The Apache Software Foundation Blog recently began running a new feature entitled "The ASF Asks", intended to hep raise awareness of some of the Foundation's many projects. A couple of weeks ago, the blog highlighted the Pivot project in an entry called "The ASF Asks: Have you met Apache Pivot?".

For those who nave not met Pivot yet, it is a platform for building rich Internet applications in Java. Like Flex and Silverlight, Pivot uses an XML-based markup language (called "WTKX") to declare the structure of a user interface. It also includes a number of other features common to RIA toolkits including style support, data binding, animated effects, and web services integration. Like JavaFX, Pivot applications run in a JVM; however, unlike JavaFX, they can be built using Java or any other JVM language (e.g. Groovy or Scala) rather than being limited to JavaFX Script.

As a sort of follow-up to the "How Can Oracle Make JavaFX More Popular" entry from a couple of weeks ago, I'd like to ask the following question: if you have met Apache Pivot, are you using it? If so, why? What makes the platform compelling to you? If not, why not? What suggestions would you offer to the platform developers to make it a more compelling alternative?