What I'm about to say is the truth to the best of my knowledge, but keep in mind that my activity in XOOPS has not been constant. There are many gaps that I cannot fill in. Also, I must emphasize that I'm only going to give a basic overview of the current state of XOOPS, as I see it. The details of *how* we ended up at this point are only important to those who relish in pointing fingers. What *is* important now is moving forward and not making the same mistake twice!

At present, the people "in charge" are the Core Developers. This came into effect when Herko ceased being the Project Manager. Basically, the idea was to form a new management structure that would oversee the community and the project as a whole, but this never came to pass.

Whether you agree with the Core Devs managing this project or not, they have worked very hard to try to do what they felt was best for this project and the community as a whole. For that, we really should give them thanks! Their minds and hearts were in the right place, but the model didn't work.

Where we are now is that the Core Devs are busy with coding XOOPS, overseeing various aspects of the site restructuring, overseeing management of the xoops.org websites, teaching new contributors about the XOOPS core, and trying to work full-time jobs and have a reasonable life outside of XOOPS.

What is most concerning is that there are currently only 3 Core Devs that I'm aware of. What does this lead to?

A Core Dev Team that is spread too thin, who are doing too many tasks, and who cannot reasonably respond to the calls for information from the community.

Now, that's not to say that the Core Devs are doing everything. Quite the contrary. They are doing much of the Coding, roadmap writing and management tasks, but they are not doing everything. There are a number of Moderators and community members who are also selflessly volunteering their time, knowledge and hard work to give the XOOPS project and community the very best. I don't know how many of these contributors there are, but I can say for certain that it is a VERY SMALL NUMBER.

So, let's take a look at this for a second...

There are 4 or less acting managers (counting Herko as Foundation Chairman) to manage an entire Open Source project. There are far less than 50 volunteers who are actively doing work to make this project move forward (I'm not counting module, hack, and theme devs who work independently of XOOPS.org). If you really want to nail down a number, it appears as though the number of consistent contributors to the overall progress of XOOPS is less than 30. Given that there are 30,000+ registered members on this site, this is absolutely inexcusable!

In all fairness, the current state of xoops.org does not lend itself well to collaboration. There are several reasons for this and I'm not going to waste my time or yours rehashing all of that. Just know it cannot be done right now!

As far as the "Management Team" goes....
It's dead! It's been dead for over a year. Before that, it was barely more than an ideal and was not even remotely effective! (This is just my opinion, but the truth is that there has been NO activity on from the Management Team in a year or more.)

At this point, you are probably wondering what work *IS* being done. Well, the answer is as much as possible with the slim resources that are available.

That *I* know of, there is a very small team (<10) who are working on the site restructuring and Core Development. There is a team of Moderators (also <10) who are trying to keep the peace and help new users. There are a number of "non-privileged" users who have stepped up who are doing their best to help other members with their questions as well (I have now idea of the number, but there are several).

3. Allow the community to contribute in whatever way they can with the intention of enhancing the new and existing user experience, regardless of what the domain name is. As the contributions prove to be fruitful, consider integration into the parent xoops.org site if it is appropriate and SECURE.

To those who would still criticize XOOPS and those who have NOT been putting forth effort at xoops.org... You need to take a long hard look in the mirror and ask yourself, "What have I done for XOOPS lately". It is easy to criticize those who are doing something. What is more important, and more effective is those who would put aside the criticism and *DO* something, anything to bring about a positive change. Think about that for a moment.

I don't think we are talking against a wall. We are talking with each other.

riosoft wrote:
Please, tell me. Who is Who in XOOPS at this moment? Are we speaking against a wall? Lost in the fog?
Is not necessary an official communique really given the current situation?

who have the capacity of decision at this just moment?

International community support is what happens here on xoops.org at the moment. Support forums, FAQ, documentation, training, that sort of thing. What kind of leadership does this need, really? Any structural leadership? I can't think of anything that needs structural community leadership. We'd need moderators, reporters for news, maintainers and editors for FAQ and such. But a leadership structure, IMHO no.