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From: | Alan Langford |
Subject: | Re: [phpGroupWare-developers] New developers (Was: Nested db-objects) |
Date: | Mon, 26 May 2008 11:54:25 -0400 |
User-agent: | Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (Windows/20080421) |
On 2008-05-26 07:13, Dave Hall wrote:
As someone who has been lurking here for just over three years, I have to say that this is the case for me. I first installed eGW. When I asked about making a contribution, I discovered that most of the development I was interested in was "sponsored" work being done on a different repository, and that the work would be "donated" when it was completed.A release always bring in new developers, but few stick around. Over the years I have witnessed the people coming to the project, checking it out, then realising the state of the code base and justifiably running a mile. We need to take the issue of code quality and standards seriously if we are to build a sustainable project. Cheers Dave
A clash of attitudes ensued. Then I installed pGW and left their list...I had hopes of using pGW for a small client as the base for a CRM requirement they had. In the end the project didn't go ahead -- for reasons unrelated to the code. Meanwhile I had installed it and still use it for my very limited contact management needs. I was hoping to have some spare time to make a contribution, but as Dave said, the state of the code is of no help. Neither are the ongoing clashes between members of the team.
phpGroupWare is still an interesting, even "cool" project, but over the years I have completely lost interest in making a contribution to it. It used to be that I was waiting for you guys to a new edition of the core (I can't even remember the name... newapp or something?) up to the point where I could learn about it and start making a contribution, but progress was too slow because the project is below a critical mass of contributors (I even wrote a blog post on the topic last year, in an attempt to draw developers with available time to this project).
I have since become deeply involved in content management systems and joined the "Joomla!" project. The kind of sniping that happens here would not be tolerated in J!, but that's a direct result of having many voices to keep things calm and to work out issues based on commonly agreed upon design principles. Sadly, at this point if I needed groupware functionality I would be far more inclined to implement it in Joomla than to deal with pGW... the framework is defined, stable, well coded, and increasingly tested and robust. Joomla needs some major things before it could serve as a groupware platform, but they're coming fast.
All I can suggest is that everyone take a step back and create a vision/philosophy for the project that includes and agreed-upon set of design principles that covers issues like separation of logic and storage. Perhaps then these sorts of differences can be resolved by referring to the project philosophy instead of by a running battle on the list. These open conflicts do little more than discourage potential contributors, which perpetuates the problem. There's a lot of good stuff in pGW; it's very sad to see it become a candidate for life support.
Regards, Alan
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