Why are Forge and XMage separate projects?

[JeffHoogland]

Question - why are Forge and XMage different projects? They are both java and both maintain separate rules engines. I believe Forge came before XMage, so why did XMage opt to re-implement every card in a new rules engine instead of building on what forge already had done?

~Jeff

[LevelX]

Both projects evolved over time (it started also before I was involved in the project).

Because there are no defined standards about interfaces to reuse or common use of "magic" components (like the rule engine) all components are specific and can't be used without more or less work in another project.

It's sometimes possible to use specifc (smaller) areas (like the Forge project used/implemeneted the arrow handling of XMage) of the other project.
But e.g. to use the rules engine of Forge in the XMage project would mean to recreate nearly all parts of XMage and vice versa. So I'm pretty sure it will never happen.

It's more like both use the same Roman alphabet (=Java), but the one talks German and the other French. Sure there are some common words, but you can't mix the two languages easily together to create one great novel.