When I was in
South Korea to accept the OSS award for XOOPS , I was talking to couple of Open Source developers from Japan, and they asked me why don't we join forces with XOOPS Cube (XC). By joining forces we could create a Win-Win situation for both communities and make XOOPS stronger. And I thought: "hmm, why not? Why don't we ask them?"
As some of you might remember, there were some disagreements in 2005 between XOOPS core developers at that time and the Japanese users/developers about XOOPS not addressing their requirements (like multibyte support), and as a result XOOPS Cube was born as a fork of XOOPS.
It's important to know that nobody from the current XOOPS Core developers was involved in this disagreement, so when XOOPS got reorganized end of 2007, we've tried very hard to re-build a good relationship with Onokazu, who we totally respect as the XOOPS founder. We were quite successful, because he accepted our invitation to our
XOOPS Advisory Board, and he actually tested
2.5.0 and submitted several bugs So few days ago I asked Kilica, one of the main developers, about potential collaboration on X3. Since X3 is in Alpha, this is the best time to talk about it, because if we decide to collaborate, there is enough time to think about required features that would make migration of XC users to X3 easier. Kilica suggested that we start a discussion on their forums about it, which we did:
https://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/xoopscube/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=242&start=0 http://www.xugj.org/modules/d3forum/index.php?topic_id=1074 http://www.xugj.org/modules/d3forum/index.php?topic_id=1078 As you can see from the links above, we have an ongoing discussion there, and as Minahito stated:
Quote:
Basically I and kilica feel this proposal interesting.
which is very encouraging!
Kilica even translated the
X3 Diagram into Japanese which was very nice of him!
Those of you who followed XC development, know that there is a lot of great talent in Japan, and I strongly believe that by working together and supporting each other, both our communities will benefit.
But as Minahito stated, he doesn't see any official "merger". We'll present X3 there and individual developers from Japan will decide if they would like to join XOOPS and contribute. And as he also correctly pointed out in his messages, there are cultural differences, and it will take some time to get to know each other and learn how to work together.
However, I am very happy and excited that we are having this conversation, that there are developers in Japan who are considering to contribute to X3, and that we might have an opportunity to celebrate next year the
10th Anniversary of XOOPS together as one XOOPS family!
X3 is our most significant development in years that will help to push XOOPS to the top, and DJ did a terrific job with it, but we need to build a momentum to take advantage of this window of opportunity.
I hope that X3 will be the bridge to bring XOOPS and XC developers back together, and that we as a community will extend our warm welcome to any of the XC developers who will decide to collaborate with us on X3.Viva XOOPS!