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You are of course right in this and I may have brought fuel to the fire by not showing much emotion about Predator leaving, but Marko had been inactive (at least not visibly active) for months so while I did of course not welcome it, I also do not think that it will be the end of XOOPS.
Was I sad? Certainly. The community may have lost a developer, but I lost a wingman and friend who I had learned to like and respect. Losing Marko was a bigger blow to me, personally, than you can imagine, especially because of the circumstances.
Would I like him back? Without a doubt. However, Marko left without a word to us and the decision to return is not mine to make. There is nothing I want more than Marko contacting me to at least get this talked out. I don't expect him to come crawling back and say please take me back, because he left on a principle that was right to him. But I would like the chance to talk to him about whether that principle was correctly perceived and whether we can work around it for mutual benefit.
Well inactive maybe on xoops.org but not at home
there i was working on some modules, so the question is more
why inactive on xoops.org.
I respect you and your time you give to XOOPS ( and work of course ), but be honest to give things away is not one of your strengths, this shall not be an attack against you, but as you self pointed below, the major errors are:
Having lots of Coreteam members but no Core Developer, even small help with comitting patches to CVS would give XOOPS a faster developing - remember piratos from the german supportsite? He already did a complete XHTML validation of XOOPS last september, the result was a long discussion on xoops, with no result. The XOOPS 2.0.10 has still some validation bugs.
Having lots of module developer now on dev.xoops.org but no clear rules - different names for modules with the some function, you even didn´t allow me to aprove a project or reject, only you wanted to decide ok so i step back, debugging the dev site updating the dev site, working on my own projects, step more back, maybe wrong for me at this time right. ( so where i was your wingman? )
Having lots of patches and inspiration from the community, which is the resource of every open source community ( better is should be ) but what happens with all this? Mostly nothing and there are at least frustrated coders.
Having lots of very good themedesigners, but xoops.org default still looks like a better portalsystem, there are enough example what could be done with XOOPS and don´t forget the mainsite is also startpoint for a lot new user and also a show-piece for them, so due to the whole PR-discussion - this should be the first point for changings if XOOPS want buisseness user, if i would be a boss of a company and see this current site i would be fast in click away, just my opinion.
Before relaunching the xoops.org on last october, i saw some nice outlines by studioc with different colors for each subpage to make it easier for users to now where they are currently, what happend to this? why back to this small modified theme?
Now a japanese fork, only because of different systems ( tickets or token? ) rude words under devs in an public area? Sure everybody thinks he is right, but nobody has really tested the two systems before together to make a pro and contra for a common decision, was ask in the past and have said test each other, but be honest the cooperation of the japanese community to the rest is also not very good, instead acting like a scriptkiddy ( I´m GIJO ... ) to support patches where they are needed, is IMHO a better way.
Criticized forumdiscussions are sometimes so long and goes up and down like a rollercoaster, with mostly no result and even nobody knows at the end what was the reason.
Points over points, so the departure was not a decision of one day, it was a long process. Not because of a person or a single reason, but for a whole situation.
My fault at this point: i was not crying in the past "stop and lets think about some points" i let thinks happend and the mood becomes more and more bad.
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Will I make this become a major issue? No. The XOOPS community deserves better than the loss of a developer crippling us.
I agree with this a strong community heal themself, and as some have said - people come people go, but some points have to be focused to become a help for the future and after all XOOPS hopefully become stronger now.
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So what am I and the rest of the key XOOPS members doing to avoid this situation? We cannot avoid what we do not know exists and Marko never gave word that he was unhappy with our actions - We have now learned that although it is not said, something can still be wrong. We have learned that unless we actively do more to involve people, it will seem that we don't want others involved.
We have learned that encouraging to becoming involved is not enough to make it clear that we do want to share everything in XOOPS.
We have to actively kickstart people to join in the workload, which is what we are doing now. Herko is doing a lot in organising the organisation of the marketing and local support teams (meaning, finding people who want to run those and get the teams started and moving - which they are now). Skalpa and I are working hard at future XOOPS versions and recently brought Hervé, Marcan and phppp into the core development team. Bluenova and KavaXtreme are helping me planning how we can improve the module repository.
All in all, I would say that we now have twice as many people working on real, tangible results in moving XOOPS forward than we had 2 months ago. But although we have been told numerous times that we should share the workload and not be too few people making all the decisions, we have had to be very involved in the startup process before any results were made - even when people stepped up for it. That is a valuable lesson, I think, and one we can learn from. And hopefully also one we can communicate properly to the rest of the community. We don't want to do everything, be involved with everything and decide everything - but the support needed for others to be able to take over is higher than we expected and therefore we do need to be involved more in the earlier phases of new teams starting up.
We know that now and hopefully we will see more people involved with developing and managing XOOPS in the future - but it also takes some commitment from those who want to see a bigger, better and stronger XOOPS. As I have said (or at least meant) several times in these discussions, suggesting is easy. Stepping up is not difficult. Committing to something takes effort. And those willing to suggest improvements, take responsibility and commit to the whole process will always have the opportunities to do so.
To see this is what i have missed long time before and also that XOOPS is now on the right way.
To have one coordinator for the future is not enough.
Herko as Projectleader you have to focus everythink, if you can`t, splitting the management into, PR and marketing ( for the future this is important and a known job for you, but only if you have something at the end which is marketable ) and productive management is inevitable.
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I promise in the future to be more supportive when suggesters are to become responsibles - but commitment can only come from the persons themselves.
Just let people help you and the further developing will be faster, please don`t think only to give Titles ( XOOPS Core Developer ) away to the new 3 guys is enough, let them be more involved in the work, or you will loss them very fast, as you maybe knows at least one of these guys also wanted to leave XOOPS shortly before skalpa post his "help wanted..."
Also to those new guys, not only be telling your are in a bad mood ( some ) express your fellings and what`s wrong ( not be quiet because of your new title ) don`t make the same mistake as i did and to be too long too gentle.
If i make a decision i made them fast and consistent, if right or wrong who knows
( even i don`t know ) I will take a break and watch from the sideline.
Best wishes to all XOOPSERS for the future...
Regards Marko aka Predator
P.S. Sorry if someone feels offended, but Jan`s posting deserves an answer and XOOPS deserves to get back to the normal tasks.
