe committed to regular, constant updates and releases. Swing on by and let Don know what you're thinking. I'm sure they'll welcome the feedback.
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