@Sarah, regarding your question "What problems are people having that are not being met by the current open source structure and process?"
I just listened to Roy Fieldings presentation on the Apache Software Foundation (the one he did at the Flex Summit 2 weeks ago). Here's the one sentence which pretty much sums it up: Roy Fielding "Main benefit of open source is independence of any particular vendor". That's exactly the key problem of OpenLaszlo. By that definition, it's not an open source project. 1) All key decisions are made by Laszlo, or employees of Laszlo. There is no open process where the community can participate (ASF like voting system) in the decisions making process. 2) Feature roadmap is driven mainly by Webtop customer requirements. The roadmap is very vague (http://www.openlaszlo.org/roadmap), no release dates. 3) There are few releases of the platform. 4) The activity of the project has been stalling since 2008. 5) No community meetings (e.g. embedded into a one of the technology conference in S.F.) 6) Very few showcase applications for a project that old. The first time I asked Laszlo to put OpenMeetings into the showcase was in 2007. I think that finally happened in 2010. I don't know how many times Sebastian asked them to do it. 7) Laszlo is afraid of competition: Any projects/products which might in any way show features which would be seen as competition to Webtop are not put into the showcase section (based on my experience with the PalaceHotel.org app, and another video-based customer support solution). All I have read and heard confirms that Adobe never was able to create a business out of the Flex SDK development. If Adobe - with all the marketing they did - had a hard time to be successful at it, it will be even more difficult for OpenLaszlo, following the current strategy (no marketing, very low number of developers working on the platform, absolutely outdated component set). I don't know what kind of Ajax frameworks or products you have been using in the past years, but I consider OpenLaszlo to be one of the least attractive open source products from an activity/community perspective, compared to projects like jQuery, PhoneGap, even Flex. I'd like to hear what other people are thinking. Raju On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 12:53 AM, Raju Bitter <r.bitter.mailingli...@googlemail.com> wrote: > Thanks as well. I've heard about Max' Mom. He really has a very tough > year! Very sorry for him. But he has good friends, and I hope that > things will be better for him in 2012. > > On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 11:40 PM, Norman Klein <norman.kl...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Thanks and Merry Christmas back at you. >> >> I'm still trying to get together with Max and have a phone conference with >> you. But Max pretty much has his hands full taking care of his Mom (she's >> going blind), so I don't expect he has much spare time for outside >> activities. >> >> take care, >> >> Norman >> >> >> On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 5:01 PM, Raju Bitter >> <r.bitter.mailingli...@googlemail.com> wrote: >>> >>> Thanks for you response, Norman. Wish you a merry Christmas, wonderful >>> holidays, and all the best for the year 2012! >>> >>> Yu-Kyong told me to send her wishes! >>> >>> Take care, and thanks for always cheering me up when Laszlo is getting >>> on my nerves. >>> >>> Raju >>> >>> On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 10:17 PM, Norman Klein <norman.kl...@gmail.com> >>> wrote: >>> > >>> > Thanks for setting this up and I'll be sure to participate. >>> > >>> > There is just one issue that I have some reservations about and that's >>> > reaching out to Laszlo Systems. While that's a sincere gesture, I think >>> > the >>> > goal of the meeting should be the "future of Laszlo without Laszlo >>> > Systems". >>> > They are a dying company and they will be looking to squeeze value out >>> > of >>> > anybody or anything, while hindering things as much as possible. >>> > >>> > Norman Klein >>> > >>> > On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 2:28 PM, Raju Bitter >>> > <r.bitter.mailingli...@googlemail.com> wrote: >>> >> >>> >> Before we hundreds of emails going back-and-forth to discuss the >>> >> meeting time/date, let's instead use Doodle: >>> >> http://www.doodle.com/rkvbqr7wxumurg66 >>> >> >>> >> On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 8:07 PM, Raju Bitter >>> >> <r.bitter.mailingli...@googlemail.com> wrote: >>> >> > I've set up a Spreed web meeting (up to 20 people for the 2nd week of >>> >> > January 2012), to get a discussion start on how we can re-activate >>> >> > OpenLaszlo. The suggested meeting time is (which of course can be >>> >> > changed, depending on your availability): >>> >> > 13. Jan 2012 16:00 CET (using Spreed) 13. Jan 2012 16:00 CET >>> >> > Meeting link: https://eu42.spreed.com/checkin/jc/503164965 >>> >> > >>> >> > Anyone interested in discussing the future of OpenLaszlo, how the >>> >> > community can contribute to the project to re-activate it, and all >>> >> > other questions around the project is welcome to join. Technically >>> >> > the >>> >> > number of participants is limited to 20 people, if there's more >>> >> > interest, we'll have to use a different platform. >>> >> > >>> >> > The date/time is not fixed, if enough people with interest in the >>> >> > project are willing to join the web conference, we can shift to >>> >> > another date/time. One thing to consider: We need to fix a time which >>> >> > works for Japan, Europe and the U.S. (both East and West coast). 4pm >>> >> > in Berlin would be midnight in Japan, and 7 a.m. in San Francisco. >>> >> > If >>> >> > we can't fix a time which works for all time zone, the other option >>> >> > would be to have to separate web conferences for Asia + U.S., and for >>> >> > Europe and U.S. >>> >> > >>> >> > Before we go into the meeting, we should >>> >> > 1) create an agenda of items we want to discuss >>> >> > 2) discuss what kind of structure (people managing the project) would >>> >> > be needed to move forward >>> >> > 3) define goals for the project >>> >> > 4) reach out to Laszlo, to get a better understanding of the status >>> >> > of >>> >> > the company >>> >> > >>> >> > The discussion should be done in the mailing lists, but I'd be >>> >> > interested in summing up the discussion every few days somewhere.I >>> >> > suggest to use Google Docs, but I'm not sure if people from China >>> >> > would have a problem accessing Google Docs at the moment. We could >>> >> > use >>> >> > the OpenLaszlo wiki instead. >>> >> > >>> >> > Wish you all a good holiday season, and all the best for the new year >>> >> > of >>> >> > 2012! >>> >> > >>> >> > Best regards, >>> >> > Raju >>> >> >>> > >> >>
