It's interesting that you wrote this Ruth. I heard the same thing from a client recently, ie that they hadn't heard my name until after using OFBiz in their company for a couple of years.
After that comment (a couple of weeks ago) I thought about it a bit and in a way I'd like to think this is success on my part in trying to build the community by not emphasizing my role, which was a priority for me for a while... now I guess I don't care so much and I don't know that weakening my role really ever did anything to help grow the community. I always thought it would give others more opportunities to take on major roles in the project, but who knows... More realistically, I think this is a factor of how the ASF works combined with the long history of OFBiz. The ASF doesn't really allow (and definitely doesn't encourage) prominently recognizing individuals, especially individuals with commercial concerns (I suppose it is more virtuous to use money from students or from grants (ie money taken non-voluntarily from unfortunate "citizens") than the try to operate a commercial concern based on open source or free software). Because of ASF policy you have to look pretty hard to even figure out who the committers and PMC members are, and people who just watch the mailing list or use the software rarely know who is in these groups. The long history of OFBiz also makes this tricky. Many of those who contributed a lot early on in the build-out of the project (especially over the first 7-8 years, and even more in the first 5-6 years) are not as active on the mailing lists and in commits right now (and over the last couple of years). That's just the nature of the project, and will probably become even more that way over time, especially combined with the ASF policy factor I mentioned above. On the topic of the ASF, the policies I also find increasingly distasteful. The foundation is growing, which is good, but along with that growth the sheer volume of policies has mushroomed, to the point (IMO) of making it a less interesting means to distribute ones free/open software efforts. It's still a great foundation, but if it isn't as attractive to developers, and the more they add policies that make things difficult or unattractive to developers, how long will that last? -David On May 3, 2011, at 9:20 AM, Ruth Hoffman wrote: > How true. > But, I would suggest that in this case, the phenomena that I described has > nothing to do with reality and everything to do with ignorance. > Best Regards, > Ruth > > On 5/3/11 10:28 AM, Jacopo Cappellato wrote: >> On May 3, 2011, at 3:39 PM, Ruth Hoffman wrote: >> >>> FYI: You wrote: "It's not as if I'm an outsider taking pot-shots..." You >>> would be surprised, as I was, at the number of people using OFBiz who do >>> not know who you are or about your association with the project. I've met >>> many over the last few years. Therefore, in my experience, to many people, >>> with OFBiz interests, you are an "outsider". >> The fact that people ignore reality, doesn't make it less real. >> >> Jacopo >> >>
