[xwiki-devs] [Proposal] Governance for xwiki.org
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
Hi, On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Vincent Massol <[email protected]> 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.
Sounds good to me. Note: I work for XWiki SAS too. I'd love to get feedback from people outside the company - Denis, Caleb, Pascal, Christophe, Jérémie, Ricardo and all the others: it's time to join the discussion! ;-) Guillaume
Thanks -Vincent Massol Hat 1: XWiki SAS CTO Hat 2: XWiki committer _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
-- Guillaume Lerouge Product Manager - XWiki SAS Skype: wikibc Twitter: glerouge http://guillaumelerouge.com/
Hello, I don't know if "pascal" is me or someone else but I'm also one Pascal so I answer ;) Sorry for the long mail... I agree with this kind of governance as long as XWiki.org keeps fully free and brings the best and latest code with LGPL license. I agree that companies contributing to XWiki could be rewarded by having some "visibility" on xwiki.org site. I agree with the fact that XWiki SAS needs to earn more money based on XWiki.org because if it earns more money, XWiki will go further etc... The limit between commercial product and free software is not easy to define and to manage... Being an opensource company is really hard, isn't it? The only thing I want XWiki SAS is to keep going as a real opensource company for which the community project is the base of everything and which contains the best of breed of XWiki SAS knowledge. I would be disappointed to see you becoming a company such as the ones I can see for which opensource is just a facade or a marketting argument without any real community development and support. Jboss is not exactly one of those but they give me the impression of going progressively in this direction and after one year working intensively with their professional projects and support, I'm really disappointed because I see that their opensource and community support seems declining or even seems willingly bad sometimes and focused on only some "visible" projects. I really wonder if opensoure is not getting corrupted by such companies after all... With XWiki, I've been able to develop some little professional projects with the best code coming from XWiki without thinking that, if my project could make or not money, I would have to pay, in any case, the X thousands $ just for the license. My idea was to contribute to XWiki through these projects and if I could earn some money I would contribute to XWiki with something more than my little braincells :)... Sorry about that but the projects I have achieved with XWiki have never gone further than pilots and I have never been able to make a living with that :)... What a shame, isn't it?;) All of that just to explain that the fully open status of XWiki allowed me to bring my ideas into reality and I think your professional but free status is a great attractor for lots of people. So as long as you keep that in mind and in facts, I will keep supporting you and maybe more... Pascal On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 5:41 PM, Guillaume Lerouge <[email protected]>wrote:
Hi,
On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Vincent Massol <[email protected]> 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.
Sounds good to me.
Note: I work for XWiki SAS too. I'd love to get feedback from people outside the company - Denis, Caleb, Pascal, Christophe, Jérémie, Ricardo and all the others: it's time to join the discussion! ;-)
Guillaume
Thanks -Vincent Massol Hat 1: XWiki SAS CTO Hat 2: XWiki committer _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
-- Guillaume Lerouge Product Manager - XWiki SAS Skype: wikibc Twitter: glerouge http://guillaumelerouge.com/ _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
Hi Pascal, On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 9:22 PM, Pascal Voitot <[email protected]>wrote:
Hello,
I don't know if "pascal" is me or someone else but I'm also one Pascal so I answer ;)
Yes, I meant you :-)
Sorry for the long mail...
Thanks for the detailed feedback!
I agree with this kind of governance as long as XWiki.org keeps fully free and brings the best and latest code with LGPL license. I agree that companies contributing to XWiki could be rewarded by having some "visibility" on xwiki.org site. I agree with the fact that XWiki SAS needs to earn more money based on XWiki.org because if it earns more money, XWiki will go further etc... The limit between commercial product and free software is not easy to define and to manage... Being an opensource company is really hard, isn't it? The only thing I want XWiki SAS is to keep going as a real opensource company for which the community project is the base of everything and which contains the best of breed of XWiki SAS knowledge. I would be disappointed to see you becoming a company such as the ones I can see for which opensource is just a facade or a marketting argument without any real community development and support. Jboss is not exactly one of those but they give me the impression of going progressively in this direction and after one year working intensively with their professional projects and support, I'm really disappointed because I see that their opensource and community support seems declining or even seems willingly bad sometimes and focused on only some "visible" projects. I really wonder if opensoure is not getting corrupted by such companies after all... With XWiki, I've been able to develop some little professional projects with the best code coming from XWiki without thinking that, if my project could make or not money, I would have to pay, in any case, the X thousands $ just for the license. My idea was to contribute to XWiki through these projects and if I could earn some money I would contribute to XWiki with something more than my little braincells :)... Sorry about that but the projects I have achieved with XWiki have never gone further than pilots and I have never been able to make a living with that :)... What a shame, isn't it?;) All of that just to explain that the fully open status of XWiki allowed me to bring my ideas into reality and I think your professional but free status is a great attractor for lots of people. So as long as you keep that in mind and in facts, I will keep supporting you and maybe more...
I understand your concern. I've been reading quite a number of online discussions about JBoss and the questions people have about its business model and the fact that they're afraid that at one point it will no longer be Open-Source. I think I can speak on behalf of XWiki SAS when I say that we believe in Open-Source and want to stay a real Open-Source company - however complex it might be at times. My personal take is that, as long that we as a company promise that all the XWiki code written by XWiki SAS will be released under the LGPL license, the project can thrive with people confident that they're contributing to real Open-Source. Ludovic has personnally committed himself to this in the past as XWiki SAS' founder and this is a policy that will continue in the future. We've been talking about this internally and the overwhelming majority of XWiki SAS employees wants the XWiki code we write to be made available under the LGPL license. I hope this answers your concerns :-) Apart from this, are there other questions and/or things that may sound worrying to you? Thanks again for the feedback - and I hope that some of your XWiki-based commercial initiatives will eventually become fruitful :-) Guillaume
Pascal
On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 5:41 PM, Guillaume Lerouge <[email protected]
wrote:
Hi,
On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Vincent Massol <[email protected]> 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.
Sounds good to me.
Note: I work for XWiki SAS too. I'd love to get feedback from people outside the company - Denis, Caleb, Pascal, Christophe, Jérémie, Ricardo and all the others: it's time to join the discussion! ;-)
Guillaume
Thanks -Vincent Massol Hat 1: XWiki SAS CTO Hat 2: XWiki committer _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
-- Guillaume Lerouge Product Manager - XWiki SAS Skype: wikibc Twitter: glerouge http://guillaumelerouge.com/ _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
_______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
-- Guillaume Lerouge Product Manager - XWiki SAS Skype: wikibc Twitter: glerouge http://guillaumelerouge.com/
On Dec 15, 2009, at 9:22 PM, Pascal Voitot wrote:
Hello,
I don't know if "pascal" is me or someone else but I'm also one Pascal so I answer ;) Sorry for the long mail...
I agree with this kind of governance as long as XWiki.org keeps fully free and brings the best and latest code with LGPL license. I agree that companies contributing to XWiki could be rewarded by having some "visibility" on xwiki.org site. I agree with the fact that XWiki SAS needs to earn more money based on XWiki.org because if it earns more money, XWiki will go further etc... The limit between commercial product and free software is not easy to define and to manage... Being an opensource company is really hard, isn't it?
yep, but I think we're doing pretty good so far, aren't we? :)
The only thing I want XWiki SAS is to keep going as a real opensource company for which the community project is the base of everything and which contains the best of breed of XWiki SAS knowledge. I would be disappointed to see you becoming a company such as the ones I can see for which opensource is just a facade or a marketting argument without any real community development and support.
Given where we come from and our track record, this is very unlikely to happen. I hope you don't have any doubts about this! :)
Jboss is not exactly one of those but they give me the impression of going progressively in this direction and after one year working intensively with their professional projects and support, I'm really disappointed because I see that their opensource and community support seems declining or even seems willingly bad sometimes and focused on only some "visible" projects. I really wonder if opensoure is not getting corrupted by such companies after all... With XWiki, I've been able to develop some little professional projects with the best code coming from XWiki without thinking that, if my project could make or not money, I would have to pay, in any case, the X thousands $ just for the license. My idea was to contribute to XWiki through these projects and if I could earn some money I would contribute to XWiki with something more than my little braincells :)... Sorry about that but the projects I have achieved with XWiki have never gone further than pilots and I have never been able to make a living with that :)... What a shame, isn't it?;)
Yes indeed. Just keep trying! And yes any contribution you can make to the xwiki project is good, be it answering mails, reporting bugs, suggesting ideas, spreading the word in blogs/tweets, etc. It doesn't have to cost much.
All of that just to explain that the fully open status of XWiki allowed me to bring my ideas into reality and I think your professional but free status is a great attractor for lots of people. So as long as you keep that in mind and in facts, I will keep supporting you and maybe more...
Yes "we" (as in XWiki SAS committers) really want to continue having a strong community. One reason is that we view XWiki as a platform and a platform works well when it has a large user base and it becomes some de facto standard. Thanks for your feedback Pascal! -Vincent
Pascal
On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 5:41 PM, Guillaume Lerouge <[email protected]>wrote:
Hi,
On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Vincent Massol <[email protected]> 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.
Sounds good to me.
Note: I work for XWiki SAS too. I'd love to get feedback from people outside the company - Denis, Caleb, Pascal, Christophe, Jérémie, Ricardo and all the others: it's time to join the discussion! ;-)
Guillaume
As I have been looking for a job, I feel that I am biased toward XWikiSAS. Trying to be as independent as possible, I am in favor of advertising on xwiki.org as long as: 1. There is a detailed open standard which any company can try to meet. 2. That standard is published on xwiki.org and linked from near the advertisements maybe a small link like "Why do they get to advertise here?" The content of the standard is of no concern to me as long as it's fair. My only worry is to insure that XWiki continues to attract new users and contributors, I want more good patches to apply ;) Caleb James DeLisle Guillaume Lerouge wrote:
Hi,
On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Vincent Massol <[email protected]> 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.
Sounds good to me.
Note: I work for XWiki SAS too. I'd love to get feedback from people outside the company - Denis, Caleb, Pascal, Christophe, Jérémie, Ricardo and all the others: it's time to join the discussion! ;-)
Guillaume
Thanks -Vincent Massol Hat 1: XWiki SAS CTO Hat 2: XWiki committer _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
Hi Vincent, It sounds pretty good to me. There are a few items we need to make sure we implement right (making it clear what's commercial and what's open on xwiki.org, the 'rules' for getting the offer listed, etc), but those are matters of the actual implementation and not the idea itself. On 12/04/2009 04:44 PM, Vincent Massol 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
I think this could be optional as it is included in the support XWiki SAS offers for XWiki.org and therefore 'rewarded' through the advertising space.
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.
That would be a +1. Thanks, Anca Luca XWiki committer, XWiki SAS employed developer.
Thanks -Vincent Massol Hat 1: XWiki SAS CTO Hat 2: XWiki committer _______________________________________________ users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Hi Anca, On Dec 15, 2009, at 7:03 PM, Anca Luca wrote:
Hi Vincent,
It sounds pretty good to me. There are a few items we need to make sure we implement right (making it clear what's commercial and what's open on xwiki.org, the 'rules' for getting the offer listed, etc), but those are matters of the actual implementation and not the idea itself.
On 12/04/2009 04:44 PM, Vincent Massol 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
I think this could be optional as it is included in the support XWiki SAS offers for XWiki.org and therefore 'rewarded' through the advertising space.
It's different. This is about the hosting of xwiki.org itself. It's not related to support offerings. Thanks -Vincent
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.
That would be a +1.
Thanks, Anca Luca XWiki committer, XWiki SAS employed developer.
Thanks -Vincent Massol Hat 1: XWiki SAS CTO Hat 2: XWiki committer _______________________________________________ users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users
_______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 15:44, Vincent Massol <[email protected]> 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
It's maybe already part of 4), depends how we value this contribution.
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.
Sounds generally a good idea.
Thanks -Vincent Massol Hat 1: XWiki SAS CTO Hat 2: XWiki committer _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
-- Thomas Mortagne
Hi, Vincent Massol 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:
Maybe we should emphasize this: companies can advertise _only_ their commercial offers build 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.
Sounds fair to me. Thanks, Marius Disclaimer: I'm a committer on the XWiki open source project and a full time employee of the XWiki SAS company.
Thanks -Vincent Massol Hat 1: XWiki SAS CTO Hat 2: XWiki committer _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
On Dec 4, 2009, at 3:44 PM, Vincent Massol wrote:
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
+1
2) xwiki.org stays open in edit mode to all external contributors (and XWiki committers continue to monitor it to remove spam, etc)
+1
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
+1 And I agree with Marius' remark about the fact that only products that are built on top of XWiki could be advertised
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)
+1 This however is tricky... In order to define what "contribute most" means we need a metric, and that's not an easy thing to do. Maybe we could use a linear combination of weights assigned to the priority an issue has and an index for its "perceived" difficulty (I saw people tagging issues with their difficulty when handling the backlog in a Scrum-oriented process). Maybe LOC-count could go into the mix (the less the better :)) And maybe also time should influence the result (company that had a punctual high-quality contribution should not be listed forever if it stops contributing) The ranking is calculated wrt to this combination and a minimum threshold should be reached in order to be ranked. I don't really know how to handle this, but if we propose a ranking we need also to propose a policy about how it is calculated.
5) Companies who want to be listed should provide some proof of their contributions to the XWiki open source project
+1
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
+1
7) xwiki.org should always remain a site for the xwiki open source community
+1 -Fabio
On Dec 16, 2009, at 11:05 AM, Fabio Mancinelli wrote:
On Dec 4, 2009, at 3:44 PM, Vincent Massol wrote:
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
+1
2) xwiki.org stays open in edit mode to all external contributors (and XWiki committers continue to monitor it to remove spam, etc)
+1
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
+1 And I agree with Marius' remark about the fact that only products that are built on top of XWiki could be advertised
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)
+1 This however is tricky... In order to define what "contribute most" means we need a metric, and that's not an easy thing to do.
Maybe we could use a linear combination of weights assigned to the priority an issue has and an index for its "perceived" difficulty (I saw people tagging issues with their difficulty when handling the backlog in a Scrum-oriented process). Maybe LOC-count could go into the mix (the less the better :)) And maybe also time should influence the result (company that had a punctual high-quality contribution should not be listed forever if it stops contributing)
The ranking is calculated wrt to this combination and a minimum threshold should be reached in order to be ranked.
I don't really know how to handle this, but if we propose a ranking we need also to propose a policy about how it is calculated.
Yes this is hard. One idea is: - number of LOC (patches not included - we need to reward committership which is a commitment on the long run) - when same number of LOC then use alphabetical order. Thanks -Vincent
5) Companies who want to be listed should provide some proof of their contributions to the XWiki open source project
+1
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
+1
7) xwiki.org should always remain a site for the xwiki open source community
+1
-Fabio
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 <[email protected]> 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 _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
Hi Denis, On Dec 17, 2009, at 11:37 AM, Denis Gervalle wrote:
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.
Several points here: * Indeed XWiki SAS would be interested in getting the big sport and rightfully so IMO ;) * This is not about contribution in the general open source terms. For example we have a page listing what people could contribute to (doc, patches, ideas, etc). This is about being one of the **makers** of XWiki, i.e a large and substantial contribution. If you've submitted 10 patches, I don't feel you should be entitled to be considered one of the makers of XWiki. Actually, right now I see only one way of ensuring a company (or individual for that matter) is a "maker" of XWiki: it's by being an active committer. Being voted a committer requires that you show a long term dedication for the XWiki project. * The number of _active_ committers could be a very good metric for the ranking IMO. We need to define active but I'd say more than 1 commit every month for example (we can fine tune this ;)).
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.
Showing contributors is a different matter. We're not talking about advertising services from the "makers of XWiki". For contributors reward we should IMO do the following: * improve the Hall of Fame page, keep it more up to date (everyone should help) * Have a better dashboard on the home page about individual contributions * Have an inbuilt forum with points awarded when people answer to other's questions on the forum/mailing list * rework the code.xwiki.org pages to highlight contributions
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 ;) ),
If we were hosted there, then we would definitely thank them for hosting us! BTW our downloads are hosted on ow2 for example and they are listed as sponsors indeed. If the pb is the location, we could keep the thanks in the sponsors page as it's currently done: http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/Supporters
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 definitely don't agree and I find your answer not very honest. I think you have no idea how much it costs to host farms like xwiki.org and myxwiki.org. Let me ask you something: are you willing to put your own money to not only pay for the hosting but also pay the people to maintain the servers, perform software upgrades, review what is put on xwiki.org and myxwiki.org everyday, clean it up, spend time monitoring each wiki to see what it does to ensure it doesn't slow down the rest of the wikis, fight spam, etc? Back to the topic, let me know if the sponsors/supporter page would be ok with you? My point was not so much to have xwiki sas at the bottom of every page (and no there's no marketing push - I think you're a bit paranoiac here - it was just my own idea, see the answers from the others btw that should reassure you ;)) than to rightfully thank someone (whoever that is) when we're using their service/license for free.
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.
Yes I'm confident about this too! Thanks a lot for your feedback -Vincent
With kind regards,
-- Denis Gervalle Softec SA CEO eGuilde SaRL CTO
On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Vincent Massol <[email protected]> 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
Hi Vincent, On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 18:10, Vincent Massol <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Denis,
On Dec 17, 2009, at 11:37 AM, Denis Gervalle wrote:
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.
Several points here:
* Indeed XWiki SAS would be interested in getting the big sport and rightfully so IMO ;)
That was not the most difficult one to rank of course :)
* This is not about contribution in the general open source terms. For example we have a page listing what people could contribute to (doc, patches, ideas, etc). This is about being one of the **makers** of XWiki, i.e a large and substantial contribution. If you've submitted 10 patches, I don't feel you should be entitled to be considered one of the makers of XWiki. Actually, right now I see only one way of ensuring a company (or individual for that matter) is a "maker" of XWiki: it's by being an active committer. Being voted a committer requires that you show a long term dedication for the XWiki project.
* The number of _active_ committers could be a very good metric for the
ranking IMO. We need to define active but I'd say more than 1 commit every month for example (we can fine tune this ;)).
That is for sure a real, just hope it is not to limited... but it has a real adavantage, being clear !
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.
Showing contributors is a different matter. We're not talking about advertising services from the "makers of XWiki".
For contributors reward we should IMO do the following: * improve the Hall of Fame page, keep it more up to date (everyone should help) * Have a better dashboard on the home page about individual contributions * Have an inbuilt forum with points awarded when people answer to other's questions on the forum/mailing list * rework the code.xwiki.org pages to highlight contributions
+1
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 ;) ),
If we were hosted there, then we would definitely thank them for hosting us! BTW our downloads are hosted on ow2 for example and they are listed as sponsors indeed.
If the pb is the location, we could keep the thanks in the sponsors page as it's currently done: http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/Supporters
+1
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 definitely don't agree and I find your answer not very honest. I think you have no idea how much it costs to host farms like xwiki.org and myxwiki.org.
Let me ask you something: are you willing to put your own money to not only pay for the hosting but also pay the people to maintain the servers, perform software upgrades, review what is put on xwiki.org and myxwiki.orgeveryday, clean it up, spend time monitoring each wiki to see what it does to ensure it doesn't slow down the rest of the wikis, fight spam, etc?
Well, I feel sorry if I have hurt you with my remarks, that was not my intend. I hope you have noticed my commitment to the XWiki Project, and my comments was there to prevent others to have the feel that the project is less open than it is really. Footer links is an every page advertisement, and I really think it should be used very carefully on open source sites. I completely agree that XWiki SAS has a real merit of supporting XWiki as it does. What I mainly say here is that the hosting work for xwiki.org is not what make the merit of XWiki SAS since there are many open place well suited to host Open Source projects. So when the number of commiters goes higher, some could argue that we should vote for where to host it. (I am not saying this should be changed) This is really different for myxwiki.org, and there you are really free to advertise more on the hosting side of your participation, in the footer as you proposed, since this is the may part of it. BTW, I advertise XWiki.org in the footer of the sites of my clients when they allow me to do so using the Powered by logo ! And with my current experience, I can also realize how hard maintaining a farm could be.
Back to the topic, let me know if the sponsors/supporter page would be ok with you?
Of course, this is perfect.
My point was not so much to have xwiki sas at the bottom of every page (and no there's no marketing push - I think you're a bit paranoiac here - it was just my own idea, see the answers from the others btw that should reassure you ;)) than to rightfully thank someone (whoever that is) when we're using their service/license for free.
I have not any doubt on your honesty in that matter. That is precisely why I had thought you have had some influence from marketing :) I hope this made my whole remark less hurting and mades my thoughts clearer.
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.
Yes I'm confident about this too!
Thanks a lot for your feedback -Vincent
With kind regards,
-- Denis Gervalle Softec SA CEO eGuilde SaRL CTO
On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Vincent Massol <[email protected]>
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
_______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
-- Denis Gervalle SOFTEC sa - CEO eGuilde sarl - CTO
On 03/17/2010 11:16 AM, Denis Gervalle wrote:
Hi Vincent,
On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 18:10, Vincent Massol<[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Denis,
On Dec 17, 2009, at 11:37 AM, Denis Gervalle wrote:
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.
Several points here:
* Indeed XWiki SAS would be interested in getting the big sport and rightfully so IMO ;)
That was not the most difficult one to rank of course :)
* This is not about contribution in the general open source terms. For example we have a page listing what people could contribute to (doc, patches, ideas, etc). This is about being one of the **makers** of XWiki, i.e a large and substantial contribution. If you've submitted 10 patches, I don't feel you should be entitled to be considered one of the makers of XWiki. Actually, right now I see only one way of ensuring a company (or individual for that matter) is a "maker" of XWiki: it's by being an active committer. Being voted a committer requires that you show a long term dedication for the XWiki project.
* The number of _active_ committers could be a very good metric for the
ranking IMO. We need to define active but I'd say more than 1 commit every month for example (we can fine tune this ;)).
That is for sure a real, just hope it is not to limited... but it has a real adavantage, being clear !
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.
Showing contributors is a different matter. We're not talking about advertising services from the "makers of XWiki".
For contributors reward we should IMO do the following: * improve the Hall of Fame page, keep it more up to date (everyone should help) * Have a better dashboard on the home page about individual contributions * Have an inbuilt forum with points awarded when people answer to other's questions on the forum/mailing list * rework the code.xwiki.org pages to highlight contributions
+1
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 ;) ),
If we were hosted there, then we would definitely thank them for hosting us! BTW our downloads are hosted on ow2 for example and they are listed as sponsors indeed.
If the pb is the location, we could keep the thanks in the sponsors page as it's currently done: http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/Supporters
+1
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 definitely don't agree and I find your answer not very honest. I think you have no idea how much it costs to host farms like xwiki.org and myxwiki.org.
Let me ask you something: are you willing to put your own money to not only pay for the hosting but also pay the people to maintain the servers, perform software upgrades, review what is put on xwiki.org and myxwiki.orgeveryday, clean it up, spend time monitoring each wiki to see what it does to ensure it doesn't slow down the rest of the wikis, fight spam, etc?
Well, I feel sorry if I have hurt you with my remarks, that was not my intend. I hope you have noticed my commitment to the XWiki Project, and my comments was there to prevent others to have the feel that the project is less open than it is really. Footer links is an every page advertisement, and I really think it should be used very carefully on open source sites.
Well, this is common practice. It's not about advertisement, but recognition of the support. Hosting costs. I think that most projects backed by a company, or even non-profit organization, display the name of the hoster. I just checked subversion (collabnet), firefox (mozilla), everything on SourceForge, everything on Apache, mysql/OOo/opensolaris (oracle)... And it's not about a big "Buy Stuff From Us!!!" button, just a small "Hosting provided by [[XWiki SAS>>httpL//xwiki.com/]]" link.
I completely agree that XWiki SAS has a real merit of supporting XWiki as it does. What I mainly say here is that the hosting work for xwiki.org is not what make the merit of XWiki SAS since there are many open place well suited to host Open Source projects. So when the number of commiters goes higher, some could argue that we should vote for where to host it. (I am not saying this should be changed) This is really different for myxwiki.org, and there you are really free to advertise more on the hosting side of your participation, in the footer as you proposed, since this is the may part of it. BTW, I advertise XWiki.org in the footer of the sites of my clients when they allow me to do so using the Powered by logo ! And with my current experience, I can also realize how hard maintaining a farm could be.
Back to the topic, let me know if the sponsors/supporter page would be ok with you?
Of course, this is perfect.
My point was not so much to have xwiki sas at the bottom of every page (and no there's no marketing push - I think you're a bit paranoiac here - it was just my own idea, see the answers from the others btw that should reassure you ;)) than to rightfully thank someone (whoever that is) when we're using their service/license for free.
I have not any doubt on your honesty in that matter. That is precisely why I had thought you have had some influence from marketing :) I hope this made my whole remark less hurting and mades my thoughts clearer.
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.
Yes I'm confident about this too!
Thanks a lot for your feedback -Vincent
With kind regards,
-- Denis Gervalle Softec SA CEO eGuilde SaRL CTO
On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Vincent Massol<[email protected]>
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
-- Sergiu Dumitriu http://purl.org/net/sergiu/
participants (10)
-
Anca Luca -
Caleb James DeLisle -
Denis Gervalle -
Fabio Mancinelli -
Guillaume Lerouge -
Marius Dumitru Florea -
Pascal Voitot -
Sergiu Dumitriu -
Thomas Mortagne -
Vincent Massol