I've been pondering writing this email for some time now. As others have mentioned - our community has been trending downwards. Work from Samsung aside, and those that use E/EFL through Samsung's work -- The developer and user base has been getting smaller and smaller. That is regular members of the community contributing work and regular members of the community using E/EFL as an option for their linux desktops/laptops. The number of arguments that are now occurring among those of us still left has been rising. The current state of the project is such that dissenting opinions/code are not allowed and get reverted or overruled in discussions, this likely directly related to our structure and our lack of documented road maps, goals, and plans.
This project has been around for decades. Many of our developers have spent blood sweat and tears adding code to this project and working on it. Many of our developers have poured just as much code into this project as the next has. The project has become so much more than just one person's vision or one person's opinion. As it is the project is really not set up to handle this. There is no clear decision tree. No clear path for what is and is not accepted. No clear direction of what the goal is to accomplish. This has been leading to so much animosity, and frankly a stagnant project that is dwindling instead of growing. Sure plenty of code gets written, rewritten, or worked on, but the majority of it is not seen in the product. It is working on rewrites for performance, bug fixes for corner cases, implementing new apis that are not used anywhere, etc..., etc..., and all of that is fine and necessary, but other very important work gets left out. Take Enlightenment from late 2000s - now. A lot of work has been done. Compositing, Wayland, e_widgets -> Elm, etc..., etc... But in the last say 10 years... You could pull up versions of Enlightenment and without a technical sense or from someone following the project, you would think it is the same... Same menus, same settings, same gadgets, same shelves, same themes, same look, same interface, etc..., etc... EFL consistently is worked on and sure is doing really cool new stuff like Interfaces... but does it matter if no one is even using it? (Samsung aside). We have 3 or 4 applications that we have always had and there seems to be very little growth. We have people who have decided to fork off work or go their own route... see Moksha, Fyne, etc... due to problems within our community or our vision. This is difficult for a community like ours to overcome when and if we lose users when we already have few to begin with. I believe it is time that we as a community revisit ourselves and consider restructuring. Projects can't just be YOLO with no clear laid out direction or plan. Community based projects can't succeed in an environment where there is seemingly no project management and discussions only happen when a feature or change is pushed and one person overrides it. This project needs to have more project management. Goals need to be laid out. Road maps need to be developed. Release plans need to be created and adhered to. This project needs structure, and frankly this structure needs to come from more than just one person. There needs to be a team of project managers who determine whether changes, features, or proposal are accepted, not only one person. There needs to be a team of project managers determining the direction of the project and developing road maps for it. This team needs to be represented of our developers, our corporate interests, and our community user base. Having a team will keep from personal bias, desires, or egos getting in the way. Once we have some structure in place, it will become much easier for us to band together to work towards meeting our goals. As it is - It really feels like if we continue on the path we are on, the future is not bright at all. If we treat this project's goals as whatever meets the desires or ideas of one or two, that is what it will eventually become - a project used by one or two. I'm pleading with everyone to put egos aside, put personal ambitions, personal goals, and related aside and begin working as a team. The current climate will improve dramatically if that happens. Before you get upset and respond angrily at this email, remember I love this project and have worked on it for over 15 years and developed relationships with most of you along the way, and so I am in no way sending this email with ill intent or to anger or hurt anyone. I'm sending this email in hopes that we can only improve as we move forward. Thanks, Stephen ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ enlightenment-devel mailing list enlightenment-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/enlightenment-devel
