Thank you for putting this in perspective Ean. To all:
Indeed the reason so many prominent OFBiz developers were part of Hotwax is that the whole point of the company growth at the time many of us joined was to bring together some of the best talent independent in the community (ie that were interested and in a situation that made sense to join). Hotwax came along in its current form after OFBiz became part of the ASF, and any issues that might have come from bringing these people into one commercial organization can be laid at my feet. That structure has worked great in some ways and not so great in others. For me personally there were some not so great things and that's why I'm not a part of the company any more. The great things outweigh that in terms of commercial success, and that's why it still exists. That commercial success brings substantial benefits to OFBiz itself. The talent in that organization is why even to this day I still recommend that various clients hire Hotwax Media to get good stuff done. I may not be involved with the group any more, but it's still a great group and I can't even express in words how much the people in this group have benefitted and continue to benefit OFBiz and all who use it and are involved with the community. If you want an accurate current roster of PMC members who are part of Hotwax it is Jacopo, Scott, Anil, and Ashish. Andrew and I haven't been a part of the group for years, including a couple of years after leaving Hotwax and remaining active in OFBiz. That doesn't really matter though, what would matter are decisions by the PMC that seem to favor Hotwax. I challenge anyone to name one. Committers are invited based on code contributions. PMC members are typically invited based on continued code contributions, community involvement, and initiative on the project. Even that doesn't really matter so much. What matters is the path forward. Like Ean said if anyone wants to build commercial success by all means do so. The success of others in no way blocks your own success. The OFBiz market is pretty big, and the open source ERP market is SO much larger than all of us together could service that there really is no way even everyone with any sort of experience with OFBiz could cover it all. In nearly every contract I work on we have the challenge of finding good OFBiz developers and end up training people. Over the years I have personally trained nearly 1000 people on OFBiz development, and while that has decreased for me over the last 3 years the number for those years is still around 100. It is true that many of these people worked on a particular project and then never did OFBiz work again, and never got involved in the community, but they are still out there and the point is that it's a big market place. As has been said so many times in this and related threads: 1. if you want to become a committer start contributing code, and do so in a way that makes it easy for committers to get it in place... and also work on more than just your own contributions, help review and test and comment on contributions from others 2. if you want to become a PMC member, start out with #1, continue with everything in that over time, and get involved even more generally with the community including discussions, Jira contribution reviews and commits, and showing initiative to push along different parts of the project Like it or not the PMC is made up of the people currently on it, and they are the ones who decide who will be committers and other PMC members. That is the organization setup by the ASF, and is in fact very similar to the pattern used by OFBiz even before the project joined the ASF. This is the governance pattern for OFBiz and for the ASF in general. It's not likely to substantially change any time soon. Either work with it or do something else. Either way merit is merit, and ultimately it all comes down to code and how one interacts with others to produce and refine code. All of this motive assumption and political BS is just that, bullshit. The only reason that I'm participating in this discussion in spite of my current minimal involvement with OFBiz is that this is a path to nothing good. Paul, Pierre, and others pushing this: please try to understand the ASF processes better and work within them, including working well with others already established on the project, and don't be surprised if trying to work around it doesn't produce the desired result. Also realize that this sort of discussion has come up many times before, it's nothing new. I know that well having been the PMC Chair for a number of years and having participated in many similar discussions. If you can't get along with others, or if you are not finding what you're looking for in the OFBiz community, for goodness sake go do your own thing. That's exactly what I did with Moqui/Mantle/etc because I am interested in working on became more difficult to do within the OFBiz software and community. That doesn't mean OFBiz or its governance model is bad in any way, just not what I was personally looking for. Consider that I made that decision even in the position some seem to with they had and are complaining loudly in some seeming sort of hope to get into without going through the years of effort required in the established governance model. It leaves me wondering what the hell certain people are trying to do. I don't get it. I asked in some of my other recent posts and still see no answer, and still don't get what the goal of all of this is or how in any way something good might come of it. Maybe starting with an explanation of one's own motive might be more effective that straw-man attacks against the motives of others... -David On Mar 18, 2014, at 4:03 PM, Ean Schuessler <[email protected]> wrote: > ----- "Paul Piper" <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I am not biased against HWM, but what I question is the objectivity >> that is >> currently used within this project. As an open source software, you >> would >> assume that this project is run by the community - as often claimed >> by >> anybody within the PMC. If you look at the current list of members and >> there >> personal relations, I would argue that there is at least a >> conflicting >> perspective: >> >> >> PMC Members with HWM background >> * Jacopo Cappellato (V.P. Technology - Hotwax Media) >> * Scott Gray (Developer - Hotwax Media) >> * Bilgin Ibryam (Former Hotwax Developer) >> * David E. Jones (Former CTO Hotwax Media) >> * Anil Patel (COO Hotwax Media) >> * Ashish Vijaywargiya (Vice President of Operations at HotWax Media) >> * Andrew Zeneski (former CIO Hotwax Media) >> >> --- >> Other PMC members >> * Adrian Crum >> * Hans Bakker >> * Jacques le Roux >> * Erwan de Ferrieres >> * Adam Heath >> * David Welton > > I suppose the conspiracy at work here is the same flavor of conspiracy > that dominates the development of the GCC compiler or the Linux kernel. > One might look at these efforts and conclude that there is a conspiracy > on Red Hat's part to control these software systems. It is true that > Red Hat has conspired to create a vast organization with influence in > many corners of the globe, however, I believe that a more suitable label > for this "conspiracy" is "commercial success". > > A protracted discussion about why the most visibly successful implementer > of the project's software holds "unfair" sway doesn't strike me as > productive. If you want to change that, go back to building your business > and hire more firepower than they have. All of us will benefit. > > As David Jones readily demonstrates, if you have new ideas you can > always write new code. Moqui is a more powerful statement than anything you > can say on a conference call. > > -- > Ean Schuessler, CTO > [email protected] > 214-720-0700 x 315 > Brainfood, Inc. > http://www.brainfood.com
