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:

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Hi,

On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Vincent Massol <[email protected]> wrote:

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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