I always saw Dashboard as the beginning point, not a valuable item today. The 
ENC functionality was certainly too limited to use. I look forward to the 
PuppetDB replacement for report viewing.

On Oct 10, 2012, at 10:02 AM, Nigel Kersten wrote:
> (This mail has been sent to puppet-users, but bcc’d to puppet-dev and 
> puppet-announce to try and keep the conversation in one place.)
> 
> 
> Summary:
> 
> * We are stopping investment in Dashboard
> * Most Dashboard functionality will be replaced by two new open source 
> services
> * Some Dashboard functionality will be replaced by a proprietary application
> * The Dashboard will continue to be open source and we're happy to help 
> people take over maintenance
> * If we don't get a new maintainer, we will announce a date to EOL Dashboard
> 
> 
> Details:
> 
> If you’ve been following the development of Puppet Dashboard over the last 
> year or so, you’ve almost certainly noticed that it hasn’t been getting much 
> love from Puppet Labs.
> 
> We’ve been thinking about this for a while, and we’ve decided that we’re not 
> going to invest more in the Dashboard. It will get security patches and some 
> minor improvements over the next few months, but we’re treating it as an 
> evolutionary dead end.
> 
> We were planning to have some code ready for the replacement services before 
> making this announcement, but after questions at PuppetConf and after the 
> recent Dashboard update, we’ve realized that being transparent is the right 
> approach.
> 
> We’re generally moving the Puppet platform in a direction that is more 
> aligned with service-oriented-architecture, with standalone services for 
> specific functionality that own their own data.  Monolithic apps like the 
> Dashboard that store a variety of data types don’t fit well into this world.
> 
> You’ve seen the first moves of this with PuppetDB, where we have a 
> standalone, open source service with great APIs that is dedicated to catalog 
> and fact storage.
> 
> The ENC functionality in the Dashboard will be replaced by an open source, 
> standalone service.  The report storage and basic report viewing 
> functionality from Dashboard will become part of PuppetDB, and will be open 
> source, just as the rest of PuppetDB is. Work has recently started on both of 
> these projects. We will be working on data migration scripts from Dashboard 
> to these new services.
> 
> We will also be working on a new graphical application that provides an 
> interface to these services, but one more focused on workflows and advanced 
> use cases, and this application will be proprietary.
> 
> This is the model Puppet Labs is looking to follow from now on. Open source 
> services, with great APIs and simple GUIs just like PuppetDB, and proprietary 
> graphical applications that are more opinionated in terms of workflows. We 
> believe this is a simple line that brings a lot of clarity to the difference 
> between our open source and proprietary applications.
> 
> We’re still in the business of making Puppet a great open source platform, 
> and that’s not going to change. We will not be creating any secret APIs that 
> are just for use by Puppet Labs. We will be building our proprietary apps on 
> exactly the same APIs as everyone else has available to them.
> 
> We believe this keeps us honest in terms of keeping the open source platform 
> strong and functional, as well as Puppet Labs being fair and equitable to the 
> rest of the ecosystem compared to the applications we’re building a 
> sustainable company around.
> 
> We are not taking the Dashboard code base closed source.  Even though it’s 
> never really attracted a development community around it in the same way that 
> Puppet and MCollective have, if there are people who are committed to its 
> existence, we’re more than happy to help people take on the maintenance role.
> 
> We do think that it ultimately will need to be completely rewritten to take 
> advantage of the new ENC and PuppetDB report storage, and it needs a general 
> update to a newer version of Rails, but just as with *any* other open source 
> application that builds upon our platform, we will help anyone who wants to 
> take this on.
> 
> We don’t have firm dates for when the replacement services will be ready, but 
> we expect their first releases to be out by the end of the year.  Once both 
> of these are ready, and we have migration scripts for your data, we’ll 
> announce a complete end of life date for Dashboard unless we have replacement 
> maintainers.
> 
> Again, if you love Dashboard enough to want to maintain it, this is your 
> chance. 
> 
> I encourage and expect public discussion about this topic, but if you wish to 
> convey your thoughts privately, you can always contact myself or Luke at:
> 
> 
> Nigel, CTO
> email/jabber: ni...@puppetlabs.com
> IRC : nigelk
> 
> Luke, CEO
> email: l...@puppetlabs.com
> phone: +1-615-594-8199.
> IRC: lak
> 
> 
> cheers,
> 
> Nigel Kersten
> 
> -- 
> Nigel Kersten | http://puppetlabs.com | @nigelkersten
> Schedule Meetings at: http://tungle.me/nigelkersten
> 
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-- 
Jo Rhett
Net Consonance : net philanthropy to improve open source and internet projects.



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