I’m looking around for a way to handle a bunch of command line options, and so naturally I was drawn to the Apache Commons CLI, where I found this line:

There are currently no plans to continue the 1.x line beyond bugfixes. The 2.x design is generally preferred and is in use, however there is no current activity to make a 2.0 release. To this end, the 1.1 release is recommended to most users while the 2.x line is recommended for anyone interested in helping to get this better API released.

So: one is not being worked on because it’s old, and the other isn’t being worked on… for some other reason? This is, in part, what The Paradox of Choice is about. I’m sure either one would meet my needs, but the doubts cast on the whole thing by the lack of a clear and easy choice make you a bit frustrated because you have to choose between two things, neither one of which is clearly the “right” choice. This is clearly a bit irrational given that you’re getting, in any case, a bunch of good code that very likely does its job, but there you go… that’s why it’s called “the paradox of choice”.