17 Dec
2009
17 Dec
'09
11:37 a.m.
Hi Vincent,
We had already talk in the past about that matters. Globally, what you
proposed seems good and really honest.
But until we see a real implementation, it is difficult to know if it could
have or not a negative effect on the way the product is seen by open-source
adepts.
I completely agree with Pascal, and I also feel that if what you propose is
well done, it could be a win-win-win operation, for XWiki SAS, other
contributing companies like we are, and the end-user of our products.
My main concerns about your proposal is the same as Fabio, it is about the
ranking of contributors to receive what you have called the good spot. I
feel that the policy could be really difficult to write, since there are
many ways to contributes. Moreover, wasting time in ranking discussion does
not go in the direction of improving the open-source project. We could go
into endless discussion on that point, and I wonder if this point is not
only the result of XWiki SAS marketing departing pushing toward to receive
the good spot ! So, even if Softec/eGuilde could expect also to receive a
good spot, I think that it could be simpler to treat every advertising at
the same level, with a uniform presentation, and showing true facts only
like the number of bugs reports, patch contributions, realizations, and so
on. Having a list freely sortable on such true facts, could produce a
somewhat variable ranking that does not suffer discussion, since providing
bugs reports, patch or using the product intensively all contribute to XWiki
success and are measurable values. Combining them to get a single ranking is
really a more difficult to agree upon.
Another way to increase the visibility of contributor could be links from
there contributions on XWiki.org, like links from a macro, plug-ins,
documentation,... ; but we should than be careful to not clutter the
interface. However, this could be implemented has an extension of the way
XWiki shows the all authors of a given page, showing avatars, and linking to
their listings for example, and this could improve visibility of XWiki SAS
as this seems to be one of your goal, without being dishonest.
Regarding point 6), I am not sure this is so pertinent, since there is many
other place where the project could have been hosted, like open-source
repositories (or on my own infrastructure, wdyt to see my logo on all pages
;) ), . Therefore I am not sure that XWiki SAS should be shown on the bottom
of every page for that. Once against this smell like marketing pushing you
and I feel the visibility of XWiki SAS would therefore be too present IMHO.
I would like to conclude on the fact that from our previous discussion on
that subject, I had really appreciate your concerns about keeping the
independence of the project from the commercial part of your company, and
your commitment toward the open-source community is a really good example to
follow. I really hope that we will be able to find altogether the best way
to implement your proposal to improve the XWiki Open-Source project as
whole.
With kind regards,
--
Denis Gervalle
Softec SA CEO
eGuilde SaRL CTO
On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Vincent Massol <vincent(a)massol.net> wrote:
Hi everyone (devs and users),
While we have a clear governance for write access to our source
repository (http://dev.xwiki.org), we're missing a clear governance
for xwiki.org. The idea is to address mainly the following 2 questions:
1) who "owns" it and thus "controls" (or rather provides direction
for) its content
2) can it be used for business advertising (support, paid packages,
consulting services)
Bit of History about XWiki SAS
========================
- XWiki SAS (http://xwiki.com) is the company founded by Ludovic
Dubost the creator of XWiki (I'm the CTO of XWiki SAS in addition to
being a committer here).
- Most of the active contributors are also employed and paid by XWiki
SAS to develop the XWiki software. Today that's
-- 12.5 committers (developers)
-- 1 open source product manager (see
http://markmail.org/thread/ggaaw4u6yyci4oan
for its definition)
-- 1 designer
-- 1 tester/technical writer
- XWiki SAS sells services around the open source software, see
http://www.xwiki.com/xwiki/bin/view/Services/
- XWiki SAS truly believes and understands open source, see
http://www.xwiki.com/xwiki/bin/view/About/Values
-- I also wrote a blog post on this some time back:
http://massol.myxwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Blog/XWikiSASAndOpenSource
- XWiki SAS has promised "not to do evil" ;), see its manifesto at
http://www.xwiki.com/xwiki/bin/view/About/Manifesto
- XWiki SAS is paying for the servers and maintenance of xwiki.org,
myxwiki.org, the maven repo, the svn repo, the hudson build serversn
the free JUG farm, and more
Issue at hand
===========
XWiki SAS would like to generate more revenue to be able to increase
the development pace of the XWiki software. We'd like to fund even
more the development of XWiki, so that it becomes an even better
product. We've asked you what you'd like to see in the future in XWiki
and you've answered on this survey result:
http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Blog/Features+Survey+Results
We'd like to implement those features as fast as possible.
For this we need to ensure that users interested in commercial
services find easily the way to http://xwiki.com, even when they
arrive on xwiki.org.
This is true for XWiki SAS's services but also for any company willing
to offer services around the XWiki open source project. There's no
magic. Developers need to be paid when they work full time on some
project. We need a commercial ecosystem around XWiki for it to
progress as quickly as its competitors (the collaboration market). We
need to allow for commercial companies the ability to generate revenue
from their work on the XWiki open source project. However we also want
to continue ensuring that all the XWiki development is done in open
source, under a LGPL license.
Governance Proposal
=================
1) xwiki.org is controlled by the XWiki committers. This means that
important changes brought to it should be discussed/vote on the list,
using the same practices as for code commits
2) xwiki.org stays open in edit mode to all external contributors (and
XWiki committers continue to monitor it to remove spam, etc)
3) we agree to start with 3 zones where companies can advertise their
commercial offers on top of the XWiki open source product:
-- On the download page (for business packages, subscriptions, hosting)
-- On the support page (for services: support, consulting)
-- (still to be defined) Possibly on a "Products" tab in the new
horizontal navigation. The idea would be to do as jboss.org is doing.
Projects are open source and community and Products are commercial
4) the company offerings are listed by their amount of contributions
to the XWiki open source project. The company that contributes most
(XWiki SAS today) gets the best spots (top of the list, bigger space)
5) Companies who want to be listed should provide some proof of their
contributions to the XWiki open source project
6) XWiki SAS gets some acknowledgment for paying for the xwiki.org
server/maintenance of it. Probably somewhere in the footer of the site
or on side panel somewhere
7) xwiki.org should always remain a site for the xwiki open source
community
Conclusion
=========
We want to stress that this proposal is not about XWiki SAS making a
commercial takeover of the xwiki.org site.
It's about recognizing that if the XWiki open source software
progresses quickly today, it's thanks to contributors but also for a
very large proportion to companies paying developers to work on it,
either directly (like XWiki SAS or other companies that have
developers contributing) or indirectly (by paying for example XWiki
SAS or other companies to work on specific features).
It's also about recognizing that XWiki SAS is happy to see other
companies willing to contribute to the progress of the XWiki open
source project and thus to provide a place for these companies to be
visible too.
I hope that all our contributors but also users of the XWiki Open
Source software will find this proposal acceptable and I welcome any
feedback on it.
Thanks
-Vincent Massol
Hat 1: XWiki SAS CTO
Hat 2: XWiki committer
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