Cristian for president :) Did I mention that before? I cannot post to the core list, and considering my status in the project (a developer, but not very active), I shouldn't. Still, I wanna give my point of view, so I hope this mail gets moderated while it's still a useful contribution.
First of all, if there's a mailing list meant for only the core developers, make sure only the core developers can post to it AND receive those mails; many 'lurkers' (including me 'til now) have a lot of questions (and maybe answers?) but cannot provide input. An open source project needs a few people that can pull the project; it's simply impossible to have 40 people all taking decisions in harmony, IMHO this group of core people needs a place for normal discussions. Such a place doesn't exist. I know I shouldn't have subscribed to this list in the first place, but the simple fact is, I did, so did many others, and an internal discussion is now open on the street. Either move to the developers list, or make it really internal. What I'm talking about is the personal part of the discussion. Lars keeps mentioning the fact he doesn't seem to think Nigel is the kind of teamplayer the project needs, and that's personal. I don't think it's useful to vote about new project members; if Nigel can make good contributions to the project (the 2006 developers days roved to me he can), he's welcome, but so are Lars and Conny (and the other Metaways developers). We are an OPEN source community; check Wikipedia for definitions. However, I DO believe a small group (usually called admins :) should be able to remove people when they are acting against the interests of the project, but that's something different; everybody is welcome until proven not. The non-personal part of the discussion should be open for everybody. Here, I agree with Lars that the "secret meeting" (his words) held at Stylite last year is pretty strange; maybe I missed it, but I never heard from that until the discussions started in December. Other that that, I must say Ralf is acting in a very professional way, although I do not always agree with him. Lars is not (sorry Lars), but that also doesn't have to do with anything with agreeing or not; it's just that the discussion isn't about a proof of concept anymore. Tine looks promising to me. In earlier mails I wrote my opinion is not that important considering my modest role, but I changed my mind. Not only am I a user, every minute I invest in development, is a minute of my spare time, it doesn't matter other people contribute much more; I don't get paid a penny so I'm doing this for fun. If my input is not important anymore, make eGroupWare a commercial product, let Tine compete with it and we'll all see what happens. So, what's this all about? Developers of eGroupWare have chosen a new path and they want that as a part of eGroupWare. I seem to remember, several developers came up with ideas for apps they wanted to implement, and you know what; they did and everybody was happy. A few days ago Ralf announced new VFS classes. Current users work with MyDMS and/or Filemanager. Can they still use it in the future? Will it all be compatible? I didn't see a call for vote. I once worked on TTS. Then the project (not me!) announced it would be obsolete. I started working on a successor which had to be compatible, until suddenly Ralf announced Tracker; all my work down the drain, and it wasn't even compatible. I never saw a call for vote. The Tine guys announced a new UI and API. Current users like the functionality of eGW. What's gonna happen with everything they build up over the years? No one's waiting for a complete re-implementation. The Tine guys promised it would be compatible, so why do we need a vote? Tine is a part of eGroupWare simply because some of the core developers say it is. I could have made the choice to keep on supporting TTS, simply because I was (at that stage) its developer. I know it's a different situation with Tine, because in the end it's not possible to maintain 2 codelines. Therefore, I fully agree with the decision eGroupWare 2.0 wasn't the proper name, but there's nevertheless the fact, people are working on the improvement of the product. It happened before; the reason TTS ain't supported aymore is, it's not compatible with the new API, and who ever made that decision? Admins? The majority of the (core) developers? So what to do now? Let the Tine guys make press releases as much as they like; don't consider it a sub-project, but a proof of concept for eGroupWare. That way, all attention for Tine is attention for eGroupWare. Also, Tine should be in the eGW trunk, to allow other developers to 'port' their apps to the Tine API. In the current situation, we're all keeping up appearances, but in fact Tine already is a fork. My 2cents, Oscar ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ eGroupWare-core mailing list eGroupWare-core@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/egroupware-core
