I still think you're putting the cart before the horse. I'm not sure I
could name any specialpurpose component that has the two or three active
contributors that I think would be necessary to sustain it.
It will become apparent when the team or person steps forward to
maintain it.
If they won't contribute to it now then why would they suddenly jump at
the chance to run it? It seems silly to me to go through the effort of
setting up a sub-project then waiting a few months to pull it back down
because no one cares.
You seem to be running on the premise that some of these components have
active contributors. I'd love to know which components these are. I'm not
talking about a vaguely mentioned interest, I'm talking about actual action
taken. There are hundreds of open source projects I'm interested in and
roughly 1-2 I have time to contribute to.
Particularly for security issues, the TLP PMC cannot simply ignore dormant
sub-projects, we have to take action if a report comes in. Most of
questions I asked were based on the premise that the given sub-project was
dormant (sorry if I didn't make that clear), but you answered with the
"sub-project will take care of it" so I guess it wasn't clear. If a
sub-project is dormant (which I think is highly likely to be the outcome),
then it falls back to the PMC to deal with monitoring, receiving
contributions, determining suitability of prospective committers and
dealing with security issues. Not to mention the set up and tear down of
these failed experiments.
Regards
Scott
On 10/11/2014, at 3:35 pm, Ron Wheeler <rwhee...@artifact-software.com>
wrote:
A very excellent discussion of the issues by Scott has prompted me to
document my thoughts.
Ron
On 07/11/2014 5:24 PM, Scott Gray wrote:
I still think you're putting the cart before the horse. I'm not sure I
could name any specialpurpose component that has the two or three active
contributors that I think would be necessary to sustain it.
It will become apparent when the team or person steps forward to
maintain it.
If you have only one or two and they go away then what happens to any
new comers looking to contribute?
They will have to ask the leader of the sub-project. If the sub-project
community is completely unresponsive, they could propose to take over it.
Do we just make anyone who comes along a committer?
It is up to the sub-project to make that decision. Just the way Apache
leaves it up to OFBiz to decide who can commit.
The goal is to get these projects that have little or no current
support, set up in a way that they can find their own specialized community
that does not care to work on the framework.
Does the TLP PMC need to monitor a whole bunch of new mailing lists and
then support anyone who comes along in the hope they might be able to
become committers?
Not unless you care to stay on top of details. This is one of the
benefits of sub-projects.
You can reduce the flow through each list and only subscribe to stuff
you really need to follow, so you are only getting stuff that you actually
care about.
The archives are always available if you want to look up things after
the fact.
The sensible way to handle project management issues, is to set up an
OFBiz project mailing list that handles announcement or project news that
does not belong in the regular dev or user lists.
You can refer to the Apache project management pages for specific
suggestions about how Apache projects can handle this kind of activity.
If a component had no active committers how long would it be before it
broke completely because no one kept it updated?
Same as now. Soon.
Death of a module from natural causes ( no one caring) is not a bad
thing.
It just would be much easier to know when a module had died.
Currently, the OFBiz community has a hard time knowing what has died and
what is still valued.
If a security vulnerability is found then who will deal with it?
Same people who deal with it now if they actually care to keep working
on the sub-project.
New people who actually use the module would probably be very interested
in getting high priority issues fixed.
At least, you would know who "should" be fixing it.
Much better than the current state.
It would be up to the sub-project to establish its policies about
support for security (back-porting, supported versions), etc.
Without active committers the PMC would need to remain familiar with
the code in order to receive contributions and determine their suitability
for inclusion. Nothing would be different from now except that the
component would be less visible to us, more easily forgotten and we'd have
more infrastructure to deal with.
Why would the framework committers even care?
It is up to the sub-project to sort out their own code integrity issues.
They have the detailed knowledge and the subject matter expertise and
the motivation (they actually use it).
If the project dies, you don't have to do anything except post a note on
the sub-project web site announcing that it is no longer active and that
the PMC is looking for a new team.
If anyone else from the PMC thought that this sub-project was important,
they would have joined the sub-project in the first place.
At least everyone would know that the module was no longer active.
You can look only at the best case scenarios because you won't have any
responsibility to these sub-projects. The PMC however will still have the
burden to do anything that the sub-project committers decide that they
themselves no longer want to do.
Why? If the module is useless and no one cares, why would the PMC do
anything besides documenting the situation on the sub-project web page.
"This project is no longer maintained. The code is available 'as is'.
The last release of the module is know to work with version 13.07. OFBiz
would be pleased to hear of a team willing to continue working on this
module."
Stop thinking about it after that until an individual or a team shows up.
At what point will it be okay by you for us to kill it off? What is
it that currently gives you confidence that it won't happen very quickly?
Yes, you can kill a project that no one is willing to work on or support.
At the moment it appears that several modules would have a hard time
surviving and should be killed.
From the discussion in this thread it appears that some are just tests
that failed.
This is better than the current case, wherein users have no idea about
what is active and what is dead and the PMC has to do a survey of all users
every time a decision about a dormant project has to be made.
I think Jacopo's solution is the best to keep everyone happy (including
the vocal minority) but IMO the best approach would be to remove the
components from OFBiz altogether, set them up on github or similar, ensure
those who want to take ownership have the required access and then
advertise the existence of these special purpose components from the OFBiz
website. The components are then free to stand or fall as they may.
Should any actually survive and thrive, then a subproject would seem like a
good idea. It's my opinion though that the vast majority of the components
would go dormant and I don't think it makes a difference whether it's as a
subproject or as an external project hosted elsewhere.
Removing them from Apache is a rather extreme approach that is likely to
lead to additional forking of the OFBiz project.
Apache has a well documented set of tools and processes for dealing with
modules or applications like this and there is no real value in inventing
some new process that is unlikely to be properly set up given the amount of
work being done in the supported bits of OFBiz.
I don't see any point of worrying at all about modules that have no
following.
We just need to be transparent about what is happening.
If they are supported, set up a sub-project that allows the interested
parties to work on them with as large a community as they can attract.
They would not have to get mixed in with the framework project that has
a different set of concerns and requirements for committing.
They might not be committers to the framework or core ERP
If the projects are not supported, leave them as is and state clearly on
the project web page that these modules are not supported.
If there is a history of people working on them, using them in
production and caring, it would be nice to document that, in case that
someone finds them useful.
If they were tests that failed before being finished, perhaps moving
them to a section of "dead test" modules in the SCM would satisfy the
desire not to lose any code regardless of its uselessness as well as making
it clear that these modules are not functional and users should think that
the name of the module has anything to do with what it will actually do.
Mixing them in with modules that are actively maintained is not helpful.
I hope that this helps.
Ron
Regards
Scott
On 8/11/2014, at 9:21 am, Ron Wheeler <rwhee...@artifact-software.com>
wrote:
Taher Alkhateeb raised some valid concerns.
My take (also as a newcomer) is that there is a high barrier to entry
for people working on the framework and this makes it hard to get new
people into the OFBiz project.
By creating sub-projects that have a much smaller scope and do not
have any affect on the overall robustness of the system, we would allow new
people to take on tasks that have a much narrower scope and are more
in-line withtheir abilities and interests.
It will also allow OFBiz to attract subject matter experts on certain
areas such as the BIRT language, data analysis, project management or
manufacturing who are not attracted to the framework development tasks.
The current level of complexity forces the group to be a small band of
dedicated people who have the detailed technical understanding of the
framework and tools used to build and maintain it.
There is nothing to prevent framework contributors from also joining
sub-projects where they have an interest.
It would also provide a level of transparency about what is getting
supported.
If no one is active in the BIRT sub-project, at least you know that it
is not supported.
At the moment, you have no idea about the interest in supporting BIRT.
If you need it and it is not supported, currently you do not have
anyone to talk to except the framework mailing list.
If it had its own sub-project, you would have a leader and a list of
people who once had an interest in it.
If no one was interested in your BIRT issue, you could always hire
someone to work on the bits that you needed fixed.
If BIRT is completely orphaned,you could take over leadership of the
BIRT sub-project and get it back going.
I think that the project management and SCRUM projects could probably
put together sub-projects.
You would have to do a bit of work to get a BIRT group growing.
However, it looks like a good candidate for a separate project since
BIRT is a completely different programming language and a lot of the skills
have to do with business analysis, usability and data analysis rather than
Java coding.
You might find that a BIRT sub-project attracts a number of people who
would not be interested in supporting the framework.
Sub-project will also reduce the amount of traffic on the dev list and
allow people to focus on what they think matters to them.
They also allow other people to take on leadership roles in these
areas which reduces the burden on the current core contributors.
Sub-projects are a key part of many Apache projects, so I believe that
they must serve a useful purpose.
I think that this project is really in need of a way to grow the
community without diluting the quality and I see sub-projects as a way to
keep the focus within Apache OFBiz rather than fork the parts into outside
open source projects which is the current direction.
Ron
On 07/11/2014 2:08 PM, Taher Alkhateeb wrote:
Hi Everyone,
I do not have a long history with the OFBiz project to understand its
history, but from the last few years I noticed the following:
- The system is huge
- Documentation is wanting
- The community is suffering from low number of experienced developers
For example, I use and want to support the BIRT reporting component.
Yet there are very few committed developers experienced and comfortable
enough in maintaining it and upgrading with new releases. So, I would
imagine taking it out as an almost sure death sentence given the already
low resources.
With all due respect, talking about sub-projects and plans and
resources and commit access and all of that stuff does not make sense when
you barely have enough experienced people maintaining the code. I see only
a few names over and over who are doing the "real" heavy work.
So for my 2 cents, I still strongly encourage the initial suggestion
by Jacopo. I think other suggestions would probably kill any less heavily
maintained components.
Taher Alkhateeb
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Wheeler" <rwhee...@artifact-software.com>
To: dev@ofbiz.apache.org
Sent: Friday, 7 November, 2014 9:29:05 PM
Subject: Re: How to use ProjectMgr in 13.07
I was trying to find some Apache docs about what is involved.
Separating the SCM controls so that the sub-projects can have their
own
committers is an important task.
Any idea about what else is required?
In any case, it would be the people who want to support the
sub-project
to do the paperwork.
There is clearly nothing to stop a fork of any part of OFBiz but there
is some advantage to keeping OZBiz in one piece.
The most important thing is that it allows the sub-project to use the
OFBiz name and Apache branding in its "marketing" material and
documentation.
It also builds the pool of potential contributors and committers for
the
core.
Ron
On 07/11/2014 11:44 AM, Jacopo Cappellato wrote:
I am fine with the idea of encouraging the growth of an ecosystem of
*projects* about OFBiz (not necessarily all within the ASF) but I disagree
that they should be *sub-projects* of OFBiz, mostly because sub-projects
just add complexity within the OFBiz community (with more paperwork
required).
Jacopo
On Nov 7, 2014, at 5:32 PM, Adrian Crum <
adrian.c...@sandglass-software.com> wrote:
I agree with a separate community approach, for these reasons:
The special purpose components started out as little demonstrations
of how OFBiz can be extended to role-specific applications. Since then,
some of those components have expanded into full-featured applications - so
the overhead of maintaining them has increased beyond what we expected
initially.
Some special purpose components were included as the result of a
community discussion and effort, but others were simply "dumped" into the
repository without any discussion or community participation - and as a
result they receive little support.
Some special purpose components were created and initially
supported by community members who are not around any more.
As a result of all of these things, the special purpose components
are not well maintained.
From my perspective, if anyone believes a component needs more
attention and would like to develop it further, then they should spin it
off to a separate project.
So, instead of having a conversation about how the OFBiz community
can better support the Project Manager component, maybe we should have a
conversation about how to spin it off to a separate community.
Opentaps started off that way. Initially, it was OFBiz plus
additional components: Financials, CRM, and Warehousing.
I think the OFBiz community would benefit if we stopped trying to
be all things to all people, and instead focus on providing a sound and
flexible data model - combined with robust, reliable services. Special
purpose applications, and even presentation layer details can be left to
other communities.
Adrian Crum
Sandglass Software
www.sandglass-software.com
On 11/7/2014 4:02 PM, Ron Wheeler wrote:
I may be beating a dead horse but what Jacopo is proposing and the
concern that Jacques raised about resources would seem to fit very
well
into a sub-project structure.
Split these modules out of the main line into their own OFBiz
sub-projects where they could attract their own resources
(committers
even) and would be responsible for delivering modules that worked
with
the various OFBiz cores that exist.
Let the sub-projects worry about their own relationship to OFBiz
releases and release branches.
They might just support the released 13.07.xx version, if that is
what
the sub-project's user community can support or they might
maintain 2
versions 13.07 and a 14.xx. that works with a recent version of
the trunk.
In any case, it would no longer be a problem for the OFBiz core
developers and they could release just the OFBiz components that
are
officially part of the core.
Clearly good communication between the core project and the
sub-project
about release plans would help everyone but the core group would be
basically free to release the core as they want and the
sub-projects
would have to communicate to their uses communities what impact
this
would have on the users of the modules.
If a sub-project needs a change to the core to implement some
feature,
they would have to file an enhancement JIRA issue and convince
someone
to add it (unless they are a committer on the core).
If two sub-projects had a compatibility issue, they would at least
know
who to talk to get a solution.
Ron
On 07/11/2014 7:04 AM, Jacopo Cappellato wrote:
On Nov 7, 2014, at 12:36 PM, Jacques Le Roux
<jacques.le.r...@les7arts.com> wrote:
This will no longer work for some components (scrum for instance)
I believe we could be reintroduce some specialpurpose component
in
next release,
There is a difference between including them in a release branch
and
including them in the releases: I would be more inclined to
include
(all of them) in the release branches but exclude them from the
releases; this would simplify the work required to keep them in
synch
and would also help end users to integrate them.
However the specialpurpose components should be disabled in order
to
avoid the users to get a default ootb release/branch with enabled
special purpose functionalities that may override the more general
purpose ones offered by the core applications.
We should still consider the idea of providing separate products
for
the specialpurpose components (and having them in the branch would
help this process).
If the idea I am proposing here (include the specialpurpose
components
in the branch but not in the releases) we could re-add them (as
disabled) also to the 13.07 branch but exclude them from all the
releases (13.07.02 etc...): this will protect all the
stabilization
work we did on the branch (and also from some licensing issues
that
may affects some of the artifacts in some of the specialpurpose
components) .
Jacopo
as long as they are backed by some efforts, come to mind
project manager (Pierre Smits?)
scrum (Hans?)
examples and ext (at least me)
myportal (French people use portals, not sure for myportal?)
Other components?
IRRW Jacopo said he was not against a new discussion on this
subject
(I could not find his message), what do you think?
Jacques
Le 21/10/2014 09:06, gil portenseigne a écrit :
I've never used svn external property, just discovering. That
sounds
usefull and i'll try it out !
Thanks for the advice !
Gil
On 20/10/2014 19:08, Jacques Le Roux wrote:
I use svn external in the stable demo, already explained that
in
the MLs: see
https://svn.apache.org/viewvc/ofbiz/trunk/tools/demo-backup/branch13.7-demo.patch?view=markup
You can use the same to keep in sync, only consider projectmgr
in
your case. Since there is no projectmgr in R13.07 the risk of
gettins conflicts or build issue is extremely low
Jacques
Le 20/10/2014 17:28, gil portenseigne a écrit :
Hi Jacopo,
Ok then, i will have to re-synchronize new trunk devs each
time
i'll feel it necessary. My fear is about incompatibility
between
13.07 and trunk technologies, but that won't happen soon, or i
might backport the evolution into my local environment.
That will do the job !
Thanks
Gil
On 20/10/2014 16:36, Jacopo Cappellato wrote:
Hi Gil,
I would suggest to check it out from the trunk to the
hot-deploy
folder of 13.07:
cd hot-deploy
svn co
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/ofbiz/trunk/specialpurpose/projectmgr
Jacopo
On Oct 20, 2014, at 4:11 PM, gil portenseigne
<gil.portensei...@nereide.fr> wrote:
Hi all,
I don't want to relaunch the debate around including the
projectMgmt component into the 13.07 release, but i have a
question :
What is the best way to import the projectMgr component in
my
local 13.07 checkout environment, to start using it in a
real
project and to contribute on upgrading it for trunk and/or
the
13.07 release ?
Trunk technical evolution might be a problem if a want to
stick
to 13.07 release with projectMgmt features.
Should I use trunk instead ?
Cheers
Gil
--
<siteon0.jpg>
Gil Portenseigne
Consultant ERP OFBiz
Société Néréide
3b Les isles
37270 Veretz
Tel : 09 74 53 46 09, puis 1, poste 61
Mob : 06 82 740 444
www.nereide.fr
--
<Mail Attachment.jpeg>
Gil Portenseigne
Consultant ERP OFBiz
Société Néréide
3b Les isles
37270 Veretz
Tel : 09 74 53 46 09, puis 1, poste 61
Mob : 06 82 740 444
www.nereide.fr
--
Ron Wheeler
President
Artifact Software Inc
email: rwhee...@artifact-software.com
skype: ronaldmwheeler
phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102
--
Ron Wheeler
President
Artifact Software Inc
email: rwhee...@artifact-software.com
skype: ronaldmwheeler
phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102
