Release strategy and community WAS Re: OFBiz in Canada?

[Jacopo Cappellato <ja...@hotwaxmedia.com>]

Hi Carsten,

On Nov 12, 2009, at 2:31 PM, Carsten Schinzer wrote:

> Well, regarding participation, we just had an excellent Talk about
> participating in open source - and guess what even more detailed: on ASF -
> projects here at W-JAX 2009 in Munich.
> 
> It was especially of interest, since it drew a couple of examples what the
> motivation of people would be to participate. And you will not be surprised
> to see that a certain commercial interest is not unusual.
> 
> However, the argument of "critical mass" being brought up above seems a
> little vague to me: What is actually the number of comitters / contributors
> required to switch into a good release plan?

Yes it is vague for sure, and it is based on a reality check: OFbiz's community is active, OFBiz is widely used, a lot of new features are freely contributed everyday but very few people or companies seem interested in contributing time to maintain a release plan.
This is why I said this.
We can probably try do something to better use the efforts of the ones willing to help maintain releases, ideas are welcome.

Kind regards,

Jacopo

> Any ideas? Is it dependant on
> the BUG statistics reported on JIRA? How many are they and how good are we
> contributors in fixing them? Are we currently building a backlog? Is it for
> trunk or for releases only? How are bug reports/bugs distributed across
> components? Is it possibly critical to have a certain number of committers
> per component?
> 
> Back to the talk I mentioned:
> Once I have the slides, I will distribute the link across people (or here)
> if there is interest.
> 
> Kind regards
> 
> 
> Carsten
> 
> 
> 2009/11/12 Christopher Snow <sn...@snowconsulting.co.uk>
> 
>> Yes, I take the credit for the hijack!
>> 
>> 
>> Jacques Le Roux wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> From: "Olivier Tremblay" <ol...@gmail.com>
>>> 
>>>> Unrelated: +1 thread hijack :P
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Yes, but if you read it all you will find that some ideas there matter and
>>> are related to the subject Chris submitted
>>> 
>>> This said, sorry for the thread hijack but it was Chris's actually ;o)
>>> 
>>> Jacques
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> Back to the discussed matter:
>>>> 
>>>> As a programmer, I'd be interested to know more about how I can help.
>>>> I'm not really used to open-source projects, but I'm going to have to
>>>> implement this solution for my company. Which is why I want to find  other
>>>> Canadian (preferably Quebec) users, and lend a hand if possible.  What would
>>>> I need to know to participate?
>>>> 
>>>> Olivier
>>>> 
>>>> Le 2009-11-12 à 06:20, Jacques Le Roux a écrit :
>>>> 
>>>> Christopher,
>>>>> 
>>>>> Sorry this is maybe a bit a technical answer, but I believe it shows
>>>>> another mindset
>>>>> 
>>>>> One of the causes, which is maybe hidden for philosophical and
>>>>> pragmatical reasons, is that we (should) always use RTC mode (Review-
>>>>> Then-Commit)
>>>>> For more on this apect you could be interested by
>>>>> http://old.nabble.com/Review-Then-Commit-td26303921.html
>>>>> 
>>>>> To commiters : this does not mean that I'm pushing for CTR mode,  only
>>>>> that it's interesting to see how other communities are doing
>>>>> and reactions about that ;o)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Jacques
>>>>> 
>>>>> From: "Jacques Le Roux" <ja...@les7arts.com>
>>>>> 
>>>>>> From: "Christopher Snow" <sn...@snowconsulting.co.uk>
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> So it's the chicken-and-egg situtation?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> No : it's improving and the curve is not exponential nor even
>>>>>> quadratic but is more than flat. Actually this is very clear since
>>>>>> we released 9.04
>>>>>> And maybe the new effort which may happend on SME will increase  even
>>>>>> more this curve http://markmail.org/thread/whm4uqjhcvwz6pvp
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Jacques
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> There are not enough contributors  to focus on making stable  releases
>>>>>>> and documentation.  But without stable releases and
>>>>>>> documentation, new contributors are not attracted to ofbiz.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Jacques Le Roux wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Yes we need more solid teams, this is improving...
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Jacques
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> From: "Christopher Snow" <sn...@snowconsulting.co.uk>
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Are you saying that there are now enough contributors to  implement
>>>>>>>>> a good release plan?
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Many thanks,
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Chris
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Jacopo Cappellato wrote:
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> On Nov 12, 2009, at 7:34 AM, Christopher Snow wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> Ofbiz community seems to be focused on making ofbiz generate  as
>>>>>>>>>>> much consulting revenue as possible and not on making ofbiz a
>>>>>>>>>>> great shrink wrapped product. For example, end users having to
>>>>>>>>>>> use svn and patches so to keep their systems up to date is
>>>>>>>>>>> crazy.
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> I don't think that the focus of the OFBiz community is to make
>>>>>>>>>> OFBiz a consulting revenue generator, nor I think that the
>>>>>>>>>> absence of a stable recent release is a consequence of this.
>>>>>>>>>> The awful truth, imo, is that maintaining a release is  expensive
>>>>>>>>>> (in terms of man hours) and the time contributed by  the users
>>>>>>>>>> of OFBiz (i.e. its community made of final users, consultants
>>>>>>>>>> etc...) until now has not been enough to have a good release
>>>>>>>>>> plan.
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> Jacopo
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Best
> 
> Carsten Schinzer
> 
> Waisenhausstr. 53a
> 80637 München
> Germany