Note: This announcement is being reposted to the AOLSERVER-ANNOUNCE
list. The original can be seen in the AOLSERVER list archive here:
http://listserv.aol.com/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0405&L=aolserver&P=9228
Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 13:52:47 -0400
From: Dossy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On 2004.05.20, Jim Davidson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Expect to see a communication from Dossy himself regarding the upcoming
> plans and goals for the project.
Thanks, Jim. I suspect this announcement comes as sort of a surprise to
everyone as the list and project have been fairly quiet in the past few
months, but even though there was little external signs of activity,
there has been much planning and consideration with regard to the
AOLserver project going on. Now that plans are more or less final, it
was the appropriate time to make the announcement and start executing on
these great plans!
Perhaps one of the criticisms is that we do go through these periods of
"low visibility activity which brings about significant change" where
the perception from the community is that little is happening. To try
and eliminate that perception, I hope to make the entire organization
and planning process surrounding AOLserver as transparent as possible.
To that end, I've put together a "roadmap" of where I hope we can all
take the AOLserver project in the next couple of months. I'll be
posting the roadmap to the wiki shortly, but for now, here it is:
AOLserver project 2004 Roadmap
==============================
This document will serve as the roadmap for the AOLserver project and
Open Source community for 2004.
N.B.: When identifying the need for resources to fill roles outlined
below, it is intentional that there is no designation whether the role
should be filled by an AOL employee resource or someone from the larger
AOLserver community. Ideally, the roles will be filled by whichever
individual is enthusiastic about the role, has the necessary time to
commit to fulfilling the role's duties, and the capability to fill the
role. There is also no explicit preclusion from the same individual
fulfilling multiple roles if possible and appropriate.
Goals and milestones for Q2 2004
================================
1) www.aolserver.com website revamp
The project website deserves a more modern look and feel while
maintaining the crisp, clean design aspects of the site. The site
needs to clearly represent the most current releases and recent
changes.
Specific information that should be easily accessible on the website
initially:
- what it is
- how it's different
- where is useful, where it's not
- how to get started - basic guide, notes for apache users
- latest source and binary bundles
- basic intro docs and extensive, complete, accurate manpages
One role needs to be filled here: Webmaster. The project needs two
Webmasters to ensure good responsiveness to keeping the site current
in a timely fashion.
2) Freshen up documentation
Currently available documentation for AOLserver mixes information
for 2.3, 3.x and 4.x. All of the documentation needs to be
evaluated for correctness and updated where appropriate.
Documentation should be made available in at least three formats:
plain text, HTML and PDF. All documentation should be readily
available from the project website.
One role needs to be filled here: Documentation Writer. The
project needs two Documentation Writers to keep all of the
documentation current.
3) SourceForge bug and support trackers
There are currently 56 open bugs, 3 open support requests, 29 open
patches and 8 open feature requests in SourceForge. Attention to
these trackers is minimal at best which sends the wrong message
about the project's commitment to supporting itself.
Two roles need to be filled here: Support Manager and Support
Engineers. The project needs one Support Manager and four Support
Engineers. The Support Manager (SM) needs to ensure that opened
requests get tasked to someone in a timely fashion (within 24-48
hours) and resolved appropriately. The SM will also be responsible
for communicating any resolutions or FAQs to the Documentation Team
for inclusion in any documentations or publications.
4) Better release management of AOLserver
While maintaining a ChangeLog and tagging code periodically may be
suitable for the developer community, the larger user audience of
AOLserver has a varying degree of technical background. Releases
need to be managed such that a clear communication accessible to a
non-technical background should be able to understand the value
contained in the latest code release providing clear and compelling
reasons to keep their installations up to date. This same
information should also be be published on the project website as
well as distributed to the AOLSERVER-ANNOUNCE mailing list.
One role needs to be filled here: Release Manager. There is need
for one Release Manager, who will ensure that changes since the
previous release will be collated and prepared along with the actual
code release, distributed to the Webmasters for publication on the
project website and distributed to the Documentation Team for
inclusion in any appropriate documentation. Official releases will
be published in source and binary form (when applicable) on the
project website via the Project Files section in SourceForge.
The Release Manager should also coordinate with the project's Press
Team for publication to PR sources (Freshmeat.net, NewsForge, etc.)
for major releases or significant bug and/or security fixes.
5) Establish metrics for measuring success and publish reports on a
regular basis.
There are several simple measurements that we can take that can be
automated on a regular schedule (daily, weekly, monthly) and
published on the project website. The first metric will be:
Commit frequency per username: number of files affected, lines of
code affected.
This serves the purpose of making clear to the community where
activity is taking place within the project as well as which
individuals are actively involved and participating. Without this,
it is unclear from a high level what kind of progress is being made
on the project, if any at all, giving people a sense that the
project is inactive when that may not actually be the case. Having
this metric measured regularly and published will either confirm or
dispel this belief and allow us to better manage this issue.
6) Regular and open communications to the world
In order to raise awareness about AOLserver to both attract users
and developers, we need regular and open communication with the
world. The messages need to be clear, concise and accessible to a
wide audience. They need to be sent out regularly to keep the
attention of our audience as well as to show steady progress.
One role needs to be filled: Public Relations Coordinator. The PR
Coordinator is responsible for producing and distributing regular
press releases to the appropriate channels: project mailing lists,
project website, external news channels such as NewsForge and
Slashdot, etc.
7) Tighter integration of Java into the core execution environment
With tighter Java integration into AOLserver, we will be able to
leverage more available talent as well as more third-party developed
software under AOLserver. There are several efforts to bring Java
into AOLserver but the project could benefit from having these
separate efforts aligned and deliver a single solution.
8) Win32 platform becomes a first-class citizen again
While even the more recent releases of AOLserver can still be built
on Win32, the commitment of official support for it was left to the
community to resolve. Consider this the resolution: the audience
for AOLserver on Win32 should not be diminished without good reason.
While we shouldn't be investing any time on Win32-specific support
issues until we've resolved items #1-#7 on the roadmap first,
I would like to keep Win32 as a viable platform for AOLserver so
that in the future we could integrate .NET into AOLserver similarly
to the way Java is being integrated into it, today.
If anyone has any questions or concerns regarding this shift in
responsibility or about the AOLserver project in general, please contact
me directly. Thanks!
I look forward to all the great things we're going to accomplish
together this year and onwards,
-- Dossy
