24 Jul
2012
24 Jul
'12
1:51 a.m.
Hi Gary,
I would like to confirm Sergiu's message. Like him, I strongly believe that
the XWiki community is one the best open source communities, and that
participating to this project is really a pleasure for any serious java
developer. I have joined the small circle of committers a few years ago
after having used XWiki as a simple user for several years. The circle of
commiters is not small because we are not open, but it is small because the
requirements are high for truly participating to this project, and
therefore need a lot of personal involvement. I should even admit that I am
currently unable to participate as much as I would like, simply because I
am lacking time.
I really hope you will change your mind on this project, and maybe we will
have the occasion to work in an not too distant future to further improve
XWiki together...
--
Denis Gervalle
SOFTEC sa - CEO
eGuilde sarl - CTO
On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 12:27 AM, Sergiu Dumitriu <sergiu(a)xwiki.com> wrote:
On 07/23/2012 05:24 PM, Gary Kopp wrote:
To XWiki SAS, and non-affiliated XWiki
developers:
While XWiki meets the technical requirements of being "open source," so
far
I have found it to be a bit "closed" in its pragmatic aspects. The
developers actually interacting in public on this list all seem to be
employees of the sponsors, and the communications seem to restrict
themselves to development going on internally. Over the last week or so,
questions coming in from "outsiders" (like myself) go unanswered. It's not
necessarily atypical for open source sponsors to be unresponsive to
outsiders, but the better open source projects still encourage the active
committers to provide some level of support for potential contributors.
Beyond that, when outside "hackers" (meant in a positive sense) are
tinkering with an open source project they typically do offer their own
contributions to questions raised on development mailing lists, in those
open source projects where such activity is possible and/or encouraged. I
see no evidence of outsider developers/hackers in the XWiki project.
What finally led me to write this e-mail is my inability to build XWiki
from
source. I was initially encouraged by the presence of quite a bit of
information about building in the wiki documents. But when I actually
tried
to put the instructions into practice I found them to be less than
complete,
and unable to be followed to a successful conclusion (while the purpose of
this e-mail is not to get help with these problems, I will note that most
of
my problems revolve around Maven). I have reached the conclusion that the
only people really able to build XWiki are its sponsors, using their own
procedures, and these procedures are _not_ those currently found on the
wiki. I hope I am wrong about this.
So, are outside developers encouraged to participate? Is any XWiki
development going on outside of the sponsoring organizations? If so, do
those developers find the current building documentation to be adequate,
and
I'm simply not up to the task?
--Gary
Hi Gary,
I'm going to start my answer with an excuse that covers most of the points
raised in your mail: for the past week and this one as well, the XWiki SAS
company is organizing an annual seminar for all its employees, and
everybody is rather busy with all the activities going on here, including a
hackaton that changes our priorities into getting a small project done
before the end of the week. So this period is not a very good one to judge
the interactions in the community.
Not all the committers are employees of XWiki SAS. It is true that the
largest share of contributions come from XWiki SAS personnel, but not
because we're doing closed source development out in the open just to
appear open source. The main reason is that whenever we find a talented
person sticking around, we usually try to keep that person's interest in
the project by employing him (I am such an example).
Another reason is that enterprise software communities have different
mechanics than user software like browsers or desktop applications. Most of
the users are employees of companies using XWiki internally, and they're
just trying to get some problems fixed. After their problems are fixed,
they go on with their main job. It is hard to get outside users to stick
around long enough to get really motivated into staying for the long term.
It happens in just two cases: When their company is using XWiki not just as
an internal wiki for their company, but as a platform on which they build
solutions for their own clients. And we have four such committers. The
second case is when they're true hackers that just happened to get in touch
with XWiki, and fell in love with it. I am such a person, and Caleb is
another.
If you check the mailing list activity on the long term, excluding the
past week, you will see that we try to answer as many questions as we can,
and that the non-committers also respond to questions that they can answer.
As for "better open source projects", I for one strongly believe that the
XWiki community is one of the best open source communities in the world,
although rather on the small to medium size. But since I am an XWiki SAS
employee, feel free to doubt my opinion.
Now, about the build problem, most of the time it works, but we see from
time to time problems raised on the mailing list. Maven is supposed to
simplify things and to "just work", but a complex build configuration is
more likely to fail than a simple java library. Someone will come in and
help you, but don't count on too much interaction from the XWiki SAS
employees until the end of the week.
I hope that you'll give us a second chance.
--
Sergiu Dumitriu
http://purl.org/net/sergiu/
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