2010/4/2 Brett Profitt <[email protected]> > Hi, > > I'm Brett Profitt, the lead developer for the Elgg project, and was > given a heads up by > Melvin Carvalho on our community site [1] that Elgg's being discussed > as a possible solution for a distributed SNS by the FSF/GNU. Awesome! > > Just wanted to throw a few things out to you guys: > > * The general roadmap and focus mentioned in this thread are basically > correct. Heavy dev time went into 1.7 to fix long standing bugs and > API oddities. While I'm pleased with the results so far, this is a > continual process of improvement in the project. 1.8 is focusing on > interface, UI/UX, and making it easier to theme Elgg. It's planned > for autumn 2010. A generic roadmap covering up to Elgg 2.0 was posted > on the community site [2] and will soon be examined in depth and > posted on elgg.org. > > * There's been a recent hugely positive change in Elgg's > community--not unrelated to a change in how Elgg devs approached > it--that's been really pleasant to experience. Elgg's ecosystem has > reached critical mass where conversations are interesting and > worthwhile, the help vampires are dealt with quickly by community > regulars (and even a few recovering help vampires themselves), trac > [3] is buzzing with not only bug reports but *patches* and actual > joint development is taking place. If you were in the community more > than 3 months ago and left, you might want to come back--it's better. > > * Federalization is starting to be big deal with Elgg. Curverider > (the primary funding company for Elgg) are discussing ways to create a > federalization plugin using openID and OAuth. There's some working > code and it's very likely significant parts of this will be opened > once the code is reasonably distributable. This would be a great > project for joint development with some of the distributed web app > gurus that I'm sure are lurking. > > * Yeah, the G part of 'GUID' is a lie. There's been talk about > creating truly global IDs, but this was left alone in favor of more > serious bugs and shortcomings. Triage happens. > > * Elgg is OSS--if you need to change Elgg to make it better for you, > chances are your changes will make it better for everyone. I'm not > familiar with the full scope of your project and I know that > branches/forks are sometime necessary, but I see them closer to a last > resort than a first reaction. Community support and interaction has > increased dramatically going into the 1.7 release and it's just > getting better. Whether it's interaction on trac / community or > something more official like a hosted branch on code.elgg.org, I'd > love to have you guys (gender-neutral) as part of that! >
Many thanks for posting, Brett! I would suggest taking elgg for a 'test drive', maybe on the daisycha.insite, say on a 6 week timeframe. After 6 weeks, the newest versions of the most popular GNU/Linux distros will be out, with all the new social features, and PHP 5.3 will start gaining wider adoption. It should be possible to see by that time, what functionality we want to work on, what the gaps are, and what resources are available to the project. A decision can then perhaps be more clear, the direction in which to progress, for a longer development leg. > > I know this was a bit of an info dump, so if you have any questions or > comments, feel free to ask. If you're up for some IRC action we're > #elgg on freenode. > > Thanks, > Brett > > 1. http://community.elgg.org > 2. > http://community.elgg.org/mod/groups/topicposts.php?topic=453453&group_guid=212846 > (4th<http://community.elgg.org/mod/groups/topicposts.php?topic=453453&group_guid=212846%0A%284th>comment > down...comment permalinks are in trunk!) > 3. http://trac.elgg.org > > ---- > Brett Profitt > Elgg Lead Developer > > Skype: brett.profitt > Twitter: http://twitter.com/brettprofitt > > >
