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Posted to dev@ofbiz.apache.org by Shi Yusen <sh...@langhua.cn> on 2008/11/15 21:09:17 UTC
Re: My Notes From OFBiz Symposium at ApacheCon US 2008 - Main
Theme: Organizing Ourselves
+1.
The reason is simple: nobody takes the role of project manager in OFBiz.
When Redhat aquired JBoss, I found almost every project had a new
project manager who really helped the projects released more and more
predictable.
At the beginning as TLP, Jacopo Cappellato looked like preparing the
release version. And when he joined HotwaxMedia, he's missing I guess.
Someone in the PMC should stand out. Jacques Le Roux or Scott Gray?
PMC, programmers meeting committee? If so, it's a quite pitty for an ERP
platform. :)
Kind Regards,
Shi Yusen/Beijing Langhua Ltd.
在 2008-11-15六的 13:46 -0500，Joe Eckard写道：
> On Nov 14, 2008, at 3:41 PM, David E Jones wrote:
>
> >
> > On Nov 14, 2008, at 9:46 AM, Adrian Crum wrote:
> >
> >> David E Jones wrote:
> >>>> I don't mean to dilute the framework release effort. But at the
> >>>> same time, it seems to me issues are coming up in R4 that have
> >>>> been addressed in the trunk.
> >>> While to some extent this depends on the type of issue, in general
> >>> issues in the 4.0.0 branch should be fixed in that branch by the
> >>> "sub-community" that has formed around the branch. If things are
> >>> not getting fixed, to me that means the branch has not attracted
> >>> enough of a user and contributor community. I don't know how to
> >>> fix that problem...
> >>
> >> It is true that most of the bugs discovered in R4 are fixed as they
> >> come up. I was thinking more along the line of the kinds of things
> >> that were corrected by refactorings and such.
> >>
> >> I've run across a number of people using R4 and service providers
> >> who are using R4 for their customer's deployments. In addition,
> >> Opentaps is based on R4. So, there is a sizeable R4 community out
> >> there, even if they aren't vocal on the mailing lists and such.
> >>
> >> I guess the goal or purpose of a Release 5 would be the same as
> >> Release 4 - to provide the opportunity to build on a target that
> >> isn't moving.
> >>
> >> I agree that there needs to be a community of people who want it
> >> and are willing to support it. I was just tossing the idea out
> >> there, but at this point in time there doesn't seem to be much
> >> interest.
> >
> > These are good points Adrian. Don't let my "Devil's Advocate"
> > approach scare you away or make you think there is no interest in
> > doing these. I imagine there are many people who would like to see
> > release branches happen.
> >
> > Part of the reason I wrote some doubts about it is that there is an
> > open source mantra of "release early, release often" and I was
> > wondering about that... What if we took the opposite approach of
> > "never release"? It's the total opposite extreme and I'm not
> > completely sure I like the idea, but it has some really interesting
> > points. For example it encourages:
> >
> > 1. community interaction, even for those who are just "users" and
> > not sending things back
> > 2. frequent upgrades by all users to resolve issues
> > 3. community responsibility, rising the priority of things like
> > automated testing, and giving people more reasons to get involved
> > with that testing and contribute tests
> > 4. base application design decision refinement to help people with
> > regular updates and resolving issues while not creating new ones
> > 5. something the press can write about that is very different from
> > things done in other places
> > 6. a social experiment in collaborative enterprise software that is
> > yet unseen in the world
> >
> > Of course, there are disadvantages, like:
> >
> > 1. a smaller user community because the prospect is scary
> >
> > Maybe that's it. I really think that if as a community we work more
> > on automated regression tests and such we'll have a higher quality
> > of software in the trunk than is in the release branches, partially
> > because of what Adrian mentioned (and I alluded to) where certain
> > types of issues require a lot of refactoring and aren't simple fixes
> > that can go into a release branch.
> >
> > Anyway, something to think about. In a way doing release branches
> > breaks important aspects of the "never release" approach because
> > things like #1, #2 and certain of the others won't happen, or won't
> > happen as much. Actually, it applies to more, maybe especially #3.
> > If we never release, developers have no excuse of making things
> > unstable, or committing without thinking about things, or throwing
> > stuff out for they are designed well. There is no excuse of "if
> > people want something stable, use the release branch, and leave us
> > alone!"
> >
> > I'm still for doing another release branch early next year (and
> > continuing with 18-24 months between branches), unless a lot of
> > people find the "never release" philosophy interesting.
> >
> > -David
> >
>
> (disclaimer: one guy's opinion, grain of salt, etc.)
>
> Speaking primarily as an end user, the "never release" approach that
> the project is currently taking encourages me to isolate my code as
> much as possible, and discourages frequent upgrades. It also
> encourages me to cherry-pick bug fixes, which can make it tedious to
> construct patches to send back when I find new bugs.
>
> Sometimes I like to imagine a world where OFBiz has major, minor and
> point releases (with release notes) similar to what is described at http://commons.apache.org/releases/versioning.html
> (with the compatibility types redefined in OFBiz terms). For
> example, any change that modifies a service's signature, or the data
> model might require a new point release to include any outstanding bug
> fixes, then a new minor release with a simple upgrade instruction for
> that change added to the release notes. (in other words,
> incompatibility would be the determining factor for minor & major
> revision number upgrades)
>
> With something like that in place, I could feel confident upgrading
> from a theoretical version 4.0.19 to 4.0.23, knowing that nothing
> should break, and I don't need to install new seed data or worry about
> data model changes. If I wanted some new features in 4.1.x, I would
> need to check the release notes to see what incompatible change
> prompted the version increase and make adjustments and an upgrade plan.
>
> Maybe this approach just isn't feasible for any number of reasons, but
> I have always wondered why there doesn't seem to be any discussion of
> something similar whenever the topic of releases are brought up.
>
>
> -Joe
Re: My Notes From OFBiz Symposium at ApacheCon US 2008 - Main Theme: Organizing Ourselves
Posted by Bruno Busco <br...@gmail.com>.
Having a roadmap could simply mean having something like this:
https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/BrowseProject.jspa?id=12310110&subset=-1
or
https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/BrowseProject.jspa?id=10600&subset=-1
or
https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/BrowseProject.jspa?id=10220&subset=3
or
https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/BrowseProject.jspa?id=10560&subset=-1
If it is for sure true that OFBiz grows up thanks to contribution that
developers do because they need them with their customers, it is also true
that many efforts have been done, and will be, to have OFBiz more generic,
with a more reusability factor, with a better UI etc.
Those generally are not things requested by a developer's customer but are
things that OFBiz still needs to have something to base a marketing campain
on.
A clear and solid release number is something really needed.
How could we ever write on the site news "Released OFBiz x.y (see release
notes)" otherwise?
The release numbering, IMO, is at the top of the list in the marketing aware
factors.
-Bruno
2008/11/16 Shi Yusen <sh...@langhua.cn>
> I guess no War of Independence would happen. I can't remember Mel
> Gibson reported to anybody in Patriot.
>
> I can trust anyone in PMC. OFBiz itself is a brand like a commercial
> software.
>
> Why do we need a release version? What we really need is a predictable
> vision if OFBiz is our core platform of our business. For example, we
> also use OpenCms as our core platform. We developed an OpenCms-LDAP
> module and we don't want it to be a part of OpenCms as it's not perfect.
> But it's useful,
>
>
> 在 2008-11-15六的 16:36 -0500，David E Jones写道：
> > On Nov 15, 2008, at 4:27 PM, David E Jones wrote:
> > > OFBiz is not commercial software with paid developers. JBoss may be
> > > available under an open source license, but it is developed under a
> > > commercial model, not a community-driven model like OFBiz.
> > >
> > > In the case of a community-driven software project, what would a
> > > project manager do? Who would he/she boss around? Who would be
> > > accountable for delivery and how would that accountability be
> > > enforced?
> >
> I guess no War of Independence would happen. I can't remember Mel
> Gibson reported to anybody in Patriot.
>
> I can trust anyone in PMC. OFBiz itself is a brand like a commercial
> software and clients should be able to trust.
>
> People do trust open source now.
> (ad, you can skip this)
> We are offering technical support to T-Systems China on BMW Web Hosting,
> the website of BMW China and worldwide is built on Linux, OpenCms,
> Tomcat and Mysql, all are open source, except some functions developed
> by Interone.
>
> Open source is not a problem any more. Is community-driven model a
> problem? If yes, I would suggest CHANGE.
>
> > I hope I'm not getting into revisionist history, but my experience
> > with community-driven software so far is that if someone does propose
> > something and try to recruit others to work on it then it usually
> > fails. Generally the champion of the effort has to work on it
> > themselves, and keep working on it until others start _using_ it, and
> > then they will get involved with improving and extending it. It's just
> > that simple.
> >
> > Personally I know I've left a wake of unfinished projects where I
> > tried to recruit others and identify a goal to work towards, like the
> > framework improvements and framework-only release (a starting point
> > for higher level releases, something easier). As soon as I got
> > involved in increased workload, moving, and organizing and preparing
> > for ApacheCon and such I stopped working on it... and so did everyone
> > else!
> >
> > With new things I'm trying to push, like adoption of open standards
> > and building some requirements and designs that we can base future
> > enhancements and extensions of OFBiz on, my plan is to work on them
> > personally as much as I can and do so until others join in.
> >
> > That's how things get done in community-driven projects: by
> > leadership. That's how everything in OFBiz has been done. Someone lead
> > the way, and others joined in... hundreds of times in the last 7.5
> > years on hundreds of parts of OFBiz. There is a big difference between
> > leaders and manager, and what self-organizing communities need is
> > leadership, not management. That's the meritocracy way.
> >
> > -David
> >
>
> Nobody would say OFBiz is not good. And it's not necessary to proof
> OFBiz is good. On the contrary, I think people (at least myself) need
> OFBiz promising. If you feel the project is hard to control (I know you
> don't like control, I believe you may not like out of control, then
> control it), it's a good idea to do the work as you said, narrow your
> efforts to framework-only, then the framework would play the role of
> tomcat project, OFBiz as the Jakarta, applications and specailpurposes
> as the subprojects (including the ex-subprojects) in Jakarta.
>
> In other words, if even you don't know what the next version of OFBiz
> would be, how could the others know?
>
> Versioning means promising, means roadmap, means you know, and then we
> know, everyone knows where we are going. Then the community can unit
> around you, and costomers will put resources into the real projects
> based on OFBiz (this is the key reason why I say too much here:)).
>
> Though my tone is not that kind. below are what we will open to the
> community for 2009 as a promising (all we promised for 2008 come to
> true):
> 1. Update OFBiz-jBPM component to jBPM 3.3.2 or later and OFBiz trunk.
> 2. Update OFBiz-LDAP-CAS to support LDAP membership and alias setting.
> 3. Develop OFBiz-SAML to support SAML(may not the latest SAML 2.0).
> 4. Develop OFBiz-OpenID
> 5. Update OFBiz-OpenOCES
> 6. Develop OFBiz-Lucene-SearchPipeline
> 7. Continue the OFBiz Chinese localization
>
> Regards,
>
> Shi Yusen/Beijing Langhua Ltd.
>
>
Re: My Notes From OFBiz Symposium at ApacheCon US 2008 - Main
Theme: Organizing Ourselves
Posted by Shi Yusen <sh...@langhua.cn>.
I guess no War of Independence would happen. I can't remember Mel
Gibson reported to anybody in Patriot.
I can trust anyone in PMC. OFBiz itself is a brand like a commercial
software.
Why do we need a release version? What we really need is a predictable
vision if OFBiz is our core platform of our business. For example, we
also use OpenCms as our core platform. We developed an OpenCms-LDAP
module and we don't want it to be a part of OpenCms as it's not perfect.
But it's useful,
在 2008-11-15六的 16:36 -0500，David E Jones写道：
> On Nov 15, 2008, at 4:27 PM, David E Jones wrote:
> > OFBiz is not commercial software with paid developers. JBoss may be
> > available under an open source license, but it is developed under a
> > commercial model, not a community-driven model like OFBiz.
> >
> > In the case of a community-driven software project, what would a
> > project manager do? Who would he/she boss around? Who would be
> > accountable for delivery and how would that accountability be
> > enforced?
>
I guess no War of Independence would happen. I can't remember Mel
Gibson reported to anybody in Patriot.
I can trust anyone in PMC. OFBiz itself is a brand like a commercial
software and clients should be able to trust.
People do trust open source now.
(ad, you can skip this)
We are offering technical support to T-Systems China on BMW Web Hosting,
the website of BMW China and worldwide is built on Linux, OpenCms,
Tomcat and Mysql, all are open source, except some functions developed
by Interone.
Open source is not a problem any more. Is community-driven model a
problem? If yes, I would suggest CHANGE.
> I hope I'm not getting into revisionist history, but my experience
> with community-driven software so far is that if someone does propose
> something and try to recruit others to work on it then it usually
> fails. Generally the champion of the effort has to work on it
> themselves, and keep working on it until others start _using_ it, and
> then they will get involved with improving and extending it. It's just
> that simple.
>
> Personally I know I've left a wake of unfinished projects where I
> tried to recruit others and identify a goal to work towards, like the
> framework improvements and framework-only release (a starting point
> for higher level releases, something easier). As soon as I got
> involved in increased workload, moving, and organizing and preparing
> for ApacheCon and such I stopped working on it... and so did everyone
> else!
>
> With new things I'm trying to push, like adoption of open standards
> and building some requirements and designs that we can base future
> enhancements and extensions of OFBiz on, my plan is to work on them
> personally as much as I can and do so until others join in.
>
> That's how things get done in community-driven projects: by
> leadership. That's how everything in OFBiz has been done. Someone lead
> the way, and others joined in... hundreds of times in the last 7.5
> years on hundreds of parts of OFBiz. There is a big difference between
> leaders and manager, and what self-organizing communities need is
> leadership, not management. That's the meritocracy way.
>
> -David
>
Nobody would say OFBiz is not good. And it's not necessary to proof
OFBiz is good. On the contrary, I think people (at least myself) need
OFBiz promising. If you feel the project is hard to control (I know you
don't like control, I believe you may not like out of control, then
control it), it's a good idea to do the work as you said, narrow your
efforts to framework-only, then the framework would play the role of
tomcat project, OFBiz as the Jakarta, applications and specailpurposes
as the subprojects (including the ex-subprojects) in Jakarta.
In other words, if even you don't know what the next version of OFBiz
would be, how could the others know?
Versioning means promising, means roadmap, means you know, and then we
know, everyone knows where we are going. Then the community can unit
around you, and costomers will put resources into the real projects
based on OFBiz (this is the key reason why I say too much here:)).
Though my tone is not that kind. below are what we will open to the
community for 2009 as a promising (all we promised for 2008 come to
true):
1. Update OFBiz-jBPM component to jBPM 3.3.2 or later and OFBiz trunk.
2. Update OFBiz-LDAP-CAS to support LDAP membership and alias setting.
3. Develop OFBiz-SAML to support SAML(may not the latest SAML 2.0).
4. Develop OFBiz-OpenID
5. Update OFBiz-OpenOCES
6. Develop OFBiz-Lucene-SearchPipeline
7. Continue the OFBiz Chinese localization
Regards,
Shi Yusen/Beijing Langhua Ltd.
Re: My Notes From OFBiz Symposium at ApacheCon US 2008 - Main Theme: Organizing Ourselves
Posted by Adrian Crum <ad...@yahoo.com>.
--- On Sat, 11/15/08, David E Jones <da...@hotwaxmedia.com> wrote:
> Personally I know I've left a wake of unfinished
> projects where I tried to recruit others and identify a goal
> to work towards, like the framework improvements and
> framework-only release (a starting point for higher level
> releases, something easier). As soon as I got involved in
> increased workload, moving, and organizing and preparing for
> ApacheCon and such I stopped working on it... and so did
> everyone else!
I still want to help out with that, btw. Like you, I got busy with other things. I have some framework release related Jira issues out there that I still intend to work on.
-Adrian
Re: My Notes From OFBiz Symposium at ApacheCon US 2008 - Main Theme: Organizing Ourselves
Posted by David E Jones <da...@hotwaxmedia.com>.
On Nov 15, 2008, at 4:27 PM, David E Jones wrote:
>
> On Nov 15, 2008, at 3:09 PM, Shi Yusen wrote:
>
>> +1.
>>
>> The reason is simple: nobody takes the role of project manager in
>> OFBiz.
>>
>> When Redhat aquired JBoss, I found almost every project had a new
>> project manager who really helped the projects released more and more
>> predictable.
>>
>> At the beginning as TLP, Jacopo Cappellato looked like preparing the
>> release version. And when he joined HotwaxMedia, he's missing I
>> guess.
>>
>> Someone in the PMC should stand out. Jacques Le Roux or Scott Gray?
>>
>> PMC, programmers meeting committee? If so, it's a quite pitty for
>> an ERP
>> platform. :)
>>
>> Kind Regards,
>>
>> Shi Yusen/Beijing Langhua Ltd.
>
> OFBiz is not commercial software with paid developers. JBoss may be
> available under an open source license, but it is developed under a
> commercial model, not a community-driven model like OFBiz.
>
> In the case of a community-driven software project, what would a
> project manager do? Who would he/she boss around? Who would be
> accountable for delivery and how would that accountability be
> enforced?
I clicked on "Send" too quickly...
I hope I'm not getting into revisionist history, but my experience
with community-driven software so far is that if someone does propose
something and try to recruit others to work on it then it usually
fails. Generally the champion of the effort has to work on it
themselves, and keep working on it until others start _using_ it, and
then they will get involved with improving and extending it. It's just
that simple.
Personally I know I've left a wake of unfinished projects where I
tried to recruit others and identify a goal to work towards, like the
framework improvements and framework-only release (a starting point
for higher level releases, something easier). As soon as I got
involved in increased workload, moving, and organizing and preparing
for ApacheCon and such I stopped working on it... and so did everyone
else!
With new things I'm trying to push, like adoption of open standards
and building some requirements and designs that we can base future
enhancements and extensions of OFBiz on, my plan is to work on them
personally as much as I can and do so until others join in.
That's how things get done in community-driven projects: by
leadership. That's how everything in OFBiz has been done. Someone lead
the way, and others joined in... hundreds of times in the last 7.5
years on hundreds of parts of OFBiz. There is a big difference between
leaders and manager, and what self-organizing communities need is
leadership, not management. That's the meritocracy way.
-David
Re: My Notes From OFBiz Symposium at ApacheCon US 2008 - Main Theme: Organizing Ourselves
Posted by David E Jones <da...@hotwaxmedia.com>.
On Nov 15, 2008, at 3:09 PM, Shi Yusen wrote:
> +1.
>
> The reason is simple: nobody takes the role of project manager in
> OFBiz.
>
> When Redhat aquired JBoss, I found almost every project had a new
> project manager who really helped the projects released more and more
> predictable.
>
> At the beginning as TLP, Jacopo Cappellato looked like preparing the
> release version. And when he joined HotwaxMedia, he's missing I guess.
>
> Someone in the PMC should stand out. Jacques Le Roux or Scott Gray?
>
> PMC, programmers meeting committee? If so, it's a quite pitty for an
> ERP
> platform. :)
>
> Kind Regards,
>
> Shi Yusen/Beijing Langhua Ltd.
OFBiz is not commercial software with paid developers. JBoss may be
available under an open source license, but it is developed under a
commercial model, not a community-driven model like OFBiz.
In the case of a community-driven software project, what would a
project manager do? Who would he/she boss around? Who would be
accountable for delivery and how would that accountability be enforced?
-David