Next Ofbiz release
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Hi,
i would like to ask if there is a roadmap to the next Ofbiz release (or release candidate). When (based on time or based on task/functionality to be implemented) is it planned? I do not see the JIRA roadmap feature used here but I think it would be great. Thanks, - Bruno |
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http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/Release+Plan -David On Apr 10, 2008, at 11:32 AM, Bruno Busco wrote: > Hi, > i would like to ask if there is a roadmap to the next Ofbiz release > (or > release candidate). > > When (based on time or based on task/functionality to be > implemented) is it > planned? > I do not see the JIRA roadmap feature used here but I think it would > be > great. > > Thanks, > - Bruno |
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Thank you David,
so, if I well understand, having release 4.0 been released about an year ago, we should have next release soon! BTW I think that using JIRA release management features (roadmap, change log and issue fix version) will be of great help to the community. Take this as just a suggestion from a JIRA fun ;-). -Bruno 2008/4/10, David E Jones <[hidden email]>: > > > http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/Release+Plan > > -David > > > On Apr 10, 2008, at 11:32 AM, Bruno Busco wrote: > > > Hi, > > i would like to ask if there is a roadmap to the next Ofbiz release (or > > release candidate). > > > > When (based on time or based on task/functionality to be implemented) is > > it > > planned? > > I do not see the JIRA roadmap feature used here but I think it would be > > great. > > > > Thanks, > > - Bruno > > > > |
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Hi Bruno,
Could you tell us more about this ? (leasy request to avoid to read the documentation, you may reply by a RTFM if you like ;o) Thanks Jacques From: "Bruno Busco" <[hidden email]> > Thank you David, > so, if I well understand, having release 4.0 been released about an year > ago, we should have next release soon! > BTW I think that using JIRA release management features (roadmap, change log > and issue fix version) will be of great help to the community. Take this as > just a suggestion from a JIRA fun ;-). > > -Bruno > > > 2008/4/10, David E Jones <[hidden email]>: >> >> >> http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/Release+Plan >> >> -David >> >> >> On Apr 10, 2008, at 11:32 AM, Bruno Busco wrote: >> >> > Hi, >> > i would like to ask if there is a roadmap to the next Ofbiz release (or >> > release candidate). >> > >> > When (based on time or based on task/functionality to be implemented) is >> > it >> > planned? >> > I do not see the JIRA roadmap feature used here but I think it would be >> > great. >> > >> > Thanks, >> > - Bruno >> > >> >> > |
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Jacques,
what I was speaking about was the release management functionality in JIRA that I will try to resume here: - The jira project administrator defines one or more versions (say OFBIZ 4.1, OFBIZ 4.2, OFBIZ 5.0) using the "adminster project" link and then the "versions manage" link. - The release manager then can schedule all the open issues to be resolved in one of the future versions setting the "Fix version" field of each issue. By doing this when looking at the "road map" all programmed future versions are listed and for each version the list of issue that must be resolved to release the version are listed (with the status fixed, open etc.) - When all the issue that were scheduled for a version are resolved the version can be released using the the "adminster project" link and then the "versions manage" link. - When a version is released it does not appear any more in the "road map" page but in the "change log" page. Here there will always be available the list of all the version released with the list of all the issues resolved in each. When defining future versions an estimated (or desired) date can also be specified and so a clear road map is evident to everybody. Everyone will see when next version will be released and above all what issues is going to resolve and what issues are not going to be resolved becouse are scheduled for a successive release or not scheduled at all. -Bruno 2008/4/14, Jacques Le Roux <[hidden email]>: > > Hi Bruno, > > Could you tell us more about this ? (leasy request to avoid to read the > documentation, you may reply by a RTFM if you like ;o) > > Thanks > > Jacques > > From: "Bruno Busco" <[hidden email]> > > > Thank you David, > > so, if I well understand, having release 4.0 been released about an year > > ago, we should have next release soon! > > BTW I think that using JIRA release management features (roadmap, change > > log > > and issue fix version) will be of great help to the community. Take this > > as > > just a suggestion from a JIRA fun ;-). > > > > -Bruno > > > > > > 2008/4/10, David E Jones <[hidden email]>: > > > > > > > > > > > http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/Release+Plan > > > > > > -David > > > > > > > > > On Apr 10, 2008, at 11:32 AM, Bruno Busco wrote: > > > > > > > Hi, > > > > i would like to ask if there is a roadmap to the next Ofbiz release > > > (or > > > > release candidate). > > > > > > > > When (based on time or based on task/functionality to be > > > implemented) is > > > > it > > > > planned? > > > > I do not see the JIRA roadmap feature used here but I think it would > > > be > > > > great. > > > > > > > > Thanks, > > > > - Bruno > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > |
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For more information please read here
http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/docs/latest/version_management.html (this is not a RTFM !! ;-) -Bruno 2008/4/14, Bruno Busco <[hidden email]>: > > Jacques, > what I was speaking about was the release management functionality in JIRA > that I will try to resume here: > - The jira project administrator defines one or more versions (say OFBIZ > 4.1, OFBIZ 4.2, OFBIZ 5.0) using the "adminster project" link and then the > "versions manage" link. > - The release manager then can schedule all the open issues to be resolved > in one of the future versions setting the "Fix version" field of each issue. > By doing this when looking at the "road map" all programmed future versions > are listed and for each version the list of issue that must be resolved to > release the version are listed (with the status fixed, open etc.) > - When all the issue that were scheduled for a version are resolved the > version can be released using the the "adminster project" link and then the > "versions manage" link. > - When a version is released it does not appear any more in the "road map" > page but in the "change log" page. Here there will always be available the > list of all the version released with the list of all the issues resolved in > each. > > When defining future versions an estimated (or desired) date can also be > specified and so a clear road map is evident to everybody. > Everyone will see when next version will be released and above all what > issues is going to resolve and what issues are not going to be resolved > becouse are scheduled for a successive release or not scheduled at all. > > -Bruno > > 2008/4/14, Jacques Le Roux <[hidden email]>: > > > > Hi Bruno, > > > > Could you tell us more about this ? (leasy request to avoid to read the > > documentation, you may reply by a RTFM if you like ;o) > > > > Thanks > > > > Jacques > > > > From: "Bruno Busco" <[hidden email]> > > > > > Thank you David, > > > so, if I well understand, having release 4.0 been released about an > > > year > > > ago, we should have next release soon! > > > BTW I think that using JIRA release management features (roadmap, > > > change log > > > and issue fix version) will be of great help to the community. Take > > > this as > > > just a suggestion from a JIRA fun ;-). > > > > > > -Bruno > > > > > > > > > 2008/4/10, David E Jones <[hidden email]>: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/Release+Plan > > > > > > > > -David > > > > > > > > > > > > On Apr 10, 2008, at 11:32 AM, Bruno Busco wrote: > > > > > > > > > Hi, > > > > > i would like to ask if there is a roadmap to the next Ofbiz > > > > release (or > > > > > release candidate). > > > > > > > > > > When (based on time or based on task/functionality to be > > > > implemented) is > > > > > it > > > > > planned? > > > > > I do not see the JIRA roadmap feature used here but I think it > > > > would be > > > > > great. > > > > > > > > > > Thanks, > > > > > - Bruno > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > |
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In reply to this post by Bruno Busco
This is a great tool. The problem with the tool and the approach in general to this sort of release management is that it assumes top-down management of a project. In the Release Plan document it starts out by explaining the nature of OFBiz and the community that drives it. Most ASF projects, and many other open source projects, are community driven but are also more limited in scope and have either an existing specification to work toward, or have a sufficiently limited scope that the definition of targets for a release is not overly burdensome. With OFBiz it's not just the size of the scope, but the fact that the scope depends on what different contributors to OFBiz need over time, for themselves or their clients/customers. If we had a budget for driving OFBiz top-down that could result in the same volume of progress it would have to be around $5-10M per year (my own estimate of course, no Gartner or the like has deigned to look into this). In short there is a reason why OFBiz is the only real community driven open source enterprise automation project out there. The closest alternative is probably Adempiere, but that is more of a community driven effort to replace a bad vendor that has mostly stepped out of the picture. So, until someone comes along with a sufficient budget to drive things in a more "traditional" way, we have to stick with what works according to what people are willing and able to contribute. -David On Apr 14, 2008, at 7:45 AM, Bruno Busco wrote: > Jacques, > what I was speaking about was the release management functionality > in JIRA > that I will try to resume here: > - The jira project administrator defines one or more versions (say > OFBIZ > 4.1, OFBIZ 4.2, OFBIZ 5.0) using the "adminster project" link and > then the > "versions manage" link. > - The release manager then can schedule all the open issues to be > resolved > in one of the future versions setting the "Fix version" field of > each issue. > By doing this when looking at the "road map" all programmed future > versions > are listed and for each version the list of issue that must be > resolved to > release the version are listed (with the status fixed, open etc.) > - When all the issue that were scheduled for a version are resolved > the > version can be released using the the "adminster project" link and > then the > "versions manage" link. > - When a version is released it does not appear any more in the > "road map" > page but in the "change log" page. Here there will always be > available the > list of all the version released with the list of all the issues > resolved in > each. > > When defining future versions an estimated (or desired) date can > also be > specified and so a clear road map is evident to everybody. > Everyone will see when next version will be released and above all > what > issues is going to resolve and what issues are not going to be > resolved > becouse are scheduled for a successive release or not scheduled at > all. > > -Bruno > > 2008/4/14, Jacques Le Roux <[hidden email]>: >> >> Hi Bruno, >> >> Could you tell us more about this ? (leasy request to avoid to read >> the >> documentation, you may reply by a RTFM if you like ;o) >> >> Thanks >> >> Jacques >> >> From: "Bruno Busco" <[hidden email]> >> >>> Thank you David, >>> so, if I well understand, having release 4.0 been released about >>> an year >>> ago, we should have next release soon! >>> BTW I think that using JIRA release management features (roadmap, >>> change >>> log >>> and issue fix version) will be of great help to the community. >>> Take this >>> as >>> just a suggestion from a JIRA fun ;-). >>> >>> -Bruno >>> >>> >>> 2008/4/10, David E Jones <[hidden email]>: >>> >>>> >>>> >>>> http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/Release+Plan >>>> >>>> -David >>>> >>>> >>>> On Apr 10, 2008, at 11:32 AM, Bruno Busco wrote: >>>> >>>>> Hi, >>>>> i would like to ask if there is a roadmap to the next Ofbiz >>>>> release >>>> (or >>>>> release candidate). >>>>> >>>>> When (based on time or based on task/functionality to be >>>> implemented) is >>>>> it >>>>> planned? >>>>> I do not see the JIRA roadmap feature used here but I think it >>>>> would >>>> be >>>>> great. >>>>> >>>>> Thanks, >>>>> - Bruno >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>> |
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In reply to this post by Bruno Busco
Thanks Bruno,
David as well explained why OFBiz does not use such tools... yet... Jacques ----- Original Message ----- From: Bruno Busco To: [hidden email] ; Jacques Le Roux Sent: Monday, April 14, 2008 3:58 PM Subject: Re: Next Ofbiz release For more information please read here http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/docs/latest/version_management.html (this is not a RTFM !! ;-) -Bruno 2008/4/14, Bruno Busco <[hidden email]>: Jacques, what I was speaking about was the release management functionality in JIRA that I will try to resume here: - The jira project administrator defines one or more versions (say OFBIZ 4.1, OFBIZ 4.2, OFBIZ 5.0) using the "adminster project" link and then the "versions manage" link. - The release manager then can schedule all the open issues to be resolved in one of the future versions setting the "Fix version" field of each issue. By doing this when looking at the "road map" all programmed future versions are listed and for each version the list of issue that must be resolved to release the version are listed (with the status fixed, open etc.) - When all the issue that were scheduled for a version are resolved the version can be released using the the "adminster project" link and then the "versions manage" link. - When a version is released it does not appear any more in the "road map" page but in the "change log" page. Here there will always be available the list of all the version released with the list of all the issues resolved in each. When defining future versions an estimated (or desired) date can also be specified and so a clear road map is evident to everybody. Everyone will see when next version will be released and above all what issues is going to resolve and what issues are not going to be resolved becouse are scheduled for a successive release or not scheduled at all. -Bruno 2008/4/14, Jacques Le Roux <[hidden email]>: Hi Bruno, Could you tell us more about this ? (leasy request to avoid to read the documentation, you may reply by a RTFM if you like ;o) Thanks Jacques From: "Bruno Busco" <[hidden email]> Thank you David, so, if I well understand, having release 4.0 been released about an year ago, we should have next release soon! BTW I think that using JIRA release management features (roadmap, change log and issue fix version) will be of great help to the community. Take this as just a suggestion from a JIRA fun ;-). -Bruno 2008/4/10, David E Jones <[hidden email]>: http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/Release+Plan -David On Apr 10, 2008, at 11:32 AM, Bruno Busco wrote: > Hi, > i would like to ask if there is a roadmap to the next Ofbiz release (or > release candidate). > > When (based on time or based on task/functionality to be implemented) is > it > planned? > I do not see the JIRA roadmap feature used here but I think it would be > great. > > Thanks, > - Bruno > |
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In reply to this post by David E Jones
David E Jones wrote:
> This is a great tool. The problem with the tool and the approach in > general to this sort of release management is that it assumes top-down > management of a project. > > In the Release Plan document it starts out by explaining the nature of > OFBiz and the community that drives it. Most ASF projects, and many > other open source projects, are community driven but are also more > limited in scope and have either an existing specification to work > toward, or have a sufficiently limited scope that the definition of > targets for a release is not overly burdensome. > > With OFBiz it's not just the size of the scope, but the fact that the > scope depends on what different contributors to OFBiz need over time, > for themselves or their clients/customers. If we had a budget for > driving OFBiz top-down that could result in the same volume of > progress it would have to be around $5-10M per year (my own estimate > of course, no Gartner or the like has deigned to look into this). > > In short there is a reason why OFBiz is the only real community driven > open source enterprise automation project out there. The closest > alternative is probably Adempiere, but that is more of a community > driven effort to replace a bad vendor that has mostly stepped out of > the picture. > > So, until someone comes along with a sufficient budget to drive things > in a more "traditional" way, we have to stick with what works > according to what people are willing and able to contribute. shouldn't view ourselves as "just waiting for a budget to go back to a top-down model". We know that the top-down model always leads to lock in and all the other negatives of a single monolithic vendor. The Linux kernel has already shown that you can get distributed scale with multiple large vendor players giving the power assist. I think that's the future we want to be living in. -- Ean Schuessler, CTO [hidden email] 214-720-0700 x 315 Brainfood, Inc. http://www.brainfood.com |
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+1 :o)
Jacques From: "Ean Schuessler" <[hidden email]> > David E Jones wrote: >> This is a great tool. The problem with the tool and the approach in >> general to this sort of release management is that it assumes top-down >> management of a project. >> >> In the Release Plan document it starts out by explaining the nature of >> OFBiz and the community that drives it. Most ASF projects, and many >> other open source projects, are community driven but are also more >> limited in scope and have either an existing specification to work >> toward, or have a sufficiently limited scope that the definition of >> targets for a release is not overly burdensome. >> >> With OFBiz it's not just the size of the scope, but the fact that the >> scope depends on what different contributors to OFBiz need over time, >> for themselves or their clients/customers. If we had a budget for >> driving OFBiz top-down that could result in the same volume of >> progress it would have to be around $5-10M per year (my own estimate >> of course, no Gartner or the like has deigned to look into this). >> >> In short there is a reason why OFBiz is the only real community driven >> open source enterprise automation project out there. The closest >> alternative is probably Adempiere, but that is more of a community >> driven effort to replace a bad vendor that has mostly stepped out of >> the picture. >> >> So, until someone comes along with a sufficient budget to drive things >> in a more "traditional" way, we have to stick with what works >> according to what people are willing and able to contribute. > I think if we really believe in the community oriented model that we > shouldn't view ourselves as "just waiting for a budget to go back to a > top-down model". We know that the top-down model always leads to lock in > and all the other negatives of a single monolithic vendor. The Linux > kernel has already shown that you can get distributed scale with > multiple large vendor players giving the power assist. I think that's > the future we want to be living in. > > -- > Ean Schuessler, CTO > [hidden email] > 214-720-0700 x 315 > Brainfood, Inc. > http://www.brainfood.com > |
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In reply to this post by Ean Schuessler
On Apr 29, 2008, at 2:54 PM, Ean Schuessler wrote: > David E Jones wrote: >> This is a great tool. The problem with the tool and the approach in >> general to this sort of release management is that it assumes top- >> down management of a project. >> >> In the Release Plan document it starts out by explaining the nature >> of OFBiz and the community that drives it. Most ASF projects, and >> many other open source projects, are community driven but are also >> more limited in scope and have either an existing specification to >> work toward, or have a sufficiently limited scope that the >> definition of targets for a release is not overly burdensome. >> >> With OFBiz it's not just the size of the scope, but the fact that >> the scope depends on what different contributors to OFBiz need over >> time, for themselves or their clients/customers. If we had a budget >> for driving OFBiz top-down that could result in the same volume of >> progress it would have to be around $5-10M per year (my own >> estimate of course, no Gartner or the like has deigned to look into >> this). >> >> In short there is a reason why OFBiz is the only real community >> driven open source enterprise automation project out there. The >> closest alternative is probably Adempiere, but that is more of a >> community driven effort to replace a bad vendor that has mostly >> stepped out of the picture. >> >> So, until someone comes along with a sufficient budget to drive >> things in a more "traditional" way, we have to stick with what >> works according to what people are willing and able to contribute. > I think if we really believe in the community oriented model that we > shouldn't view ourselves as "just waiting for a budget to go back to > a top-down model". We know that the top-down model always leads to > lock in and all the other negatives of a single monolithic vendor. > The Linux kernel has already shown that you can get distributed > scale with multiple large vendor players giving the power assist. I > think that's the future we want to be living in. I can't speak for everyone here, but my opinion of the driving force behind OFBiz is definitely the community. My comments were not meant to imply that certain things can't happen without corporate or other sponsorship from a big enough single entity, but that such is not the nature of the OFBiz community or any community driven projects, so we have to rely on what people are willing to contribute, a la the community driven open source model. That said, one of the big objectives as I see it now for OFBiz is to develop the community, a sort of business development for open source projects. Our focus in the past for community develop has been mostly around fostering and encouraging contributors. Now that we have a strong framework and generic business artifacts base in order for adoption of OFBiz to grow we need stronger service providers and a wider community of users, whether or not they also participate as contributors. My reasoning behind that is that most enterprise (and other) products are created and driven by a central company and to a large extent it is the reputation and name of that company that drives people to accept and desire the software offered. While OFBiz itself can be a brand that we as a community promote, OFBiz itself has no funds for marketing or evangelism, leaving the burden of those efforts to the community, to whoever wants to contribute such things. In order for large companies to use OFBiz on a wider basis they need a reputation and name to sell to stakeholders in their organization. Eventually I hope that OFBiz will have such a name on its own, but for now that's sadly not the case. In short if we can work together to attract larger services organizations to the OFBiz community and to grow services organizations working based on OFBiz it will open things up for the next stage of growth and progress for the project. Right now there are large services organizations using OFBiz, but not advertising such or proposing it to their clients so much, partly because of limited internal skilled people available (from what I can tell...). Most of their projects are because their clients are requesting OFBiz, but the services organizations are not recommending it. Some examples I'm aware of include Euro/Amer companies like Accenture and Indian companies like TCS, Satyam, etc. I'm not sure if these companies are used to recommending solutions and doing marketing, but they are the largest organizations involved with OFBiz (aside from end-users) and because OFBiz doesn't have it's own marketing budget and coordinated efforts, the service providers are the only ones with a sufficient commercial interest to invest in this. Now, if we could get press attention even though we don't have money to push it we might make some great progress. However, and this might be based on my jaded view of the world, but most press organizations talk about what is making money, even in the open source world. Apache gets in the news sometimes because of games played with Sun and others, and because of large user bases for lower level tools in many cases. Anyway, this is a big effort going forward that I've been thinking about lately, ie the business development around OFBiz... not so much of OFBiz itself as that only applies so much, but around OFBiz. That said one of our big tools for that is to do GA binary releases and make a big stink about them. That's probably the strongest tool any open source project has. To start that off I'd like to focus on the framework and do a release branch and a GA binary release of it. After that we'd move on to the base applications along with the framework. For the framework itself the things that we need help with and to consider are: 1. is there anything in the framework that we should or want to clean up before we do a release and "set things in stone" more than they are now? 2. are there new features that we've been talking about for while that we should just develop and include? (the entity field automatic auditing feature is one I decided to spend a couple of hours adding yesterday; LDAP auth OOTB would be another nice one to add, and I'm sure there are more) 3. are there critical bugs or security holes we should fix? (one thing that comes to mind is tools and default behavior where applicable to protect against XSS/cross-site-scripting) 4. who can help with this? who can help test and write unit tests for the framework? who can help implement new features and fix bugs and such? What we really need here from contributors is pro-active effort. If you'd like to help but you're not sure what to work on you can ask, but please be sensitive about requesting assistance or mentoring from core developers or other contributors as that may keep them from doing things that can be directly contributed. In other words, we need people who can help get this done and while we're at it if there are others who want to get involved please do in a pro-active, self- motivated way. BTW, sorry for hijacking your comment Ean... I've been thinking about this a lot lately and responding to your comment seemed to flow into this. -David |
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David,
I totally agree with your vision, the purpose of my original proposal to use the JIRA roadmap feature was just to have a clear understanding of your points 1), 2) and 3) So that, day by day, everyone can clearly see what the community has decided to "clean up before we do a release", "just develop and include" and "critical bugs or security holes we should fix". Creating a JIRA version (even for the framework only), selecting issues and scheduling them for that version is just how jira helps us to do your point 1), 2) and 3). -Bruno 2008/4/30 David E Jones <[hidden email]>: > > On Apr 29, 2008, at 2:54 PM, Ean Schuessler wrote: > > > David E Jones wrote: > > > > > This is a great tool. The problem with the tool and the approach in > > > general to this sort of release management is that it assumes top-down > > > management of a project. > > > > > > In the Release Plan document it starts out by explaining the nature of > > > OFBiz and the community that drives it. Most ASF projects, and many other > > > open source projects, are community driven but are also more limited in > > > scope and have either an existing specification to work toward, or have a > > > sufficiently limited scope that the definition of targets for a release is > > > not overly burdensome. > > > > > > With OFBiz it's not just the size of the scope, but the fact that the > > > scope depends on what different contributors to OFBiz need over time, for > > > themselves or their clients/customers. If we had a budget for driving OFBiz > > > top-down that could result in the same volume of progress it would have to > > > be around $5-10M per year (my own estimate of course, no Gartner or the like > > > has deigned to look into this). > > > > > > In short there is a reason why OFBiz is the only real community driven > > > open source enterprise automation project out there. The closest alternative > > > is probably Adempiere, but that is more of a community driven effort to > > > replace a bad vendor that has mostly stepped out of the picture. > > > > > > So, until someone comes along with a sufficient budget to drive things > > > in a more "traditional" way, we have to stick with what works according to > > > what people are willing and able to contribute. > > > > > I think if we really believe in the community oriented model that we > > shouldn't view ourselves as "just waiting for a budget to go back to a > > top-down model". We know that the top-down model always leads to lock in and > > all the other negatives of a single monolithic vendor. The Linux kernel has > > already shown that you can get distributed scale with multiple large vendor > > players giving the power assist. I think that's the future we want to be > > living in. > > > > I can't speak for everyone here, but my opinion of the driving force > behind OFBiz is definitely the community. My comments were not meant to > imply that certain things can't happen without corporate or other > sponsorship from a big enough single entity, but that such is not the nature > of the OFBiz community or any community driven projects, so we have to rely > on what people are willing to contribute, a la the community driven open > source model. > > That said, one of the big objectives as I see it now for OFBiz is to > develop the community, a sort of business development for open source > projects. Our focus in the past for community develop has been mostly around > fostering and encouraging contributors. Now that we have a strong framework > and generic business artifacts base in order for adoption of OFBiz to grow > we need stronger service providers and a wider community of users, whether > or not they also participate as contributors. > > My reasoning behind that is that most enterprise (and other) products are > created and driven by a central company and to a large extent it is the > reputation and name of that company that drives people to accept and desire > the software offered. > > While OFBiz itself can be a brand that we as a community promote, OFBiz > itself has no funds for marketing or evangelism, leaving the burden of those > efforts to the community, to whoever wants to contribute such things. In > order for large companies to use OFBiz on a wider basis they need a > reputation and name to sell to stakeholders in their organization. > Eventually I hope that OFBiz will have such a name on its own, but for now > that's sadly not the case. > > In short if we can work together to attract larger services organizations > to the OFBiz community and to grow services organizations working based on > OFBiz it will open things up for the next stage of growth and progress for > the project. > > Right now there are large services organizations using OFBiz, but not > advertising such or proposing it to their clients so much, partly because of > limited internal skilled people available (from what I can tell...). Most of > their projects are because their clients are requesting OFBiz, but the > services organizations are not recommending it. Some examples I'm aware of > include Euro/Amer companies like Accenture and Indian companies like TCS, > Satyam, etc. > > I'm not sure if these companies are used to recommending solutions and > doing marketing, but they are the largest organizations involved with OFBiz > (aside from end-users) and because OFBiz doesn't have it's own marketing > budget and coordinated efforts, the service providers are the only ones with > a sufficient commercial interest to invest in this. > > Now, if we could get press attention even though we don't have money to > push it we might make some great progress. However, and this might be based > on my jaded view of the world, but most press organizations talk about what > is making money, even in the open source world. Apache gets in the news > sometimes because of games played with Sun and others, and because of large > user bases for lower level tools in many cases. > > Anyway, this is a big effort going forward that I've been thinking about > lately, ie the business development around OFBiz... not so much of OFBiz > itself as that only applies so much, but around OFBiz. > > That said one of our big tools for that is to do GA binary releases and > make a big stink about them. That's probably the strongest tool any open > source project has. > > To start that off I'd like to focus on the framework and do a release > branch and a GA binary release of it. After that we'd move on to the base > applications along with the framework. For the framework itself the things > that we need help with and to consider are: > > 1. is there anything in the framework that we should or want to clean up > before we do a release and "set things in stone" more than they are now? > > 2. are there new features that we've been talking about for while that we > should just develop and include? (the entity field automatic auditing > feature is one I decided to spend a couple of hours adding yesterday; LDAP > auth OOTB would be another nice one to add, and I'm sure there are more) > > 3. are there critical bugs or security holes we should fix? (one thing > that comes to mind is tools and default behavior where applicable to protect > against XSS/cross-site-scripting) > > 4. who can help with this? who can help test and write unit tests for the > framework? who can help implement new features and fix bugs and such? > > What we really need here from contributors is pro-active effort. If you'd > like to help but you're not sure what to work on you can ask, but please be > sensitive about requesting assistance or mentoring from core developers or > other contributors as that may keep them from doing things that can be > directly contributed. In other words, we need people who can help get this > done and while we're at it if there are others who want to get involved > please do in a pro-active, self-motivated way. > > BTW, sorry for hijacking your comment Ean... I've been thinking about this > a lot lately and responding to your comment seemed to flow into this. > > -David > > > |
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On Apr 29, 2008, at 11:25 PM, Bruno Busco wrote: > David, > I totally agree with your vision, the purpose of my original > proposal to use > the JIRA roadmap feature was just to have a clear understanding of > your > points 1), 2) and 3) > So that, day by day, everyone can clearly see what the community has > decided > to "clean up before we do a release", "just develop and include" and > "critical bugs or security holes we should fix". > > Creating a JIRA version (even for the framework only), selecting > issues and > scheduling them for that version is just how jira helps us to do > your point > 1), 2) and 3). > > -Bruno This is somewhat of a different scenario, where I'm defining a certain scope and asking people to participate. But still, things are community driven and even if we lay out a bunch of stuff for people to work on it doesn't mean it will happen before the release or make it into it. The point of these is for people to not just propose stuff to be included, but to also DO the stuff and contribute it. So, in other words, yes everyone please do create Jira issues and make it clear that you'll be working on them... -David |
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In reply to this post by David E Jones
+1.
David mentioned a main puzzle for OFBiz: how to lower down the requirements on a OFBiz programmer. Currently, a qualified OFBiz programmer must be a superman. I think split the requirements to consultant part and programmer part may help. As we know, in large service providers, consultants contact customers and sometimes even have the power to change customers' decissions on IT platforms. For consultants, a standard OFBiz consulting proceedure is required. >From our limited pratices, perhaps fish-born diagram is an effective way to help consultants setup a bridge between OFBiz customers and OFBiz programmers. The main born is the core business process of a customer and every small born is a component in OFBiz such as order, catalog and etc. Making a room for consultants, having a room for OFBiz. BTW, here are our contribution plan of this year on OFBiz (for programmers ^_^, you can get the plan's Chinese version here: http://www.langhua.cn/jianjie/dev-plan-2008.html): 1. Digital Signature component (based on OpenOCES, coming soon) 2. Single Sign On component based on CAS 3. Continue the Simplified Chinese translation 4. Portlets based on rmiservice component 5. OFBiz + jBPM (coming soon) Regards, Shi Yusen/Beijing Langhua Ltd. 在 2008-04-29二的 22:06 -0600，David E Jones写道： > On Apr 29, 2008, at 2:54 PM, Ean Schuessler wrote: > > David E Jones wrote: > >> This is a great tool. The problem with the tool and the approach in > >> general to this sort of release management is that it assumes top- > >> down management of a project. > >> > >> In the Release Plan document it starts out by explaining the nature > >> of OFBiz and the community that drives it. Most ASF projects, and > >> many other open source projects, are community driven but are also > >> more limited in scope and have either an existing specification to > >> work toward, or have a sufficiently limited scope that the > >> definition of targets for a release is not overly burdensome. > >> > >> With OFBiz it's not just the size of the scope, but the fact that > >> the scope depends on what different contributors to OFBiz need over > >> time, for themselves or their clients/customers. If we had a budget > >> for driving OFBiz top-down that could result in the same volume of > >> progress it would have to be around $5-10M per year (my own > >> estimate of course, no Gartner or the like has deigned to look into > >> this). > >> > >> In short there is a reason why OFBiz is the only real community > >> driven open source enterprise automation project out there. The > >> closest alternative is probably Adempiere, but that is more of a > >> community driven effort to replace a bad vendor that has mostly > >> stepped out of the picture. > >> > >> So, until someone comes along with a sufficient budget to drive > >> things in a more "traditional" way, we have to stick with what > >> works according to what people are willing and able to contribute. > > I think if we really believe in the community oriented model that we > > shouldn't view ourselves as "just waiting for a budget to go back to > > a top-down model". We know that the top-down model always leads to > > lock in and all the other negatives of a single monolithic vendor. > > The Linux kernel has already shown that you can get distributed > > scale with multiple large vendor players giving the power assist. I > > think that's the future we want to be living in. > > I can't speak for everyone here, but my opinion of the driving force > behind OFBiz is definitely the community. My comments were not meant > to imply that certain things can't happen without corporate or other > sponsorship from a big enough single entity, but that such is not the > nature of the OFBiz community or any community driven projects, so we > have to rely on what people are willing to contribute, a la the > community driven open source model. > > That said, one of the big objectives as I see it now for OFBiz is to > develop the community, a sort of business development for open source > projects. Our focus in the past for community develop has been mostly > around fostering and encouraging contributors. Now that we have a > strong framework and generic business artifacts base in order for > adoption of OFBiz to grow we need stronger service providers and a > wider community of users, whether or not they also participate as > contributors. > > My reasoning behind that is that most enterprise (and other) products > are created and driven by a central company and to a large extent it > is the reputation and name of that company that drives people to > accept and desire the software offered. > > While OFBiz itself can be a brand that we as a community promote, > OFBiz itself has no funds for marketing or evangelism, leaving the > burden of those efforts to the community, to whoever wants to > contribute such things. In order for large companies to use OFBiz on a > wider basis they need a reputation and name to sell to stakeholders in > their organization. Eventually I hope that OFBiz will have such a name > on its own, but for now that's sadly not the case. > > In short if we can work together to attract larger services > organizations to the OFBiz community and to grow services > organizations working based on OFBiz it will open things up for the > next stage of growth and progress for the project. > > Right now there are large services organizations using OFBiz, but not > advertising such or proposing it to their clients so much, partly > because of limited internal skilled people available (from what I can > tell...). Most of their projects are because their clients are > requesting OFBiz, but the services organizations are not recommending > it. Some examples I'm aware of include Euro/Amer companies like > Accenture and Indian companies like TCS, Satyam, etc. > > I'm not sure if these companies are used to recommending solutions and > doing marketing, but they are the largest organizations involved with > OFBiz (aside from end-users) and because OFBiz doesn't have it's own > marketing budget and coordinated efforts, the service providers are > the only ones with a sufficient commercial interest to invest in this. > > Now, if we could get press attention even though we don't have money > to push it we might make some great progress. However, and this might > be based on my jaded view of the world, but most press organizations > talk about what is making money, even in the open source world. Apache > gets in the news sometimes because of games played with Sun and > others, and because of large user bases for lower level tools in many > cases. > > Anyway, this is a big effort going forward that I've been thinking > about lately, ie the business development around OFBiz... not so much > of OFBiz itself as that only applies so much, but around OFBiz. > > That said one of our big tools for that is to do GA binary releases > and make a big stink about them. That's probably the strongest tool > any open source project has. > > To start that off I'd like to focus on the framework and do a release > branch and a GA binary release of it. After that we'd move on to the > base applications along with the framework. For the framework itself > the things that we need help with and to consider are: > > 1. is there anything in the framework that we should or want to clean > up before we do a release and "set things in stone" more than they are > now? > > 2. are there new features that we've been talking about for while that > we should just develop and include? (the entity field automatic > auditing feature is one I decided to spend a couple of hours adding > yesterday; LDAP auth OOTB would be another nice one to add, and I'm > sure there are more) > > 3. are there critical bugs or security holes we should fix? (one thing > that comes to mind is tools and default behavior where applicable to > protect against XSS/cross-site-scripting) > > 4. who can help with this? who can help test and write unit tests for > the framework? who can help implement new features and fix bugs and > such? > > What we really need here from contributors is pro-active effort. If > you'd like to help but you're not sure what to work on you can ask, > but please be sensitive about requesting assistance or mentoring from > core developers or other contributors as that may keep them from doing > things that can be directly contributed. In other words, we need > people who can help get this done and while we're at it if there are > others who want to get involved please do in a pro-active, self- > motivated way. > > BTW, sorry for hijacking your comment Ean... I've been thinking about > this a lot lately and responding to your comment seemed to flow into > this. > > -David > > |
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Thanks for your comments Shi. This is great stuff, and looking forward to working with you more and seeing the results of these efforts. On the requirements versus implementation thing (with design in the middle), I agree that is a huge deal. It is almost impossible to expect a single person (a superman as you call it!) that can really do both the business and the technical sides of any enterprise system really well. I've spent most of that last few months working on improving and better defining these things at Hotwax Media (especially now that we have around 50 people in the company in different roles and with different expertise). I'm not sure if there is anything that can be done through OFBiz itself to help service providers do a better job with these sorts of things, but if anyone has ideas for anything we can do together to help service providers grow, let's get it on the table. I have been considering a book of some sort since I have put together enough material in the last few months to easily fill a book on the topic... -David On Apr 30, 2008, at 12:37 AM, Shi Yusen wrote: > +1. > > David mentioned a main puzzle for OFBiz: how to lower down the > requirements on a OFBiz programmer. Currently, a qualified OFBiz > programmer must be a superman. I think split the requirements to > consultant part and programmer part may help. As we know, in large > service providers, consultants contact customers and sometimes even > have > the power to change customers' decissions on IT platforms. > > For consultants, a standard OFBiz consulting proceedure is required. >> From our limited pratices, perhaps fish-born diagram is an >> effective way > to help consultants setup a bridge between OFBiz customers and OFBiz > programmers. The main born is the core business process of a customer > and every small born is a component in OFBiz such as order, catalog > and > etc. > > Making a room for consultants, having a room for OFBiz. > > BTW, here are our contribution plan of this year on OFBiz (for > programmers ^_^, you can get the plan's Chinese version here: > http://www.langhua.cn/jianjie/dev-plan-2008.html): > 1. Digital Signature component (based on OpenOCES, coming soon) > 2. Single Sign On component based on CAS > 3. Continue the Simplified Chinese translation > 4. Portlets based on rmiservice component > 5. OFBiz + jBPM (coming soon) > > Regards, > > Shi Yusen/Beijing Langhua Ltd. > > > 在 2008-04-29二的 22:06 -0600，David E Jones写道： >> On Apr 29, 2008, at 2:54 PM, Ean Schuessler wrote: >>> David E Jones wrote: >>>> This is a great tool. The problem with the tool and the approach in >>>> general to this sort of release management is that it assumes top- >>>> down management of a project. >>>> >>>> In the Release Plan document it starts out by explaining the nature >>>> of OFBiz and the community that drives it. Most ASF projects, and >>>> many other open source projects, are community driven but are also >>>> more limited in scope and have either an existing specification to >>>> work toward, or have a sufficiently limited scope that the >>>> definition of targets for a release is not overly burdensome. >>>> >>>> With OFBiz it's not just the size of the scope, but the fact that >>>> the scope depends on what different contributors to OFBiz need over >>>> time, for themselves or their clients/customers. If we had a budget >>>> for driving OFBiz top-down that could result in the same volume of >>>> progress it would have to be around $5-10M per year (my own >>>> estimate of course, no Gartner or the like has deigned to look into >>>> this). >>>> >>>> In short there is a reason why OFBiz is the only real community >>>> driven open source enterprise automation project out there. The >>>> closest alternative is probably Adempiere, but that is more of a >>>> community driven effort to replace a bad vendor that has mostly >>>> stepped out of the picture. >>>> >>>> So, until someone comes along with a sufficient budget to drive >>>> things in a more "traditional" way, we have to stick with what >>>> works according to what people are willing and able to contribute. >>> I think if we really believe in the community oriented model that we >>> shouldn't view ourselves as "just waiting for a budget to go back to >>> a top-down model". We know that the top-down model always leads to >>> lock in and all the other negatives of a single monolithic vendor. >>> The Linux kernel has already shown that you can get distributed >>> scale with multiple large vendor players giving the power assist. I >>> think that's the future we want to be living in. >> >> I can't speak for everyone here, but my opinion of the driving force >> behind OFBiz is definitely the community. My comments were not meant >> to imply that certain things can't happen without corporate or other >> sponsorship from a big enough single entity, but that such is not the >> nature of the OFBiz community or any community driven projects, so we >> have to rely on what people are willing to contribute, a la the >> community driven open source model. >> >> That said, one of the big objectives as I see it now for OFBiz is to >> develop the community, a sort of business development for open source >> projects. Our focus in the past for community develop has been mostly >> around fostering and encouraging contributors. Now that we have a >> strong framework and generic business artifacts base in order for >> adoption of OFBiz to grow we need stronger service providers and a >> wider community of users, whether or not they also participate as >> contributors. >> >> My reasoning behind that is that most enterprise (and other) products >> are created and driven by a central company and to a large extent it >> is the reputation and name of that company that drives people to >> accept and desire the software offered. >> >> While OFBiz itself can be a brand that we as a community promote, >> OFBiz itself has no funds for marketing or evangelism, leaving the >> burden of those efforts to the community, to whoever wants to >> contribute such things. In order for large companies to use OFBiz >> on a >> wider basis they need a reputation and name to sell to stakeholders >> in >> their organization. Eventually I hope that OFBiz will have such a >> name >> on its own, but for now that's sadly not the case. >> >> In short if we can work together to attract larger services >> organizations to the OFBiz community and to grow services >> organizations working based on OFBiz it will open things up for the >> next stage of growth and progress for the project. >> >> Right now there are large services organizations using OFBiz, but not >> advertising such or proposing it to their clients so much, partly >> because of limited internal skilled people available (from what I can >> tell...). Most of their projects are because their clients are >> requesting OFBiz, but the services organizations are not recommending >> it. Some examples I'm aware of include Euro/Amer companies like >> Accenture and Indian companies like TCS, Satyam, etc. >> >> I'm not sure if these companies are used to recommending solutions >> and >> doing marketing, but they are the largest organizations involved with >> OFBiz (aside from end-users) and because OFBiz doesn't have it's own >> marketing budget and coordinated efforts, the service providers are >> the only ones with a sufficient commercial interest to invest in >> this. >> >> Now, if we could get press attention even though we don't have money >> to push it we might make some great progress. However, and this might >> be based on my jaded view of the world, but most press organizations >> talk about what is making money, even in the open source world. >> Apache >> gets in the news sometimes because of games played with Sun and >> others, and because of large user bases for lower level tools in many >> cases. >> >> Anyway, this is a big effort going forward that I've been thinking >> about lately, ie the business development around OFBiz... not so much >> of OFBiz itself as that only applies so much, but around OFBiz. >> >> That said one of our big tools for that is to do GA binary releases >> and make a big stink about them. That's probably the strongest tool >> any open source project has. >> >> To start that off I'd like to focus on the framework and do a release >> branch and a GA binary release of it. After that we'd move on to the >> base applications along with the framework. For the framework itself >> the things that we need help with and to consider are: >> >> 1. is there anything in the framework that we should or want to clean >> up before we do a release and "set things in stone" more than they >> are >> now? >> >> 2. are there new features that we've been talking about for while >> that >> we should just develop and include? (the entity field automatic >> auditing feature is one I decided to spend a couple of hours adding >> yesterday; LDAP auth OOTB would be another nice one to add, and I'm >> sure there are more) >> >> 3. are there critical bugs or security holes we should fix? (one >> thing >> that comes to mind is tools and default behavior where applicable to >> protect against XSS/cross-site-scripting) >> >> 4. who can help with this? who can help test and write unit tests for >> the framework? who can help implement new features and fix bugs and >> such? >> >> What we really need here from contributors is pro-active effort. If >> you'd like to help but you're not sure what to work on you can ask, >> but please be sensitive about requesting assistance or mentoring from >> core developers or other contributors as that may keep them from >> doing >> things that can be directly contributed. In other words, we need >> people who can help get this done and while we're at it if there are >> others who want to get involved please do in a pro-active, self- >> motivated way. >> >> BTW, sorry for hijacking your comment Ean... I've been thinking about >> this a lot lately and responding to your comment seemed to flow into >> this. >> >> -David >> >> > |
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In reply to this post by David E Jones
Any other comments on this? I'd really love to get the framework shaped up and cleaned up as much as we plan to for the near future so we can release something and keep it stable for a while... Related to this, when we release the framework I really want to put some stuff together to talk it up and get the ideas in it out to the world. Part of that would be more docs and marketing material, and another part of it would be some press releases that go through the ASF public relations group. If any one or any company wants to get involved with that please speak up! I'll try to coordinate it for now, but there is certainly room for public credit and mention of contributors to the relevant materials. -David On Apr 29, 2008, at 10:06 PM, David E Jones wrote: > > On Apr 29, 2008, at 2:54 PM, Ean Schuessler wrote: >> David E Jones wrote: >>> This is a great tool. The problem with the tool and the approach >>> in general to this sort of release management is that it assumes >>> top-down management of a project. >>> >>> In the Release Plan document it starts out by explaining the >>> nature of OFBiz and the community that drives it. Most ASF >>> projects, and many other open source projects, are community >>> driven but are also more limited in scope and have either an >>> existing specification to work toward, or have a sufficiently >>> limited scope that the definition of targets for a release is not >>> overly burdensome. >>> >>> With OFBiz it's not just the size of the scope, but the fact that >>> the scope depends on what different contributors to OFBiz need >>> over time, for themselves or their clients/customers. If we had a >>> budget for driving OFBiz top-down that could result in the same >>> volume of progress it would have to be around $5-10M per year (my >>> own estimate of course, no Gartner or the like has deigned to look >>> into this). >>> >>> In short there is a reason why OFBiz is the only real community >>> driven open source enterprise automation project out there. The >>> closest alternative is probably Adempiere, but that is more of a >>> community driven effort to replace a bad vendor that has mostly >>> stepped out of the picture. >>> >>> So, until someone comes along with a sufficient budget to drive >>> things in a more "traditional" way, we have to stick with what >>> works according to what people are willing and able to contribute. >> I think if we really believe in the community oriented model that >> we shouldn't view ourselves as "just waiting for a budget to go >> back to a top-down model". We know that the top-down model always >> leads to lock in and all the other negatives of a single monolithic >> vendor. The Linux kernel has already shown that you can get >> distributed scale with multiple large vendor players giving the >> power assist. I think that's the future we want to be living in. > > I can't speak for everyone here, but my opinion of the driving force > behind OFBiz is definitely the community. My comments were not meant > to imply that certain things can't happen without corporate or other > sponsorship from a big enough single entity, but that such is not > the nature of the OFBiz community or any community driven projects, > so we have to rely on what people are willing to contribute, a la > the community driven open source model. > > That said, one of the big objectives as I see it now for OFBiz is to > develop the community, a sort of business development for open > source projects. Our focus in the past for community develop has > been mostly around fostering and encouraging contributors. Now that > we have a strong framework and generic business artifacts base in > order for adoption of OFBiz to grow we need stronger service > providers and a wider community of users, whether or not they also > participate as contributors. > > My reasoning behind that is that most enterprise (and other) > products are created and driven by a central company and to a large > extent it is the reputation and name of that company that drives > people to accept and desire the software offered. > > While OFBiz itself can be a brand that we as a community promote, > OFBiz itself has no funds for marketing or evangelism, leaving the > burden of those efforts to the community, to whoever wants to > contribute such things. In order for large companies to use OFBiz on > a wider basis they need a reputation and name to sell to > stakeholders in their organization. Eventually I hope that OFBiz > will have such a name on its own, but for now that's sadly not the > case. > > In short if we can work together to attract larger services > organizations to the OFBiz community and to grow services > organizations working based on OFBiz it will open things up for the > next stage of growth and progress for the project. > > Right now there are large services organizations using OFBiz, but > not advertising such or proposing it to their clients so much, > partly because of limited internal skilled people available (from > what I can tell...). Most of their projects are because their > clients are requesting OFBiz, but the services organizations are not > recommending it. Some examples I'm aware of include Euro/Amer > companies like Accenture and Indian companies like TCS, Satyam, etc. > > I'm not sure if these companies are used to recommending solutions > and doing marketing, but they are the largest organizations involved > with OFBiz (aside from end-users) and because OFBiz doesn't have > it's own marketing budget and coordinated efforts, the service > providers are the only ones with a sufficient commercial interest to > invest in this. > > Now, if we could get press attention even though we don't have money > to push it we might make some great progress. However, and this > might be based on my jaded view of the world, but most press > organizations talk about what is making money, even in the open > source world. Apache gets in the news sometimes because of games > played with Sun and others, and because of large user bases for > lower level tools in many cases. > > Anyway, this is a big effort going forward that I've been thinking > about lately, ie the business development around OFBiz... not so > much of OFBiz itself as that only applies so much, but around OFBiz. > > That said one of our big tools for that is to do GA binary releases > and make a big stink about them. That's probably the strongest tool > any open source project has. > > To start that off I'd like to focus on the framework and do a > release branch and a GA binary release of it. After that we'd move > on to the base applications along with the framework. For the > framework itself the things that we need help with and to consider > are: > > 1. is there anything in the framework that we should or want to > clean up before we do a release and "set things in stone" more than > they are now? > > 2. are there new features that we've been talking about for while > that we should just develop and include? (the entity field automatic > auditing feature is one I decided to spend a couple of hours adding > yesterday; LDAP auth OOTB would be another nice one to add, and I'm > sure there are more) > > 3. are there critical bugs or security holes we should fix? (one > thing that comes to mind is tools and default behavior where > applicable to protect against XSS/cross-site-scripting) > > 4. who can help with this? who can help test and write unit tests > for the framework? who can help implement new features and fix bugs > and such? > > What we really need here from contributors is pro-active effort. If > you'd like to help but you're not sure what to work on you can ask, > but please be sensitive about requesting assistance or mentoring > from core developers or other contributors as that may keep them > from doing things that can be directly contributed. In other words, > we need people who can help get this done and while we're at it if > there are others who want to get involved please do in a pro-active, > self-motivated way. > > BTW, sorry for hijacking your comment Ean... I've been thinking > about this a lot lately and responding to your comment seemed to > flow into this. > > -David > > |
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Regarding the effort to get the word out, HWM will definitely enjoy
the chance to participate in that - docs, marketing, PR. Would be great to collaborate with other individuals / organizations on any of these as well. Any interested parties, feel free to contact me individually and we could begin working on a plan. Best regards, Mike -- Mike Bates HotWax Media CEO http://www.hotwaxmedia.com cell: 801.706.9137 desk: 801.649.6245 main: 888.405.2667 On May 1, 2008, at 7:15 PM, David E Jones wrote: > > Any other comments on this? I'd really love to get the framework > shaped up and cleaned up as much as we plan to for the near future > so we can release something and keep it stable for a while... > > Related to this, when we release the framework I really want to put > some stuff together to talk it up and get the ideas in it out to the > world. Part of that would be more docs and marketing material, and > another part of it would be some press releases that go through the > ASF public relations group. If any one or any company wants to get > involved with that please speak up! I'll try to coordinate it for > now, but there is certainly room for public credit and mention of > contributors to the relevant materials. > > -David > > > On Apr 29, 2008, at 10:06 PM, David E Jones wrote: >> >> On Apr 29, 2008, at 2:54 PM, Ean Schuessler wrote: >>> David E Jones wrote: >>>> This is a great tool. The problem with the tool and the approach >>>> in general to this sort of release management is that it assumes >>>> top-down management of a project. >>>> >>>> In the Release Plan document it starts out by explaining the >>>> nature of OFBiz and the community that drives it. Most ASF >>>> projects, and many other open source projects, are community >>>> driven but are also more limited in scope and have either an >>>> existing specification to work toward, or have a sufficiently >>>> limited scope that the definition of targets for a release is not >>>> overly burdensome. >>>> >>>> With OFBiz it's not just the size of the scope, but the fact that >>>> the scope depends on what different contributors to OFBiz need >>>> over time, for themselves or their clients/customers. If we had a >>>> budget for driving OFBiz top-down that could result in the same >>>> volume of progress it would have to be around $5-10M per year (my >>>> own estimate of course, no Gartner or the like has deigned to >>>> look into this). >>>> >>>> In short there is a reason why OFBiz is the only real community >>>> driven open source enterprise automation project out there. The >>>> closest alternative is probably Adempiere, but that is more of a >>>> community driven effort to replace a bad vendor that has mostly >>>> stepped out of the picture. >>>> >>>> So, until someone comes along with a sufficient budget to drive >>>> things in a more "traditional" way, we have to stick with what >>>> works according to what people are willing and able to contribute. >>> I think if we really believe in the community oriented model that >>> we shouldn't view ourselves as "just waiting for a budget to go >>> back to a top-down model". We know that the top-down model always >>> leads to lock in and all the other negatives of a single >>> monolithic vendor. The Linux kernel has already shown that you can >>> get distributed scale with multiple large vendor players giving >>> the power assist. I think that's the future we want to be living in. >> >> I can't speak for everyone here, but my opinion of the driving >> force behind OFBiz is definitely the community. My comments were >> not meant to imply that certain things can't happen without >> corporate or other sponsorship from a big enough single entity, but >> that such is not the nature of the OFBiz community or any community >> driven projects, so we have to rely on what people are willing to >> contribute, a la the community driven open source model. >> >> That said, one of the big objectives as I see it now for OFBiz is >> to develop the community, a sort of business development for open >> source projects. Our focus in the past for community develop has >> been mostly around fostering and encouraging contributors. Now that >> we have a strong framework and generic business artifacts base in >> order for adoption of OFBiz to grow we need stronger service >> providers and a wider community of users, whether or not they also >> participate as contributors. >> >> My reasoning behind that is that most enterprise (and other) >> products are created and driven by a central company and to a large >> extent it is the reputation and name of that company that drives >> people to accept and desire the software offered. >> >> While OFBiz itself can be a brand that we as a community promote, >> OFBiz itself has no funds for marketing or evangelism, leaving the >> burden of those efforts to the community, to whoever wants to >> contribute such things. In order for large companies to use OFBiz >> on a wider basis they need a reputation and name to sell to >> stakeholders in their organization. Eventually I hope that OFBiz >> will have such a name on its own, but for now that's sadly not the >> case. >> >> In short if we can work together to attract larger services >> organizations to the OFBiz community and to grow services >> organizations working based on OFBiz it will open things up for the >> next stage of growth and progress for the project. >> >> Right now there are large services organizations using OFBiz, but >> not advertising such or proposing it to their clients so much, >> partly because of limited internal skilled people available (from >> what I can tell...). Most of their projects are because their >> clients are requesting OFBiz, but the services organizations are >> not recommending it. Some examples I'm aware of include Euro/Amer >> companies like Accenture and Indian companies like TCS, Satyam, etc. >> >> I'm not sure if these companies are used to recommending solutions >> and doing marketing, but they are the largest organizations >> involved with OFBiz (aside from end-users) and because OFBiz >> doesn't have it's own marketing budget and coordinated efforts, the >> service providers are the only ones with a sufficient commercial >> interest to invest in this. >> >> Now, if we could get press attention even though we don't have >> money to push it we might make some great progress. However, and >> this might be based on my jaded view of the world, but most press >> organizations talk about what is making money, even in the open >> source world. Apache gets in the news sometimes because of games >> played with Sun and others, and because of large user bases for >> lower level tools in many cases. >> >> Anyway, this is a big effort going forward that I've been thinking >> about lately, ie the business development around OFBiz... not so >> much of OFBiz itself as that only applies so much, but around OFBiz. >> >> That said one of our big tools for that is to do GA binary releases >> and make a big stink about them. That's probably the strongest tool >> any open source project has. >> >> To start that off I'd like to focus on the framework and do a >> release branch and a GA binary release of it. After that we'd move >> on to the base applications along with the framework. For the >> framework itself the things that we need help with and to consider >> are: >> >> 1. is there anything in the framework that we should or want to >> clean up before we do a release and "set things in stone" more than >> they are now? >> >> 2. are there new features that we've been talking about for while >> that we should just develop and include? (the entity field >> automatic auditing feature is one I decided to spend a couple of >> hours adding yesterday; LDAP auth OOTB would be another nice one to >> add, and I'm sure there are more) >> >> 3. are there critical bugs or security holes we should fix? (one >> thing that comes to mind is tools and default behavior where >> applicable to protect against XSS/cross-site-scripting) >> >> 4. who can help with this? who can help test and write unit tests >> for the framework? who can help implement new features and fix bugs >> and such? >> >> What we really need here from contributors is pro-active effort. If >> you'd like to help but you're not sure what to work on you can ask, >> but please be sensitive about requesting assistance or mentoring >> from core developers or other contributors as that may keep them >> from doing things that can be directly contributed. In other words, >> we need people who can help get this done and while we're at it if >> there are others who want to get involved please do in a pro- >> active, self-motivated way. >> >> BTW, sorry for hijacking your comment Ean... I've been thinking >> about this a lot lately and responding to your comment seemed to >> flow into this. >> >> -David >> >> > |
smime.p7s (2K) |
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In reply to this post by David E Jones
I can spend some time going through the UI and make sure it's compatible
with the latest IE. I was planning on doing that anyway. Plus, I have experience with preparing press releases. -Adrian David E Jones wrote: > > Any other comments on this? I'd really love to get the framework shaped > up and cleaned up as much as we plan to for the near future so we can > release something and keep it stable for a while... > > Related to this, when we release the framework I really want to put some > stuff together to talk it up and get the ideas in it out to the world. > Part of that would be more docs and marketing material, and another part > of it would be some press releases that go through the ASF public > relations group. If any one or any company wants to get involved with > that please speak up! I'll try to coordinate it for now, but there is > certainly room for public credit and mention of contributors to the > relevant materials. > > -David > > > On Apr 29, 2008, at 10:06 PM, David E Jones wrote: >> >> On Apr 29, 2008, at 2:54 PM, Ean Schuessler wrote: >>> David E Jones wrote: >>>> This is a great tool. The problem with the tool and the approach in >>>> general to this sort of release management is that it assumes >>>> top-down management of a project. >>>> >>>> In the Release Plan document it starts out by explaining the nature >>>> of OFBiz and the community that drives it. Most ASF projects, and >>>> many other open source projects, are community driven but are also >>>> more limited in scope and have either an existing specification to >>>> work toward, or have a sufficiently limited scope that the >>>> definition of targets for a release is not overly burdensome. >>>> >>>> With OFBiz it's not just the size of the scope, but the fact that >>>> the scope depends on what different contributors to OFBiz need over >>>> time, for themselves or their clients/customers. If we had a budget >>>> for driving OFBiz top-down that could result in the same volume of >>>> progress it would have to be around $5-10M per year (my own estimate >>>> of course, no Gartner or the like has deigned to look into this). >>>> >>>> In short there is a reason why OFBiz is the only real community >>>> driven open source enterprise automation project out there. The >>>> closest alternative is probably Adempiere, but that is more of a >>>> community driven effort to replace a bad vendor that has mostly >>>> stepped out of the picture. >>>> >>>> So, until someone comes along with a sufficient budget to drive >>>> things in a more "traditional" way, we have to stick with what works >>>> according to what people are willing and able to contribute. >>> I think if we really believe in the community oriented model that we >>> shouldn't view ourselves as "just waiting for a budget to go back to >>> a top-down model". We know that the top-down model always leads to >>> lock in and all the other negatives of a single monolithic vendor. >>> The Linux kernel has already shown that you can get distributed scale >>> with multiple large vendor players giving the power assist. I think >>> that's the future we want to be living in. >> >> I can't speak for everyone here, but my opinion of the driving force >> behind OFBiz is definitely the community. My comments were not meant >> to imply that certain things can't happen without corporate or other >> sponsorship from a big enough single entity, but that such is not the >> nature of the OFBiz community or any community driven projects, so we >> have to rely on what people are willing to contribute, a la the >> community driven open source model. >> >> That said, one of the big objectives as I see it now for OFBiz is to >> develop the community, a sort of business development for open source >> projects. Our focus in the past for community develop has been mostly >> around fostering and encouraging contributors. Now that we have a >> strong framework and generic business artifacts base in order for >> adoption of OFBiz to grow we need stronger service providers and a >> wider community of users, whether or not they also participate as >> contributors. >> >> My reasoning behind that is that most enterprise (and other) products >> are created and driven by a central company and to a large extent it >> is the reputation and name of that company that drives people to >> accept and desire the software offered. >> >> While OFBiz itself can be a brand that we as a community promote, >> OFBiz itself has no funds for marketing or evangelism, leaving the >> burden of those efforts to the community, to whoever wants to >> contribute such things. In order for large companies to use OFBiz on a >> wider basis they need a reputation and name to sell to stakeholders in >> their organization. Eventually I hope that OFBiz will have such a name >> on its own, but for now that's sadly not the case. >> >> In short if we can work together to attract larger services >> organizations to the OFBiz community and to grow services >> organizations working based on OFBiz it will open things up for the >> next stage of growth and progress for the project. >> >> Right now there are large services organizations using OFBiz, but not >> advertising such or proposing it to their clients so much, partly >> because of limited internal skilled people available (from what I can >> tell...). Most of their projects are because their clients are >> requesting OFBiz, but the services organizations are not recommending >> it. Some examples I'm aware of include Euro/Amer companies like >> Accenture and Indian companies like TCS, Satyam, etc. >> >> I'm not sure if these companies are used to recommending solutions and >> doing marketing, but they are the largest organizations involved with >> OFBiz (aside from end-users) and because OFBiz doesn't have it's own >> marketing budget and coordinated efforts, the service providers are >> the only ones with a sufficient commercial interest to invest in this. >> >> Now, if we could get press attention even though we don't have money >> to push it we might make some great progress. However, and this might >> be based on my jaded view of the world, but most press organizations >> talk about what is making money, even in the open source world. Apache >> gets in the news sometimes because of games played with Sun and >> others, and because of large user bases for lower level tools in many >> cases. >> >> Anyway, this is a big effort going forward that I've been thinking >> about lately, ie the business development around OFBiz... not so much >> of OFBiz itself as that only applies so much, but around OFBiz. >> >> That said one of our big tools for that is to do GA binary releases >> and make a big stink about them. That's probably the strongest tool >> any open source project has. >> >> To start that off I'd like to focus on the framework and do a release >> branch and a GA binary release of it. After that we'd move on to the >> base applications along with the framework. For the framework itself >> the things that we need help with and to consider are: >> >> 1. is there anything in the framework that we should or want to clean >> up before we do a release and "set things in stone" more than they are >> now? >> >> 2. are there new features that we've been talking about for while that >> we should just develop and include? (the entity field automatic >> auditing feature is one I decided to spend a couple of hours adding >> yesterday; LDAP auth OOTB would be another nice one to add, and I'm >> sure there are more) >> >> 3. are there critical bugs or security holes we should fix? (one thing >> that comes to mind is tools and default behavior where applicable to >> protect against XSS/cross-site-scripting) >> >> 4. who can help with this? who can help test and write unit tests for >> the framework? who can help implement new features and fix bugs and such? >> >> What we really need here from contributors is pro-active effort. If >> you'd like to help but you're not sure what to work on you can ask, >> but please be sensitive about requesting assistance or mentoring from >> core developers or other contributors as that may keep them from doing >> things that can be directly contributed. In other words, we need >> people who can help get this done and while we're at it if there are >> others who want to get involved please do in a pro-active, >> self-motivated way. >> >> BTW, sorry for hijacking your comment Ean... I've been thinking about >> this a lot lately and responding to your comment seemed to flow into >> this. >> >> -David >> >> > > |
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That would be great Adrian. I noticed you were working on the example component, which will be part of this framework release. Actually, the example and webtools components are the only ones that really have a UI to them, so work in those areas would be especially great right now. For the press release: I'll definitely keep you in the loop. I'm not totally sure how that will work, but I think we need to create a draft or at least tell the story and then the Apache PRC folks can help us refine and distribute it. -David On May 2, 2008, at 8:39 AM, Adrian Crum wrote: > I can spend some time going through the UI and make sure it's > compatible with the latest IE. I was planning on doing that anyway. > > Plus, I have experience with preparing press releases. > > -Adrian > > David E Jones wrote: >> Any other comments on this? I'd really love to get the framework >> shaped up and cleaned up as much as we plan to for the near future >> so we can release something and keep it stable for a while... >> Related to this, when we release the framework I really want to put >> some stuff together to talk it up and get the ideas in it out to >> the world. Part of that would be more docs and marketing material, >> and another part of it would be some press releases that go through >> the ASF public relations group. If any one or any company wants to >> get involved with that please speak up! I'll try to coordinate it >> for now, but there is certainly room for public credit and mention >> of contributors to the relevant materials. >> -David >> On Apr 29, 2008, at 10:06 PM, David E Jones wrote: >>> >>> On Apr 29, 2008, at 2:54 PM, Ean Schuessler wrote: >>>> David E Jones wrote: >>>>> This is a great tool. The problem with the tool and the approach >>>>> in general to this sort of release management is that it assumes >>>>> top-down management of a project. >>>>> >>>>> In the Release Plan document it starts out by explaining the >>>>> nature of OFBiz and the community that drives it. Most ASF >>>>> projects, and many other open source projects, are community >>>>> driven but are also more limited in scope and have either an >>>>> existing specification to work toward, or have a sufficiently >>>>> limited scope that the definition of targets for a release is >>>>> not overly burdensome. >>>>> >>>>> With OFBiz it's not just the size of the scope, but the fact >>>>> that the scope depends on what different contributors to OFBiz >>>>> need over time, for themselves or their clients/customers. If we >>>>> had a budget for driving OFBiz top-down that could result in the >>>>> same volume of progress it would have to be around $5-10M per >>>>> year (my own estimate of course, no Gartner or the like has >>>>> deigned to look into this). >>>>> >>>>> In short there is a reason why OFBiz is the only real community >>>>> driven open source enterprise automation project out there. The >>>>> closest alternative is probably Adempiere, but that is more of a >>>>> community driven effort to replace a bad vendor that has mostly >>>>> stepped out of the picture. >>>>> >>>>> So, until someone comes along with a sufficient budget to drive >>>>> things in a more "traditional" way, we have to stick with what >>>>> works according to what people are willing and able to contribute. >>>> I think if we really believe in the community oriented model that >>>> we shouldn't view ourselves as "just waiting for a budget to go >>>> back to a top-down model". We know that the top-down model always >>>> leads to lock in and all the other negatives of a single >>>> monolithic vendor. The Linux kernel has already shown that you >>>> can get distributed scale with multiple large vendor players >>>> giving the power assist. I think that's the future we want to be >>>> living in. >>> >>> I can't speak for everyone here, but my opinion of the driving >>> force behind OFBiz is definitely the community. My comments were >>> not meant to imply that certain things can't happen without >>> corporate or other sponsorship from a big enough single entity, >>> but that such is not the nature of the OFBiz community or any >>> community driven projects, so we have to rely on what people are >>> willing to contribute, a la the community driven open source model. >>> >>> That said, one of the big objectives as I see it now for OFBiz is >>> to develop the community, a sort of business development for open >>> source projects. Our focus in the past for community develop has >>> been mostly around fostering and encouraging contributors. Now >>> that we have a strong framework and generic business artifacts >>> base in order for adoption of OFBiz to grow we need stronger >>> service providers and a wider community of users, whether or not >>> they also participate as contributors. >>> >>> My reasoning behind that is that most enterprise (and other) >>> products are created and driven by a central company and to a >>> large extent it is the reputation and name of that company that >>> drives people to accept and desire the software offered. >>> >>> While OFBiz itself can be a brand that we as a community promote, >>> OFBiz itself has no funds for marketing or evangelism, leaving the >>> burden of those efforts to the community, to whoever wants to >>> contribute such things. In order for large companies to use OFBiz >>> on a wider basis they need a reputation and name to sell to >>> stakeholders in their organization. Eventually I hope that OFBiz >>> will have such a name on its own, but for now that's sadly not the >>> case. >>> >>> In short if we can work together to attract larger services >>> organizations to the OFBiz community and to grow services >>> organizations working based on OFBiz it will open things up for >>> the next stage of growth and progress for the project. >>> >>> Right now there are large services organizations using OFBiz, but >>> not advertising such or proposing it to their clients so much, >>> partly because of limited internal skilled people available (from >>> what I can tell...). Most of their projects are because their >>> clients are requesting OFBiz, but the services organizations are >>> not recommending it. Some examples I'm aware of include Euro/Amer >>> companies like Accenture and Indian companies like TCS, Satyam, etc. >>> >>> I'm not sure if these companies are used to recommending solutions >>> and doing marketing, but they are the largest organizations >>> involved with OFBiz (aside from end-users) and because OFBiz >>> doesn't have it's own marketing budget and coordinated efforts, >>> the service providers are the only ones with a sufficient >>> commercial interest to invest in this. >>> >>> Now, if we could get press attention even though we don't have >>> money to push it we might make some great progress. However, and >>> this might be based on my jaded view of the world, but most press >>> organizations talk about what is making money, even in the open >>> source world. Apache gets in the news sometimes because of games >>> played with Sun and others, and because of large user bases for >>> lower level tools in many cases. >>> >>> Anyway, this is a big effort going forward that I've been thinking >>> about lately, ie the business development around OFBiz... not so >>> much of OFBiz itself as that only applies so much, but around OFBiz. >>> >>> That said one of our big tools for that is to do GA binary >>> releases and make a big stink about them. That's probably the >>> strongest tool any open source project has. >>> >>> To start that off I'd like to focus on the framework and do a >>> release branch and a GA binary release of it. After that we'd move >>> on to the base applications along with the framework. For the >>> framework itself the things that we need help with and to consider >>> are: >>> >>> 1. is there anything in the framework that we should or want to >>> clean up before we do a release and "set things in stone" more >>> than they are now? >>> >>> 2. are there new features that we've been talking about for while >>> that we should just develop and include? (the entity field >>> automatic auditing feature is one I decided to spend a couple of >>> hours adding yesterday; LDAP auth OOTB would be another nice one >>> to add, and I'm sure there are more) >>> >>> 3. are there critical bugs or security holes we should fix? (one >>> thing that comes to mind is tools and default behavior where >>> applicable to protect against XSS/cross-site-scripting) >>> >>> 4. who can help with this? who can help test and write unit tests >>> for the framework? who can help implement new features and fix >>> bugs and such? >>> >>> What we really need here from contributors is pro-active effort. >>> If you'd like to help but you're not sure what to work on you can >>> ask, but please be sensitive about requesting assistance or >>> mentoring from core developers or other contributors as that may >>> keep them from doing things that can be directly contributed. In >>> other words, we need people who can help get this done and while >>> we're at it if there are others who want to get involved please do >>> in a pro-active, self-motivated way. >>> >>> BTW, sorry for hijacking your comment Ean... I've been thinking >>> about this a lot lately and responding to your comment seemed to >>> flow into this. >>> >>> -David >>> >>> |
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In reply to this post by David E Jones
When you're speaking of releasing the framework, is the intent to
distribute something standalone that could be downloaded / used (and tested / maintained) separately from the business applications? -Joe On May 1, 2008, at 9:15 PM, David E Jones wrote: > > Any other comments on this? I'd really love to get the framework > shaped up and cleaned up as much as we plan to for the near future > so we can release something and keep it stable for a while... > > Related to this, when we release the framework I really want to put > some stuff together to talk it up and get the ideas in it out to > the world. Part of that would be more docs and marketing material, > and another part of it would be some press releases that go through > the ASF public relations group. If any one or any company wants to > get involved with that please speak up! I'll try to coordinate it > for now, but there is certainly room for public credit and mention > of contributors to the relevant materials. > > -David > |
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