Re: [Phpgroupware-developers] Project Structure

[Lars Kneschke(priv.)]

Dan Kuykendall <address@hidden> schrieb: 
>Dave Hall wrote:
>
>> We recognise that the "core
>> team" are the people who have made major contributions to the
>project in the
>> past, but in our opinions this does not give them the right to
>continue to
>> control the direction of the project and its contributors.
>
>Yes, we have made major contributions in the past and still continue
>to 
>make many. But you are wrong to think that this does not give us the
>right to control the direction of the project. Because we wrote the
>VAST 
>majority of the code, the trademarked name, the domain and savannah
>and 
>sourceforge projects, we have every right morally and legally to
>control 
>the direction of this project.

I fear that you have this opinion. As you say, you "wrote". It's a long time
ago, that you contributed something important. Jengo and skeeter too. phpGW
would not be that nice as it is, without the work of the other developers.
They fixed many,many bugs and improved many apps/api in the past. Without
that your code would be unuseable today.

Your opinnion to this topic makes we very angry. You have legally right on
your site. Morally not! You just ignore the work of all other contributors.
But most of us live in free countries, where anyone can have it is oppinion.

>> "Core Team" Restructure
>> We propose that the "Coordination Team" or CT (formerly know as the
>"core
>> team") is elected for a term of 12 months, by the active
>contributors to the
>> project.
>
>In concept this isnt entirely a bad idea. However, none of the current
>core team is going to submit to a solution that would allow several 
>jonny come latelys to vote us out of our own project. It just isnt
>going 
>to happen. I also want to know what "active contributors" means? Who
>decides who is active or not? Who decides what consitutes a
>contribution?

common sense is the key. You know how communitys work togehter. There become
allways some people "leaders", because they do important work for the
project. No one will vote you out, if you do important work for the project.
If you don't do important work, no one will vote for you.

>> The role of these people is to coordinate the project for the
>period
>> they are elected and take
>> responsibility for the day to day operation of the project. We feel
>that
>> there should be 7 positions and each has an area of _primary_
>responsibility -
>> these areas being:
>> 
>>     * API
>>     * Applications
>>     * Support
>>     * Internationalisation/Translations
>>     * Documentation
>>     * Colloboration
>>     * Sponsored Development
>
>This group of seven will not work out well. Its a good start, but the
>API is not easy and having only one person assigned to this is not a
>good idea. Also its not really fair to have someone who is responsible
>for internationlisation to be on equal grounds with the API person.

The translator person is responsible for the translation. The api person for
the api. Both are leaders for theire(?) own area. I don't see why this
should be problem. Having a good translation is important as a good api.

>> If a developer is "AWOL" for more than 3 months, their position
>would be
>> declared vacant and a by election conducted to elect a new person
>their
>> position. We acknowledge that all contributors need a break from
>time to time, but
>> they must notify the project of this and make satisfactory
>arrangements for
>> their period of absense.
>
>What do you consider "AWOL"?
>This is one thing that pisses me off. I answer emails sent to me. I try 
>and follow the mailing list. But if I dont show up in IRC I get 
>considered "AWOL", without even someone sending me an email. I have
>seen 
>a couple of you say I "disappeared" and have blamed me for holding back 
>progress. And yet I havent recieved a single email asking me about the
>issue.
>This is the kind of crap that is going to continue to make me oppose
>any such lame schemes.
>
Sorry Dan! We don't write this make you angry. We have the feeling that you
are not responsible. I can remeber how long it did take to get write access
to the api again. It is also bad when we can't remove cvs locks, but you can
,but we can't reach you. It is also bad when you not activly join
discussions on the devel list. 
Yout want to be a leader. That is ok! But please act like a leader. It is
not part of the normal developers to search for the leader.

>
>I am not going to assign my code away. I was planning to in the past,
>but with this type of crap turning up it will be a cold day in hell 
>before it happens. Same for the phpgroupware.org domain.

Ok! This is a clear statement. 

>> We propose that for the first 3 months of a contributor being added
>to the
>> project that they will be on a "probation period", during which time
>they can
>> participate in discussions, but do not have voting rights. The
>probation
>> period is to protect the project from being stacked by those who
>wish to take
>> over. Also after 1 months of un notified inactivity a contributor
>would lose
>> their voting rights, and have to serve a 3 months probabation period
>on return
>> or after 3 months of inactivity they would
>> lose the title of contributor.
>
>Again, who decides what consitutes a contribution worthy of the
>status? 
>What consititues inactivity? IRC time?

common sense of the community again! I'm to lazy to give examples. I think
anyone can think of good examples.

>> One issue which we
>> feel should involve the community is the db abstraction layer -
>phplib vs PEAR
>> vs ADOdb.
>
>This has been discussed at length in email. I spent about 200 hours 
>invisigating PEAR, I even became a PEAR contributor in the process. 
>However it will not work well in the phpGW structure, and redesigning
>
>phpGW to work with PEAR would be a major hassle.
>ADOdb is nifty and such, but again it is not worth doing since our 
>current DB abstraction works just fine.

That our current DB abstraction layer works just fine is not correct. Until
some days ago, we had no maintainer for it(now mdean seems to be back) and
it does not create additional indexes, which is a big perfomance problem.
PEAR or ADOdb would take the burden of maintaining the db classes from us.
But mdean is back now!

>> A poll of contributors could be conducted in the devteam install
>> on phpgroupware.org - with documents outlining the pros and cons of
>each side
>> of the debate being on the wiki.
>
>You keep flipping back and forth. First you say there is a leadership
>team, which indicated a representative republic type structure.. now
>you 
>are saying that some things would be done by popular vote. This is 
>pretty lame, because most contributors are not "coders". So why does
>someone who helps translate to spanish have the same vote as someone
>who works in the API or core apps?
A translator is important to. Who says that i can't code php, just because i
 translate phpgw to german? Some things just needs discussion, to find the
pros and the cons. At least the core team make the last decission.

>
>> A proposed change to the API would need to documented on the wiki,
>with
>> contributors would be notified on the developer list of the
>proposal, and given
>> 1-2 weeks to comment on it. The final version of the document would
>then be
>> agreed on. A developer or team of developers would then be assigned
>to the
>> task. The developers will be expected to update the wiki with
>progress on their
>> development.
>
>I assume you would only want this for major changes to the API. It
>seems 
>like your starting to create too much management overhead.

Sure. It is not good create to much administrative overhead.

>> We also feel that the CT does not have the power to make decisions
>without
>> involving the community. Where possible the community should be the
>ones who
>> make the decisions not the CT.
>
>OK. Now you have cleared up the limit of the CT. Basicly you want it
>run 
>  by popular vote of the contributors. This is terribly flawed because
>people outside of the issue are of equal vote.

Where possible! SOme fundamental things should be resolved in the community.
Example: Should we switch to support only php 4.3.0? 
Such a important should be discussed in the public.

>> Conclusion
>> We feel that all active contributors to the project should be the
>ones who
>> control its destiny, not a group of former developers.
>
>This is just wrong. Not all contributions are equal. Maybe this isnt
>"politically correct" to say, but its the truth. Each member of
>current 
>core team has individually contributed more than all others combined.
>I 
>think its handy to have stuff translated to spanish, but thats just
>not 
>compariable to somewhere around 20,000 lines of code and about 3500 
>hours which I have personally pumped into phpGW.

I do not agree with you.

>> We think the structure
>> outlined above is heading in the right direction, but this is not a
>final
>> proposal - please contribute to it here or on the wiki (see
>> http://phpgroupware.org/wiki/restructure ). This is only a draft
>document, we seek your input
>> into the future direction of the project.
>
>Its an interesting discussion. But as it is setup now I will simply
>not 
>agree. I will pull back control of the project and force it to fork 
>before it will even come close.

The idea of this document was to make a fork not needed. I think it is wrong
to go this way. It will only split user- and developerbase, which is not
good for any project.
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