10 May
2012
10 May
'12
7:27 p.m.
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?
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?
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?
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?
Again, every answer or comment is greatly appreciated,
Martin
10 May
10 May
8:28 p.m.
New subject: [xwiki-devs] Questions concerning the development of XWiki, Round 2
Hi Martin,
On May 10, 2012, at 7:27 PM, Martin Schönberger 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?
We've decided a long time ago (we = the committers at that time) that we preferred
evolution rather than revolution. The main reason is that XWiki already had an important
user base when the development team was started (before that it was just Ludovic working
on it). It takes more time but it allows us to keep existing users happy. In addition
we've been able to still move forward.
There's a Joel Spolsky blog about this topic:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
I don't have any figure I can prove but I'd say we've modified a bit more than
half of the code in a 5 years time span (maybe up to 75%).
I can cite 2 examples of relatively large refactorings we've done without breaking
backward compatibility:
* The Rendering module. XWiki had a wiki syntax initially and we wanted to fully rewrite
the code that takes an input in that syntax and generate HTML out of it. So we created a
new Rendering engine that can take any input in any syntax and generate an output in any
other syntax (see http://rendering.xwiki.org). And we added polyglot support in XWiki (ie
the ability to support several wiki syntaxes), and introduced XWiki Syntax 2.0.
* The WYSIWYG editor. We were using TinyMCE and switched to our own editor that we wrote
from scratch. If you're interested we can explain the reason…
Then we have a lot of smaller refactorings. We can go into more details if you're
interested.
The only big part that hasn't been refactored yet is the core Model. I'd really
like to tackle this and we've started designing the new model a bit but it's
complex and requires a long period of focused time which I personally haven't been
able to get so far.
We're very serious on backward compatibility and most wiki pages back from 5 years ago
still work on the latest version.
We've defined a precise strategy to ensure we don't break backward compatibility:
http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/DevelopmentPractices#HBackwar…
If you're interested in how we came up with this, it should be easy to find the
mailing list threads about it on xwiki.markmail.com
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?
At the open source project level we have only 2 roles:
* contributors: anyone contributing as defined here:
http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/Contributing
* committers: people who have right access to the SCM and who can vote, see
http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/Committership
Committers decide what they want to work on. Some can be more design-oriented, others more
test-oriented, etc.
At XWiki SAS we have more roles and a more traditional structure. Tech roles:
* CTO (me ;))
* Tech Lead or Senior Dev
* Web Developers
* Back end Developer
* Tester
* QA engineer
* Designer
In a related matter, many of the role descriptions of
the core
developers contain manager and leadership titles.
Hmm. Do you have a link? AFAIK we just have committers.
What, in practice,
are the main tasks of the people managing the development?
There's nobody managing the development ;)
We're auto-managed.
Committers make proposals or start votes and others discuss and vote.
We do stuff by collegial agreements.
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?
It happens rarely. We do frequently don't agree on some details. The proposals or vote
is then discussed and amended with a new proposal/vote.
Example:
* First vote: http://markmail.org/thread/56v5thsj6wv7tpno
* Second vote: http://markmail.org/thread/tino4ngttflc5i3s
Sometimes it takes longer to reach a consensus but it's always a better result IMO.
Nobody in this community votes -1 without a good reason just to bother people ;)
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?
Everyone has the same vote power but then people have more influence than others through
their past actions.
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?
We try to make it as easy as possible for someone external to follow the development or
join the team. We also try to have a common style for writing code. This is needed before
there's no ownership of the code and everyone can modify any part of the code. Also
homogenous code also makes it easier to join the dev team.
Of course we have lots of informal discussion on the mailing list and on IRC (and people
speak with other privately too but all proposals/decisions are always made publicly).
Hope it helps,
-Vincent
Again, every answer or comment is greatly
appreciated,
Martin
15 May
15 May
10:18 a.m.
New subject: [xwiki-devs] Questions concerning the development of XWiki, Round 2
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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19 May
19 May
2:27 a.m.
New subject: [xwiki-devs] Questions concerning the development of XWiki, Round 2
Thank you both, again, for your answers!
Hope it helps
Yes it definitely did, and could cast aside most of my uncertainties.
I have just a few quick remarks and follow-ups:
> In a related matter, many of the role descriptions
of the core developers contain manager and leadership titles.
Hmm. Do you have a link? AFAIK we just have
committers.
I'm sorry, I guess my mistake here was not taking the separation
between XWiki SAS and XWiki.org into consideration. I was referring to
http://www.xwiki.com/xwiki/bin/view/Company/Team, where three Project
Managers, a Team Leader, a Communication Manager, an Administration
Manager, a Support & Documentation Manager, a Research Manager, etc.
are mentioned, so I thought these roles might be relevant. The same
group of people working on the same projects in two different ways,
this is still a bit hard for me to grasp.
> What, in practice, are the main tasks of the
people managing the development?
There's nobody managing the development ;)
We're auto-managed.
I see your point. So everyone (who is interested and dedicated) takes
an equal part in making decisions? Do you think these collegial
agreements would still hold if the base of contributors was
significantly larger or wider spread, and therefore incorporated more
diverse ideas about the project? Or would the system have to be
adapted to scale successfully?
Kind regards,
Martin
8:36 a.m.
New subject: [xwiki-devs] Questions concerning the development of XWiki, Round 2
On May 19, 2012, at 2:27 AM, Martin Schönberger wrote:
Yes. That's our vote process.
Thank you both, again, for your answers!
It's easy: think about it in the same way in which a person always belongs to several
groups:
* group of your close friends
* group of people sharing a hobby with you
* group of people playing a sport with you
* group of people going to Church with you
etc
For all these groups you're the same person but with different hats when you're in
one of those groups. And each of these groups has its own rules.
The only hard part here is that there's the word "XWiki" in both entities
(open source project and company). I personally don't like this since it brings
ambiguity when we have a very clear separation between both.
Hope it helps
Yes it definitely did, and could cast aside most of my uncertainties.
I have just a few quick remarks and follow-ups:
> In a related matter, many of the role
descriptions of the core developers contain manager and leadership titles.
Hmm. Do you have a link? AFAIK we just have
committers.
I'm sorry, I guess my mistake here was not taking the separation
between XWiki SAS and XWiki.org into consideration. I was referring to
http://www.xwiki.com/xwiki/bin/view/Company/Team, where three Project
Managers, a Team Leader, a Communication Manager, an Administration
Manager, a Support & Documentation Manager, a Research Manager, etc.
are mentioned, so I thought these roles might be relevant. The same
group of people working on the same projects in two different ways,
this is still a bit hard for me to grasp. > What, in
practice, are the main tasks of the people managing the development?
There's nobody managing the development ;)
We're auto-managed.
I see your point. So everyone (who is interested and dedicated) takes
an equal part in making decisions? Do you think these collegial
agreements would still hold if the base of contributors was
significantly larger or wider spread, and therefore incorporated more
diverse ideas about the project? Or would the system have to be
adapted to scale successfully?
Right now we're about 15 active committers. I have no idea at what level it would
break but my gut feeling is that it would hold till about 50 active committers. The reason
for this value is that I've worked in the past in company where we all had the same
title and worked collegially and we only had to introduce a hierarchy when we reached 50
employees or so. Actually I even think that the open source project could go beyond this
value since it's much more free and relaxed than a company.
Note that I'm talking about committers. Now there are a lot more people participating
in various ways (raising issues, suggesting ideas, supporting others on the list, writing
articles/blog posts/tweeting, sending pull requests, etc).
Also note that there aren't that many projects with 50 active committers (Actually I
can't even cite one!) so we're pretty safe for a long time IMO ;)
Thanks
-Vincent
4556
days inactive
4565
days old
4 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
-
Guillaume Lerouge -
Martin Schönberger -
Vincent Massol