Hello Developers,

I wanted to send along a brief summary of some of the discussions that 
occurred in the "DSpace 3.0 Planning" meeting [1] on Weds, as the 
Committers feel these are important brainstorms to get out into the 
developer community.

What follows is a summary of the main discussion points of the Weds meeting:

* During the meeting, those in attendance frankly discussed some 
concerns we all have around Apache Cocoon (on which XMLUI is based), and 
its lack of recent support or releases. Many of us have started to 
question the "viability" of Cocoon as a long-term UI platform, as it no 
longer seems to have an active support community around it anymore.

* Because of this, we are starting to feel it's important to encourage 
potential new UI development. However, to be 100% clear, we highly doubt 
anything "new" will be ready for DSpace 3.0 (XMLUI will continue to be 
the 'default UI'). This is more of a *long term* idea, and currently we 
have no exact plans for a new UI. (Though it was noted there have been 
several UI-related projects in recent years, including WebMVC [2] work 
and SkylightUI [3])

* Because of these concerns, we brainstormed out some potentially 
radical 'rapid re-architecting' ideas which were presented by Richard 
Rodgers [4]. All of these ideas were just brainstorms on how we could 
potentially rapidly re-architect DSpace in a way that would more easily 
allow for rapid UI development (and enable new features that may require 
larger architectural changes).

* The discussion was interesting, but we all began to settle on the fact 
that DSpace development & releases are easier to manage/support if 
things are added incrementally (gradual evolution of the platform) 
rather than via major re-architecting (revolutionary changes to 
platform). Most of us seemed to settle on the fact that 3.0 really needs 
to be an evolutionary release (just like 1.8 and those before). In 3.0, 
we should attempt to add more new features of interest to us all, while 
also hopefully making small steps towards longer-term goals (like 
re-architecting parts of DSpace or supporting new UI development)

* However, at the same time, it was noted that we are all in favor of 
other groups/individuals (inside or outside the Commmitters team) 
beginning to experiment with building new UIs or re-architecting parts 
of DSpace. But, in order to ensure that work gets proper community & 
developer feedback, it should be done as *openly* as possible 
(preferably on GitHub with occasional updates sent to dspace-devel or 
similar). We all worry that any development projects completed behind 
"closed doors" may have a very difficult path towards achieving 
widespread adoption & support.

* As for DSpace 3.0, we still require more discussions around what 
exactly will be in 3.0.  But, it sounds likely that it will include 
several new exciting features (already in the works at various 
institutions). It is unlikely to include a new UI, nor any larger 
architectural changes (unless such work is highly stable and has a valid 
migration path).

The full meeting notes are at: 
https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/DevMtg+2012-05-09+-+3.0+Planning

If any of you have any comments or questions or have your own 
ideas/brainstorms to add, please feel free to pose them on this list. We 
want to keep these ideas/brainstorms as open as we possibly can, and 
provide opportunity for feedback/brainstorms from everyone!

- Tim, on behalf of the Commmitters

Links to items mentioned above:
[1] Meeting Notes: 
https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/DevMtg+2012-05-09+-+3.0+Planning
[2] WebMVC: 
https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/WebMVC+%28Freemarker%29+UI
[3] SkylightUI: https://github.com/skylightui/skylight
[4] Richard Rodgers' brainstorms: 
https://wiki.duraspace.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=31662379

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