Another Framework Vision

[Anil Patel-3]

Jacques,
I see that you mentioned few names and mine was in there as well, I am not feeling any bad or such. But wanted to say something.

Its not that I don't have time to contribute to Ofbiz. There is different problem, There has been way too many difficult interaction on email lists, Also lots of those were cases where one person in the community was not ready to cooperate.

As a company we have lost many hours of work and put in bad spot before customers because of bad code commits in trunk. IMO Ofbiz trunk gets way too many commits and not as much code review, testing, cooperative discussions.

Finally we decided to start using 10.04 branch for all our work. It turned out good in a way. Not many other then our company seems to care much about it, in a sense it good. There is less code changes to keep eye on.

But now that we are using 10.04, any code improvement/enhancement we make for our clients does not easily get contributed to Ofbiz because of additional effort required to forward port all that code and then discuss/argue with other committers.

Good thing though, Ofbiz 10.04 branch, did get lots of bug fixes contributions from my coworkers, and is now very stable code base.

Thanks and Regards
Anil Patel


On May 3, 2011, at 4:38 PM, Jacques Le Roux wrote:

> From: "David E Jones" <[hidden email]>
>> On May 3, 2011, at 11:05 AM, Jacques Le Roux wrote:
>>
>>> From: "David E Jones" <[hidden email]>
>>>> On May 3, 2011, at 8:14 AM, Jacques Le Roux wrote:
>>>>>> Is that harsh and rude? Yep. Do I care any more? Nope. Those who call it harsh or rude or unfair... they are the ones who need
>>>>>> to
>>>>>> rise to the level of quality expected instead of asking me to compromise. I'm done with that.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes maybe a more hierarchised organisation is better to reach some goals. This needs to be verified... Goal is the important
>>>>> word
>>>>> here...
>>>>
>>>> I'm not interested in an hierarchy, ie I don't want anyone "under" me that I'm responsible for and have to boss around. Even
>>>> Moqui is an unpaid volunteer effort, just more tightly controlled and the meritocracy bar is intentionally set higher. I don't
>>>> know that OFBiz would do better as an hierarchy, my opinion is that more "free market" forces are needed and to me that means
>>>> multiple competing projects.
>>>
>>> Actually, this was almost a provocation, but I did not get totally your point of view as you explain below. What I meant is some
>>> parts could me managed by some persons. We saw that sometimes a consensus is not reached. Unfortunately, collegial decisions does
>>> not work in all cases. That's a fact, a lesson we learned. So I sadly believe we (the community) definitively and ultimately need
>>> a justice of the peace. A person who makes the decision in last resort. Someone Karl Fogel called a benevolent dictator
>>> http://markmail.org/message/euy7qz47u3sjwjvm. That's what we missed those last times and Jacopo sort of complained about. On the
>>> other hand we know things are not as simple as that: there are other means which influence the decisions: blackmail, etc. This
>>> said, and to make things clear, it's about OFBiz community, not about what you are proposing with Moqui which is more
>>> decentralized and entrepreneurs oriented.
>>
>> Yes, the questions with OFBiz is what will the future look like. If OFBiz moves toward being based on Moqui, and fitting into an
>> ecosystem of projects instead of being an all-in-one project, what will be the new scope of Apache OFBiz?
>>
>> Should OFBiz be an ERP meant to be used as-is? If so, what size of business and sort of industry should it target? Alternatively,
>> should it be a system that is meant to be customized and not used as-is (which was actually my original vision for OFBiz, though I
>> know many have different visions and goals for the project)? Could OFBiz just be a base ERP system meant to be extended in other
>> projects, but is usable OOTB as well?
>>
>> This might be a good topic for a separate thread...
>
> Yes, for another day... I think most people use OFBiz as a template for their own system. It contains now almost all what it's
> needed for a web application project to be based on: there are tons of good (and not as good) examples...
>
>>>> Perhaps even for you Jacques a more distributed ecosystem of projects might even be better. If you could work on anything you
>>>> wanted, what would it be? What is your greatest strength and area of experience and could a project based on that exist (perhaps
>>>> working with others, if you want)?
>>>
>>> I have to thing about it. I really enjoyed the work we did with Sascha, last year. For the moment I just enjoy doing nothing, but
>>> I mean really NOTHING :D
>>
>> I hear you on this. One of my favorite movies is Office Space, partly because of the main character's Dream of Doing Nothing. One
>> of his lines in response to being asked what he did over a weekend was something like "I did nothing, and it was everything I
>> always thought it would be." Sometimes it's necessary to do nothing for a while, and have time to think and adjust priorities and
>> recognize desires.
>
> Yes, it's vital actually, the harder is to not culpabilise and turn back to spend energy
>
>> On the other hand, it's a great feeling to work on something that excites and motivates you. This is where free markets can really
>> allow for incredible productivity: when people are interested and excited and motivated, and feel a sense of ownership and pride
>> in what they are working on, productivity shoots through the roof. I don't know of any human motivation that can produce similar
>> results in productivity, and especially along with corresponding personal happiness and fulfillment.
>
> Motivation is the key, I totally agree with you!
>
> Jacques
>
>> -David
>>
>>
>
>

[Jacques Le Roux]

From: "Anil Patel" <[hidden email]>
> Jacques,
> I see that you mentioned few names and mine was in there as well, I am not feeling any bad or such. But wanted to say something.
>
> Its not that I don't have time to contribute to Ofbiz. There is different problem, There has been way too many difficult
> interaction on email lists, Also lots of those were cases where one person in the community was not ready to cooperate.
>
> As a company we have lost many hours of work and put in bad spot before customers because of bad code commits in trunk. IMO Ofbiz
> trunk gets way too many commits and not as much code review, testing, cooperative discussions.

I lost some time also, but fortunately not that much. I found that when I got a problem the community was responsive and I have
never been caught in a deadlock. Which component(s) was more a problem for you? I know you invested much in Prototype and maybe
Dojo, had the replacement by jQuery been a problem for you? Don't you miss it now?

> Finally we decided to start using 10.04 branch for all our work. It turned out good in a way. Not many other then our company
> seems to care much about it, in a sense it good. There is less code changes to keep eye on.

Anil, this is a bit untrue, though I'm not a company and I don't recommend R10.04 for my clients nor use it locally, you have
certainly noticed that I backport a lot of fixes in releases (not only R10.04 but also R9.04). I know you know this is extra work,
just for the sake of the community.

> But now that we are using 10.04, any code improvement/enhancement we make for our clients does not easily get contributed to Ofbiz
> because of additional effort required to forward port all that code and then discuss/argue with other committers.

Yes, that's why I still prefer trunk. Though I did not get much opportunities to contribute back these last times.

> Good thing though, Ofbiz 10.04 branch, did get lots of bug fixes contributions from my coworkers, and is now very stable code
> base.

This is certainly good for your company, and I can understand that, but less for OFBiz growth. Chris Snow asked one year ago if
OFBIz was dead, I don't think so. I simply believe it's now mature and different strategies emerge. Maybe someday you will need to
turn to the trunk again and then the flow of novelties from your company will begin again...

Thanks for your comment

Jacques

> Thanks and Regards
> Anil Patel
>
>
> On May 3, 2011, at 4:38 PM, Jacques Le Roux wrote:
>
>> From: "David E Jones" <[hidden email]>
>>> On May 3, 2011, at 11:05 AM, Jacques Le Roux wrote:
>>>
>>>> From: "David E Jones" <[hidden email]>
>>>>> On May 3, 2011, at 8:14 AM, Jacques Le Roux wrote:
>>>>>>> Is that harsh and rude? Yep. Do I care any more? Nope. Those who call it harsh or rude or unfair... they are the ones who
>>>>>>> need
>>>>>>> to
>>>>>>> rise to the level of quality expected instead of asking me to compromise. I'm done with that.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yes maybe a more hierarchised organisation is better to reach some goals. This needs to be verified... Goal is the important
>>>>>> word
>>>>>> here...
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm not interested in an hierarchy, ie I don't want anyone "under" me that I'm responsible for and have to boss around. Even
>>>>> Moqui is an unpaid volunteer effort, just more tightly controlled and the meritocracy bar is intentionally set higher. I don't
>>>>> know that OFBiz would do better as an hierarchy, my opinion is that more "free market" forces are needed and to me that means
>>>>> multiple competing projects.
>>>>
>>>> Actually, this was almost a provocation, but I did not get totally your point of view as you explain below. What I meant is
>>>> some
>>>> parts could me managed by some persons. We saw that sometimes a consensus is not reached. Unfortunately, collegial decisions
>>>> does
>>>> not work in all cases. That's a fact, a lesson we learned. So I sadly believe we (the community) definitively and ultimately
>>>> need
>>>> a justice of the peace. A person who makes the decision in last resort. Someone Karl Fogel called a benevolent dictator
>>>> http://markmail.org/message/euy7qz47u3sjwjvm. That's what we missed those last times and Jacopo sort of complained about. On
>>>> the
>>>> other hand we know things are not as simple as that: there are other means which influence the decisions: blackmail, etc. This
>>>> said, and to make things clear, it's about OFBiz community, not about what you are proposing with Moqui which is more
>>>> decentralized and entrepreneurs oriented.
>>>
>>> Yes, the questions with OFBiz is what will the future look like. If OFBiz moves toward being based on Moqui, and fitting into an
>>> ecosystem of projects instead of being an all-in-one project, what will be the new scope of Apache OFBiz?
>>>
>>> Should OFBiz be an ERP meant to be used as-is? If so, what size of business and sort of industry should it target?
>>> Alternatively,
>>> should it be a system that is meant to be customized and not used as-is (which was actually my original vision for OFBiz, though
>>> I
>>> know many have different visions and goals for the project)? Could OFBiz just be a base ERP system meant to be extended in other
>>> projects, but is usable OOTB as well?
>>>
>>> This might be a good topic for a separate thread...
>>
>> Yes, for another day... I think most people use OFBiz as a template for their own system. It contains now almost all what it's
>> needed for a web application project to be based on: there are tons of good (and not as good) examples...
>>
>>>>> Perhaps even for you Jacques a more distributed ecosystem of projects might even be better. If you could work on anything you
>>>>> wanted, what would it be? What is your greatest strength and area of experience and could a project based on that exist
>>>>> (perhaps
>>>>> working with others, if you want)?
>>>>
>>>> I have to thing about it. I really enjoyed the work we did with Sascha, last year. For the moment I just enjoy doing nothing,
>>>> but
>>>> I mean really NOTHING :D
>>>
>>> I hear you on this. One of my favorite movies is Office Space, partly because of the main character's Dream of Doing Nothing.
>>> One
>>> of his lines in response to being asked what he did over a weekend was something like "I did nothing, and it was everything I
>>> always thought it would be." Sometimes it's necessary to do nothing for a while, and have time to think and adjust priorities
>>> and
>>> recognize desires.
>>
>> Yes, it's vital actually, the harder is to not culpabilise and turn back to spend energy
>>
>>> On the other hand, it's a great feeling to work on something that excites and motivates you. This is where free markets can
>>> really
>>> allow for incredible productivity: when people are interested and excited and motivated, and feel a sense of ownership and pride
>>> in what they are working on, productivity shoots through the roof. I don't know of any human motivation that can produce similar
>>> results in productivity, and especially along with corresponding personal happiness and fulfillment.
>>
>> Motivation is the key, I totally agree with you!
>>
>> Jacques
>>
>>> -David
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>

[David E. Jones-2]

Back to the original purpose of this thread, does anyone have any feedback on Adrian's framework ideas?

-David

[Shi Jinghai-2]

+1 to Adrian.

On Wed, 2011-05-04 at 10:46 -0700, David E Jones wrote:
> Back to the original purpose of this thread, does anyone have any feedback on Adrian's framework ideas?
>
> -David

[David E. Jones-2]

Could you be more specific? Are you saying that you agree with every part of what Adrian proposed in his document?

For a reminder, it is this document I'm referring to (and that this thread was originally about):

https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBADMIN/Another+Framework+Vision

-David


On May 4, 2011, at 11:26 AM, Shi Jinghai wrote:

> +1 to Adrian.
>
> On Wed, 2011-05-04 at 10:46 -0700, David E Jones wrote:
>> Back to the original purpose of this thread, does anyone have any feedback on Adrian's framework ideas?
>>
>> -David
>
>

[Shi Jinghai-2]

Honestly I just read the document.

My +1 is only because I think Adrian can be a good host to make this
framework discussion continue.

On Wed, 2011-05-04 at 11:50 -0700, David E Jones wrote:

> Could you be more specific? Are you saying that you agree with every part of what Adrian proposed in his document?
>
> For a reminder, it is this document I'm referring to (and that this thread was originally about):
>
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBADMIN/Another+Framework+Vision
>
> -David
>
>
> On May 4, 2011, at 11:26 AM, Shi Jinghai wrote:
>
> > +1 to Adrian.
> >
> > On Wed, 2011-05-04 at 10:46 -0700, David E Jones wrote:
> >> Back to the original purpose of this thread, does anyone have any feedback on Adrian's framework ideas?
> >>
> >> -David
> >
> >
>

[Adrian Crum-3]

By the way, that document is based on real use cases. For example, my
last project was a Windows service, and I kept saying to myself "I wish
I had an entity engine jar" because I needed a database-agnostic data store.

-Adrian


On 5/4/2011 11:50 AM, David E Jones wrote:

> Could you be more specific? Are you saying that you agree with every part of what Adrian proposed in his document?
>
> For a reminder, it is this document I'm referring to (and that this thread was originally about):
>
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OFBADMIN/Another+Framework+Vision
>
> -David
>
>
> On May 4, 2011, at 11:26 AM, Shi Jinghai wrote:
>
>> +1 to Adrian.
>>
>> On Wed, 2011-05-04 at 10:46 -0700, David E Jones wrote:
>>> Back to the original purpose of this thread, does anyone have any feedback on Adrian's framework ideas?
>>>
>>> -David
>>