OFBiz and how to move forward (was Re: How to use ProjectMgr in 13.07)

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OFBiz and how to move forward (was Re: How to use ProjectMgr in 13.07)

Pierre Smits
Hi All,

In the thread suggestion have been made to move applications (as a
fork/split off) away from the Apache OFBiz project to be maintained by
other people. This is part of an ongoing discussion that started back in
2012 (if I recall correctly). Back then this didn't lead to consensus. Now
it also seems that this is a subject that community members aren't willing
to consent to.

Diminishing the project to something that Scott would like to result in (a
project that only works on - in a debatable order of importance - frame
work elements, base registers as party, order and product, and e-commerce)
is, in my opinion, a path to the ASF attic.
Yes, it means that the current group of committers and PMC members can
reduce their workload by focussing on the issues they care about (which
they already do - nothing changes in that aspect).
But the additional benefit for them (and negative impact on you as user and
contributor to parts that aren't in their sphere of interest) is that they
don't have to consider the issues you raise and you as a (potential)
committer.

Like I said it is a path to the attic. And let me explain why. Contraction
to the favourites applications of the few leads to less. Less adoption of
OFBiz as a suite of business solutions. Leading to less contributors,
leading to less committers, leading to less issues reported, leading to
less issues resolved. And this leads to even more contraction. It is a
vicious circle. Because sooner or later people move on.

And the above is what this project doesn't need. What you shouldn't go for.
An Apache project is nothing more and nothing less than a group of people
willing to contribute and collaborate. And the result of that contribution
and that collaboration is something that the (majority of the) users - also
you - need and/or want. But it all starts with that willingness.

When you look through our OFBiz JIRA and the mailing lists you'll find that
there have been and are plenty of people - again also you - contributing to
all kinds of aspects of the project. It doesn't (and shouldn't) matter
whether that contribution is improvements (bugs and otherwise) to the
feature set of the software, in the area of documentation, or even
regarding process and policy improvements. You are, with your contributions
of any kind, contributing to the health and future of the project. And
never forget: your contributions matter, even if some regards them as minor
or mediocre.
So the first part of participating in this project is covered and secured.
Lots of people willing to contribute!

As for the second part, the willingness to collaborate, it cannot be denied
that people have favourites. Some prefer to work on issues related to
framework, some prefer to commit patches of issues from people they like
collaborating with. This is also thru for this project.  And though it
leaves some areas of the project (temporarily) under addressed it can be
easily remediated. By inviting more contributors to be a committer. That
will lead to more issues resolved, more people working with others, a
project where losing a PMC member or a contributor is covered with
replacement, an increase in adoption. And this is a virtuous circle. This
is the  circle we should go for.

Now, we don't have to discuss setting up additional technical
infrastructures as svn sub-projects with associated JIRA constructs and
mailing lists when we don't want to embark on that journey of attracting
and getting more. Without more people willing to collaborate it is a moot
point.

As I said earlier in this posting we have (and had) a lot of people
contributing to all of the aspects of the project. All of these are
potential committers. Yet it seems that inviting a person to be a committer
is something that may only happen when the contributions of that person are
of an exceptional benefit to the project, when contributor has super human
characteristics, or when the contributor works in the areas that are
favoured by the deciders of this project.

We need to address that mindset within our community first. Before we
discuss setting up additional lower, technical infrastructures to ensure
that the other (good) applications get into releases. In fact, we wouldn't
be having this discussion about workload and such with more people on board.

So far we have read the viewpoints of Jacopo, Jacques and Scott (as PMC
Members). I invite others to share their viewpoints as well. The future of
OFBiz (and your role and contributions) is important enough to express your
viewpoint.

Regards,

Pierre Smits

*ORRTIZ.COM <http://www.orrtiz.com>*
Services & Solutions for Cloud-
Based Manufacturing, Professional
Services and Retail & Trade
http://www.orrtiz.com
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Re: OFBiz and how to move forward (was Re: How to use ProjectMgr in 13.07)

Scott Gray-2
> Diminishing the project to something that Scott would like to result in (a
> project that only works on - in a debatable order of importance - frame
> work elements, base registers as party, order and product, and e-commerce)
> is, in my opinion, a path to the ASF attic.

I completely disagree with that opinion and since so much of what you wrote is based on that premise, I won't bother replying to the rest.

I can only speak to what I've experienced and what I've seen but in general:
- The core components that live under framework and applications (which certainly are not best described as "base registers") are the most useful set of components to implement anything a business might need.  I've worked for many different clients and many different projects over the last 7 years and aside from ecommerce I have never had a set of requirements brought to me that fit well with any of the special purpose components.  
- Contributions to the applications/framework components outweigh those received by the special purpose components by a massive scale (no I don't have numbers, I just have that impression from reading almost every user/dev email for the last 9 years)

Given that OFBiz exists today in large part because of the very adaptable "core" components, the premise that focusing only on those is a path to the ASF attic is quite false.

What the OFBiz project needs to be aiming for (IMHO) is to be a lean code base that is capable of meeting the core needs of the largest possible number of businesses.  Virtually all large applications (open source or otherwise) gain a large portion of their strength by having a healthy and diverse external ecosystem.  Look at Eclipse, Magento and Xero to name a few.  Attempting to keep everything in-house within the TLP is the equivalent of Apple trying to build every application an iDevice might need instead of opening the AppStore.  They would've ended up with a large number of sub-par applications but instead they focused on a few core apps that almost everyone would use.  Phone OS's are actually a really good example of how important it is for a platform to have a healthy eco-system.  I think that the special purpose components are a good way to bootstrap an external eco-system that would help diversify OFBiz as a platform.

Attempting to make OFBiz even more monolithic is the wrong course.

Regards
Scott

On 10/11/2014, at 11:59 pm, Pierre Smits <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> In the thread suggestion have been made to move applications (as a
> fork/split off) away from the Apache OFBiz project to be maintained by
> other people. This is part of an ongoing discussion that started back in
> 2012 (if I recall correctly). Back then this didn't lead to consensus. Now
> it also seems that this is a subject that community members aren't willing
> to consent to.
>
> Diminishing the project to something that Scott would like to result in (a
> project that only works on - in a debatable order of importance - frame
> work elements, base registers as party, order and product, and e-commerce)
> is, in my opinion, a path to the ASF attic.
> Yes, it means that the current group of committers and PMC members can
> reduce their workload by focussing on the issues they care about (which
> they already do - nothing changes in that aspect).
> But the additional benefit for them (and negative impact on you as user and
> contributor to parts that aren't in their sphere of interest) is that they
> don't have to consider the issues you raise and you as a (potential)
> committer.
>
> Like I said it is a path to the attic. And let me explain why. Contraction
> to the favourites applications of the few leads to less. Less adoption of
> OFBiz as a suite of business solutions. Leading to less contributors,
> leading to less committers, leading to less issues reported, leading to
> less issues resolved. And this leads to even more contraction. It is a
> vicious circle. Because sooner or later people move on.
>
> And the above is what this project doesn't need. What you shouldn't go for.
> An Apache project is nothing more and nothing less than a group of people
> willing to contribute and collaborate. And the result of that contribution
> and that collaboration is something that the (majority of the) users - also
> you - need and/or want. But it all starts with that willingness.
>
> When you look through our OFBiz JIRA and the mailing lists you'll find that
> there have been and are plenty of people - again also you - contributing to
> all kinds of aspects of the project. It doesn't (and shouldn't) matter
> whether that contribution is improvements (bugs and otherwise) to the
> feature set of the software, in the area of documentation, or even
> regarding process and policy improvements. You are, with your contributions
> of any kind, contributing to the health and future of the project. And
> never forget: your contributions matter, even if some regards them as minor
> or mediocre.
> So the first part of participating in this project is covered and secured.
> Lots of people willing to contribute!
>
> As for the second part, the willingness to collaborate, it cannot be denied
> that people have favourites. Some prefer to work on issues related to
> framework, some prefer to commit patches of issues from people they like
> collaborating with. This is also thru for this project.  And though it
> leaves some areas of the project (temporarily) under addressed it can be
> easily remediated. By inviting more contributors to be a committer. That
> will lead to more issues resolved, more people working with others, a
> project where losing a PMC member or a contributor is covered with
> replacement, an increase in adoption. And this is a virtuous circle. This
> is the  circle we should go for.
>
> Now, we don't have to discuss setting up additional technical
> infrastructures as svn sub-projects with associated JIRA constructs and
> mailing lists when we don't want to embark on that journey of attracting
> and getting more. Without more people willing to collaborate it is a moot
> point.
>
> As I said earlier in this posting we have (and had) a lot of people
> contributing to all of the aspects of the project. All of these are
> potential committers. Yet it seems that inviting a person to be a committer
> is something that may only happen when the contributions of that person are
> of an exceptional benefit to the project, when contributor has super human
> characteristics, or when the contributor works in the areas that are
> favoured by the deciders of this project.
>
> We need to address that mindset within our community first. Before we
> discuss setting up additional lower, technical infrastructures to ensure
> that the other (good) applications get into releases. In fact, we wouldn't
> be having this discussion about workload and such with more people on board.
>
> So far we have read the viewpoints of Jacopo, Jacques and Scott (as PMC
> Members). I invite others to share their viewpoints as well. The future of
> OFBiz (and your role and contributions) is important enough to express your
> viewpoint.
>
> Regards,
>
> Pierre Smits
>
> *ORRTIZ.COM <http://www.orrtiz.com>*
> Services & Solutions for Cloud-
> Based Manufacturing, Professional
> Services and Retail & Trade
> http://www.orrtiz.com