Re: [eGroupWare-users] Community support and Stylite's EGroupware developer

Oscar_van_Eijk-3 2009-03-14 15:50:33 UTC #1

Hi all,

As we all can see, eGroupWare is getting more and more a Stylite
’brand’.
Personally, I think that’s perfect, since I agree eGW does need better
professional support and Stylite does put a lot of effort in it.
However, as a developer I’m not sure what that means for the community:

Is eGroupWare still being considered a community?
Is the constitution still valid?
What is the current role of the project admins?

With 1.6 being out and no roadmap for 1.8 yet, I’m curious how you all
see the future.

Maybe the time has come for new developer days…

Oscar

Ralf_Becker_6 2009-03-15 08:09:57 UTC #2

Hi Oscar,

this are all valid questions and I was asked similar ones by Jaytraxx
(Christian Binder), the notification maintainer:

If eGroupware has a community or not and how active it is, is nothing
Stylite decides. We definitely do NOT want to stop the eGroupware community.

What we want and did in the last few month, is that eGroupware users
clearly recognise Stylite as the by far biggest contributor to the
project. If we do the majority of the development, we also have to be
visible as such. Before Stylite was seen as one of many contributors and
a lot of eGroupware uses did not even know about Stylite and it’s
contribution to the project. So when they looked for services around
eGroupware, they seen Stylite as anyone else, or even worse not being
related to the project.

Having said all that: we respect the constitution of the project and the
contribution of the other project-members and developers. The role of
the project administrators has not changed and is defined by the
constitution.

All previous roadmaps have been a wiki page, where every contributor
could add his plans. That page simply have not been created, but
everyone is free to do so and start adding his plans. Stylite has a
short- and a long-term roadmap, but we’ve been to busy lately to publish
it. It also has to do with one of the philosophies of Stylite: only
publish what we archived and not everything we can imagine.

Maybe a new developer day is a good starting point, to share our plans
and revive the developer community.

Ralf

Oscar van Eijk schrieb:

Hi all,

As we all can see, eGroupWare is getting more and more a Stylite ‘brand’.
Personally, I think that’s perfect, since I agree eGW does need better
professional support and Stylite does put a lot of effort in it.
However, as a developer I’m not sure what that means for the community:

Is eGroupWare still being considered a community?

Is the constitution still valid?

What is the current role of the project admins?

With 1.6 being out and no roadmap for 1.8 yet, I’m curious how you all
see the future.

Maybe the time has come for new developer days…

Oscar

Being questioned by our customers and many EGroupware users, regarding
support services in the EGroupware forum, we want to state the relation
of the user forum and the commercial support of Stylite’s EGroupware
Developers.

Stylite’s EGroupware developers are members of the project community
and involved in the user forum. They analyse problems and requests from
users worldwide, commiting solutions to the current code base.

Stylite’s development team works professionally fulltime on
EGroupware. In general Stylite doesn’t reply to support requests in
the user forum, but provides information and gives feedback to actual
EGroupware issues and software development.

Stylite offers support services for customers worldwide, regarding
EGroupware operation, training, customisation and linux engineering.
Customers are in direct touch with Stylite’s EGroupware developers and
system experts.

Discussion and exchange with other EGroupware developers takes place
in the developer forum.

The reason for a modified strategy of Stylite’s EGroupware developers
and in particular mine is, that the further development of the software
needs sustainability and appropriate time resources.

With regard to this purpose,

we’ll give Stylite’s EGroupware developers as much resources as
possible for the further development of the software.

we’ll support companies and organisations individually, on base of
Stylite’s support packages, by our developers and system experts.

we approve expressly the forum as a exchange platform for EGroupware
users and will get involved with general announcements and informations
as mentioned above.

Ralf
–
Ralf Becker
Director Software Development

Stylite GmbH
[open style of IT]

Morschheimer Strasse 15
67292 Kirchheimbolanden

fon +49 (0) 6352 70629-0
fax +49 (0) 6352 70629-30
mailto: rb@stylite.de

www.stylite.de
www.egroupware.org

Geschäftsführer Andre Keller, Nigel John Vickers,
Gudrun K. Müller und Ralf Becker
Registergericht Kaiserslautern HRB 12087

Apps built with the Adobe® Flex® framework and Flex Builder™ are
powering Web 2.0 with engaging, cross-platform capabilities. Quickly and
easily build your RIAs with Flex Builder, the Eclipse™based development
software that enables intelligent coding and step-through debugging.
Download the free 60 day trial. http://p.sf.net/sfu/www-adobe-com

eGroupWare-developers mailing list
eGroupWare-developers@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/egroupware-developers

Oscar_van_Eijk-3 2009-03-15 11:00:10 UTC #3

Hi Ralf,

This answer is clear to me, but it is an answer from Stylite, not from
you as a project admin.
As I said before, IMHO it’s nothing but fair Stylite profiling itself as
the sponsor/contributor it is, personally I don’t have any objections
against that.
What I do have problems with, is the fact there’s a long- and short term
roadmap we don’t know about, which actually means there’s a (long term)
strategy in which the community isn’t involved. That makes it difficult,
if not impossible, to start adding new apps for example; if the
community creates new additions based on eTemplate as it is now, but in
the meanwhile eTemplate is being replaced/modified/whatever using e.g.
QCodo, we’re putting effort in something not compatible with plans we
don’t know about.
And what about the commercial modules being developed by Stylite you
mentioned in another mail today; what if another developer creates a
free module with exactly the same functionality? That kinda conflict
won’t help the community, Stylite nor the users…

No serious open source can survive on the long term without commercial
backup, but neither with a community being left ignorant. With 2 admins
being totally invisible and 1 admin wearing 2 caps, I think it’s time to
put some effort in the community again and start drawing up a new
roadmap that’s clear to all of us.

Just my 2c…
Oscar

MichalS 2009-03-15 11:59:27 UTC #4

Hi!

I am not a developer. My only contribution to the project is creating and maintainig the czech translation. I always believed in the future of open source supported by commercial organizations that provide services related to the application and that’s why I agree with Styllite’s promotion. But if Stylite has not enough resources to support eGW community I suggest to provide others the tools to contribute. Would it be possible to setup some kind of fund for financing community development? Companies that provide eGW support and volunteers could donate to the project or adopt programmers.

Michal

tt_oscar:

Hi Ralf,

This answer is clear to me, but it is an answer from Stylite, not from
you as a project admin.
As I said before, IMHO it’s nothing but fair Stylite profiling itself as
the sponsor/contributor it is, personally I don’t have any objections
against that.
What I do have problems with, is the fact there’s a long- and short term
roadmap we don’t know about, which actually means there’s a (long term)
strategy in which the community isn’t involved. That makes it difficult,
if not impossible, to start adding new apps for example; if the
community creates new additions based on eTemplate as it is now, but in
the meanwhile eTemplate is being replaced/modified/whatever using e.g.
QCodo, we’re putting effort in something not compatible with plans we
don’t know about.
And what about the commercial modules being developed by Stylite you
mentioned in another mail today; what if another developer creates a
free module with exactly the same functionality? That kinda conflict
won’t help the community, Stylite nor the users…

No serious open source can survive on the long term without commercial
backup, but neither with a community being left ignorant. With 2 admins
being totally invisible and 1 admin wearing 2 caps, I think it’s time to
put some effort in the community again and start drawing up a new
roadmap that’s clear to all of us.

Just my 2c…
Oscar

On Sun, 2009-03-15 at 09:09 +0100, Ralf Becker wrote:

Hi Oscar,

this are all valid questions and I was asked similar ones by Jaytraxx
(Christian Binder), the notification maintainer:

If eGroupware has a community or not and how active it is, is nothing
Stylite decides. We definitely do NOT want to stop the eGroupware community.

What we want and did in the last few month, is that eGroupware users
clearly recognise Stylite as the by far biggest contributor to the
project. If we do the majority of the development, we also have to be
visible as such. Before Stylite was seen as one of many contributors and
a lot of eGroupware uses did not even know about Stylite and it’s
contribution to the project. So when they looked for services around
eGroupware, they seen Stylite as anyone else, or even worse not being
related to the project.

Having said all that: we respect the constitution of the project and the
contribution of the other project-members and developers. The role of
the project administrators has not changed and is defined by the
constitution.

All previous roadmaps have been a wiki page, where every contributor
could add his plans. That page simply have not been created, but
everyone is free to do so and start adding his plans. Stylite has a
short- and a long-term roadmap, but we’ve been to busy lately to publish
it. It also has to do with one of the philosophies of Stylite: only
publish what we archived and not everything we can imagine.

Maybe a new developer day is a good starting point, to share our plans
and revive the developer community.

Ralf

Oscar van Eijk schrieb:

Hi all,

As we all can see, eGroupWare is getting more and more a Stylite ‘brand’.
Personally, I think that’s perfect, since I agree eGW does need better
professional support and Stylite does put a lot of effort in it.
However, as a developer I’m not sure what that means for the community:

Is eGroupWare still being considered a community?

Is the constitution still valid?

What is the current role of the project admins?

With 1.6 being out and no roadmap for 1.8 yet, I’m curious how you all
see the future.

Maybe the time has come for new developer days…

Oscar

On Fri, 2009-03-06 at 21:16 +0100, Ralf Becker wrote:

Being questioned by our customers and many EGroupware users, regarding
support services in the EGroupware forum, we want to state the relation
of the user forum and the commercial support of Stylite’s EGroupware
Developers.

Stylite’s EGroupware developers are members of the project community
and involved in the user forum. They analyse problems and requests from
users worldwide, commiting solutions to the current code base.

Stylite’s development team works professionally fulltime on
EGroupware. In general Stylite doesn’t reply to support requests in
the user forum, but provides information and gives feedback to actual
EGroupware issues and software development.

Stylite offers support services for customers worldwide, regarding
EGroupware operation, training, customisation and linux engineering.
Customers are in direct touch with Stylite’s EGroupware developers and
system experts.

Discussion and exchange with other EGroupware developers takes place
in the developer forum.

The reason for a modified strategy of Stylite’s EGroupware developers
and in particular mine is, that the further development of the software
needs sustainability and appropriate time resources.

With regard to this purpose,

we’ll give Stylite’s EGroupware developers as much resources as
possible for the further development of the software.

we’ll support companies and organisations individually, on base of
Stylite’s support packages, by our developers and system experts.

we approve expressly the forum as a exchange platform for EGroupware
users and will get involved with general announcements and informations
as mentioned above.

Ralf
–
Ralf Becker
Director Software Development

Stylite GmbH
[open style of IT]

Morschheimer Strasse 15
67292 Kirchheimbolanden

fon +49 (0) 6352 70629-0
fax +49 (0) 6352 70629-30
mailto: rb@stylite.de

www.stylite.de
www.egroupware.org

Geschäftsführer Andre Keller, Nigel John Vickers,
Gudrun K. Müller und Ralf Becker
Registergericht Kaiserslautern HRB 12087

Apps built with the Adobe® Flex® framework and Flex Builder™ are
powering Web 2.0 with engaging, cross-platform capabilities. Quickly and
easily build your RIAs with Flex Builder, the Eclipse™based development
software that enables intelligent coding and step-through debugging.
Download the free 60 day trial. http://p.sf.net/sfu/www-adobe-com

eGroupWare-developers mailing list
eGroupWare-developers@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/egroupware-developers