Hello guys.. I do work for a company in Silicon Valley. The company also uses a free project to build its commercial project to make money. This project, like ACS, has no funding. The project is FreeNAS. However, IXSystems, the company, uses FreeNAS to build a "supported, commercial version" called TrueNAS with which they sale to make money. :)
In turn, IXSystems actual provides a full time PM and developers to the project. It’s a small cost to pay for a product that makes them a lot of money. So I guess where I am getting is at the CCC I had the pleasure to meet some very good people and many large companies that make a lot of money from using ACS. I know right now, comparable speaking, I am small potatoes. But some of these people I meet seemed to be pretty sizable. Have or has any of these companies thought of hiring an FTE that is committed to making the product that they use better and chalking it up as contribution? Or even jointly hiring an FTE with another company. Now I am not sure what bureaucratic BS will come with Cloudstack being in the Apache Foundation. I don’t know if what I am saying is possible or if we could even create a Cloudsatck Foundation that handles the development side of Cloudstack.. I don’t know. I also am not saying that the people on this mailing list are not already contributing time AND money to the project.. I don’t know.. I am just making my opinion from the outside looking in. I am just making a comparison to another very successful OSS project that does employee full time people to help the project grow and does so without any "public" fundraisers. So am I on the right track? Has this already been discussed and dismissed? If so what were the reasons? I am more than willing to donate to the ACS project. I am not In a position to hire a FTE for it since I am the small minnow here in a large pod but I will help all I can. Regards, Marty Godsey Principal Engineer nSource Solutions, LLC -----Original Message----- From: Will Stevens [mailto:williamstev...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2017 9:42 AM To: Ron Wheeler <rwhee...@artifact-software.com>; dev@cloudstack.apache.org Subject: Re: JIRA - PLEASE READ I personally don't know how Jira solves any of this, but assuming it does, fine... The bigger problem which you have raised is that CloudStack has zero funding. So we can't hire a project manager, or a release manager or someone whose job it is to maintain documentation. I have been trying to find a way to, at the very least, fund a full time release manager who can focus 100% on the project. As the release manager for 4.9, I know it is a full time job. I did my best, but it is a ton of work and is hard to stay on top of. Everyone contributing to CloudStack is donating their time. They can't make a living off supporting ACS, so every one is doing their best with the little time they can take away from their day job or their family life. Yes, having clear guidelines and sticking to them helps, but without a solid CI infrastructure backing the project and improved testing and automation, we will always struggles with release schedules and such. I have been involved in this project long enough to know that all the problems you point out exist, but they are also not easily solved. Obviously we have to work with the initiatives we have and take small steps towards improvement, but we also have to be realistic with our expectations because we are counting on people's generosity to move them forward. Simplifying moving parts and streamlining the process will lead to more contribution because there is less barriers to entry. This one reason why I struggle to see the value in Jira as it is used today. I personally don't understand what value it is giving us that the github PRs and Issues don't solve. I will remain open minded and will follow along with what people think is best, but I think it is worth understanding what we are trying to solve for and simplify our approach in solving it so we can get better systems in place. On Jun 29, 2017 9:17 AM, "Ron Wheeler" <rwhee...@artifact-software.com> wrote: > As a real outsider, IMHO Paul is right. > > At times it seems that Cloudstack is a coding hobby rather than a > project or a production quality product. > > Who decides what goes into a release? How does this affect the release > schedule? > Who is responsible for meeting the "published" roadmap (of which there > seem to be many) of releases? > > How is a system admin that is not part of the project supposed to plan > for upgrade windows? > How does one know when a feature, bug fix or release will be available? > > How does the PMC manage function creep in a release, maintain > quality and consistency, reject changes that hurt the overall vision > or add too much complexity? > > No one seems to care about documentation but if someone did, how would > they stop undocumented features or features that contradict the > documentation from being incorporated? > Who makes sure that the documentation is correct at the time of the > release? > Release notes are not much help for someone doing a new install or > evaluating Cloudstack. > > Without a JIRA entry, how does an end-user who encounters a problem > know that it has been fixed already in the next release? > > Without a JIRA entry, how does the community comment on a proposed > change before it gets coded? > > If changes are going to be accepted without a JIRA, is there a > definition of a minor fix that does not require a JIRA? > - does not change functionality? > - only affects an "edge case" or cleans up an exception that is not > properly handled? > - only improves code readability or future extensibility? > - does not affect documentation? > > Apache projects that are popular and enjoy wide support do have strong > management. > > There are other examples where great Apache software is failing to get > recognized because the PMC is not paying attention to the product > management side of things. > I use Apache Jackrabbit which is a quality product with a strong > technical team supporting it. > It has very little following because the documentation and marketing > collateral is very poor. > It gets by because the audience for it is largely software developers > who can read code and can test features to work out the functionality. > It would get a lot more attention if they paid attention to the > product management side of the project. > > Cloudstack needs to avoid this situation and unfortunately this takes > effort and some discipline. > > > Ron > > > > > > On 29/06/2017 8:03 AM, Will Stevens wrote: > >> Why are we still using jira instead of the PRs for that >> communication? Can we not use issues in github now instead of jira if >> someone needs to open an issue but does not yet have code to >> contribute. If not, jira could still be used for that. >> >> I think duplicating data between jira and the PR is kind of >> pointless. I feel like the github PRs and the cide going in should be >> the source of truth, not a random third party tool. >> >> For the 4.9 release notes, i built a tool to generate the release >> notes from the PRs merged in that release. I think that is easier and >> more accurate than depending on jira since it does not track the >> actual code tree. >> >> Thats my 0.02$. >> >> On Jun 29, 2017 5:25 AM, "Paul Angus" <paul.an...@shapeblue.com> wrote: >> >> Such a view of CloudStack is what holds CloudStack back. >> It stops users/operators from having any chance of understanding what >> CloudStack does and how it does it. >> Code for code's sake is no use to anyone. >> Jira is about communication between developers and to everyone else. >> >> >> >> Kind regards, >> >> Paul Angus >> >> paul.an...@shapeblue.com >> www.shapeblue.com >> 53 Chandos Place, Covent Garden, London WC2N 4HSUK @shapeblue >> >> >> >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Daan Hoogland [mailto:daan.hoogl...@gmail.com] >> Sent: 29 June 2017 10:14 >> To: dev <dev@cloudstack.apache.org> >> Subject: Re: JIRA - PLEASE READ >> >> On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 11:06 AM, Paul Angus <paul.an...@shapeblue.com> >> wrote: >> >>> + Release notes will be impossible to create without a proper Jira >>> >> history. >> >>> And no one will know what has gone into CloudStack. >>> >> >> No they are not mr Grumpy. they should be base on the code anyway, hence >> on >> git, not jira. I do not appose to the use of Jira but it is not required >> for good coding practices and as we are not and will not function as a >> corporation, jira is an extra for those that grave for it. not a >> requirement. >> >> -- >> Daan >> >> > -- > Ron Wheeler > President > Artifact Software Inc > email: rwhee...@artifact-software.com > skype: ronaldmwheeler > phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102 > >
