15 May
2012
15 May
'12
10:18 a.m.
Hi Martin,
here we go!
On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 7:27 PM, Martin Schönberger <maschonber(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
Hello again!
First of all, let me express my thanks to all of you who joined in on
this thread (started at
http://lists.xwiki.org/pipermail/devs/2012-April/050416.html) to
support me in my quest to better understand the way open source
development works in XWiki. :)
As I've mentioned in my last email, I have some more questions I would
like to ask. Last time I focused on general aspects of the process,
today's topics revolve around the project's architecture, roles and
governance, and knowledge management.
So my first question this time concerns the architectural design, and
how it has evolved over time. Did the basic structure change / grow
significantly since the early days of XWiki? Vincent mentioned the
change from a monolithic code to small modules. Were these and other
changes made in some major refactorings, or rather through steady
refinement? To what degree is it an issue to keep backwards
compatibility between releases?
I'm not very qualified to answer this one, but here goes. XWiki has had
user that started using the software in its early days (I have an example
from around 2006 in mind) who are still using the software today and
successfully managed to upgrade from version 0.9 to version 3.5.1 and still
have their wiki functional. XWiki has many enterprise users, for whom
backward compatibility is very important. So the XWiki dev community has
always been careful not to break too many things at once and provide an
upgrade path from one version to the next. Major changes (such as the
switch to a new syntax) came with a migrator to help handling them.
It is sometimes tough to maintain backward compatibility, but it's a major
priority of the dev team.
Also I am interested more closely how the functions and
responsibilities are divided in the team. Caty wrote
about 'very clear
departments' in her last answer, and the teampage on XWiki.com lists a
multitude of different and specific roles. Both of your descriptions
of the testing process, however, suggests a less strict separation of
tasks. So what role do the roles play? How specialized or
cross-functional are the teams and people working therein? Is there a
difference between XWiki.org and XWiki SAS?
As Vincent explained, yes, there is a difference. While the company is
organized in a more traditional way, with a division of responsibilities,
in the XWiki.org there are only committers and contributors, with no other
formal title. Everyone is encouraged to participate according to their
abilities, be that coding, documenting, testing or communicating.
In addition to this, a lot of members of the community are not related to
the company whatsoever.
You can find out more about them here:
http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/HallOfFame
In a related matter, many of the role descriptions of the core
developers contain manager and leadership titles.
What, in practice,
are the main tasks of the people managing the development? Many
meritocracies have safety nets, some rules to follow or people to go
to when no consensus can be reached on important topics. Did this ever
occur in XWiki? What would be done in such a situation? Have either
the formal roles or the informal merit people earned in a special
field some kind of influence on the weight of their voice in a
dispute?
I don't have much to add to Vincent's answer here. The important thing to
keep in mind is that when taking part to the community, your XWiki SAS
title plays no part. For instance in my case, the weight of my remarks
would come from my past involvement in the community (writing
documentation, taking part to discussion about features, testing the
product) rather my XWiki SAS role.
And last but not least some questions about the access and
distribution of knowledge: XWiki features an extensive
written
documentation of itself and the process used in its development. What
is the role then of additional, personal communication, of the
proverbial informal talk at the water cooler? Is the necessary time
and ceremony of written documentation always justified by making the
knowledge permanently available to everyone, or can you think of
exceptions?
When starting to work with a new piece of technology, even with the best
documentation in the world there will be times when you will need to ask
questions and have a discussion with others. This can happen in real life
(and it does a lot at the office), but also through Skype or IRC. XWiki
devs and users try to make themselves available to answer questions from
users and newcomers, which greatly contributes to the sense of community
around XWiki.
Guillaume
Again, every answer or comment is greatly
appreciated,
Martin
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