24 Jul
2012
24 Jul
'12
7:31 p.m.
On Jul 24, 2012, at 4:59 PM, Gary Kopp wrote:
Thanks for the additional testimony, Jerome.
This might be a bit off-topic or even inappropriate, but I can't control my
curiosity :-) XWiki SAS is headquartered in Paris. But there's a satellite
in Romania. How did the Romanian connection come about?
There were 2 GSOC students that contributed to the XWiki open source project and they
continued to be active (Sergiu and Marta - Sergiu is still very active in the project and
Marta from time to time) even after the GSOC. At some point XWiki SAS asked them if they
wanted to join the company and they agreed. It just happened that 1) they were living in
Romania (could have been any other part of the world!) and 2) they were teachers at the
University and knew a lot of good computer science students and XWiki SAS also hired a few
of them who themselves had friends… ;) And in no time there was a Romanian subsidiary ;)
Thanks
-Vincent
--Gary
-----Original Message-----
From: devs-bounces(a)xwiki.org [mailto:devs-bounces@xwiki.org] On Behalf Of
Jerome Velociter
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2012 8:45 AM
To: XWiki Developers
Subject: Re: [xwiki-devs] Are Outside Developers Really Welcome?
Hello Gary,
Just to add my little testimony to the discussion.
I'm a former XWiki SAS employee, and still an active committer and
contributor - to the extend of the time I can allow myself doing that.
That's one of the things that makes truly open projects great : leaving the
company doesn't mean giving up on the community. And vice-versa : employees
don't get automatic committership rights on the project.
If you look at the the hall of fame
http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/HallOfFame#HCoreCommitters,
you'll see a fair share of core committers are XWiki SAS affiliated, but
that there are "outsiders" as well.
Hope you like it there :)
Regards,
Jerome
On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 3:17 PM, Gary Kopp <gary(a)roksw.com> wrote:
Vincent,
I freely admit that I did indeed form conclusions prematurely,
complicated by the happenstance that I picked precisely the wrong
point in time to evaluate the community (during your seminar). Given
the responses on this thread and the resources you have referenced I
now find the XWiki project to be extremely appealing from a
developer's standpoint. I thank you, and the others on this thread,
for taking the time to straighten me out.
My current plan is to "give back" in some significant fashion. I am an
exception to your typical contributor, and this will hopefully work to
the community's benefit (but only time will tell). I am a "retired"
software engineer, and I am still driven to architect (my true
speciality) and code simply to exercise my mind and create things of
"beauty." This is how I choose to spend my retirement, and I have no
other time-consuming activities. So, being by nature
obsessive-compulsive, immersive, and highly productive, whatever
"hobby" I pick (XWiki) will receive my more-than-full-time attention, on a
long term basis.
Of course, I have my own special areas of interest when it comes to
XWiki, even if they are not driven by currently recognized
requirements. The one that is foremost in my thinking at this time is
semantic content. The good news/bad news about this interest is that
it will undoubtedly lead to clashes with the current WikiModel. I see
from your posts that you personally see the model as the last (?)
remaining core piece that needs re-architecting. I will not presume to
say that I can be of any help here, but I will indeed be looking into
it once I have completely absorbed the existing architecture of the
entire XWiki platform. But first I have to get the darned system built
:-)
--Gary
-----Original Message-----
From: devs-bounces(a)xwiki.org [mailto:devs-bounces@xwiki.org] On Behalf
Of Vincent Massol
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2012 12:31 AM
To: XWiki Developers
Subject: Re: [xwiki-devs] Are Outside Developers Really Welcome?
Hi Gary,
Since you're not the first one to ask I've created a FAQ entry about this:
http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/FAQ/What+is+the+relationship+betwe
en+XWi
ki+SAS+and+the+XWiki+open+source+project
Hope you'll find the information you were looking for inside and that
you'll be reassured that we are completely the opposite of what you
initially thought (we strive very hard to NOT be a closed open source
and make every effort to be what I call a "real open source project",
i.e. a community-based open source project.
If you see any deviation from this please point them out. It seems to
me that you confused the way we work with the fact that you didn't get
any fast reply to your question and you jumped to a bit hasty
conclusions ;)
Generally speaking (excluding the Seminar thing), the reasons people
answer faster to some people than others:
* They know each other from their previous work in the community and
thus have built respect and the person getting replied to has
**contributed** back to the community thus establishing this level of
intimacy/confidence
* They know the topic and can thus answer
* How the questions are phrased, how long the question is, and how
easy they are to be answered
* ah yes. also. the phase of the moon. ;)
Thanks
-Vincent
On Jul 23, 2012, at 11:24 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