Let me look at it this way... How many forks have been forked out of the all forks in the open source environment?. If you look back in history, quite a few including most or all the major content management systems.

Why? Because an excellent developer cannot be a manager and vice versus. A plumber cannot be a marketing Guru, there are exceptions but there are few abouts. There is a difference in 'wannabee' leaders and true leaders who understand the market and can back it up.

I am not saying XOOPS is full of crap people trying to manage each other, I am saying the above is designed by history and XOOPS is likely to lose more developers and clients by acting slow.

Compare that with commercial versions where forks are almost none-exsistent compared to the GPL/Open Source software (in general, don't pick). Why? They are organised better and their diciplin is working.

Predator and Catz were 2 of if not the best module developers, producing modules that were actually useful for the community. Needless to say their coding practise where great too. Mambo have no idea how lucky they are having them now onboard.

Xoops: Get this sorted out quick before you start to lose more people. There have been forks before and this 2nd batch of jumpers should tell you that your management cannot be trusted to do the job that were assigned. The way you 'employ' new developers/managers will have to be changed too. You should get more senior people joining into your team as none-developers. A developer is afterall a developer, same can be said for a senior manager. You need to balance those two, having too much of one will divide your team - hence the jumps.

Besides, where is the loyalty? From what I can see, you have had some people in the past jumping grounds due to 'internal' conflicts. This can be avoided by taking in the right people for the right job.

Good luck with your re-structure.

Kazu, congratulations to your team and I am happy to see Mr minahito is now active with your CVS.

@Coreace, can not agree with you more on "get more senior people joining into your team as none-developers. A developer is afterall a developer, same can be said for a senior manager." I think this is the key point I was trying to speak out and I heard that several teams are being planned or organized. Hope it will work out soon.

I don't understand why people focus so much on the negative (2 to a smaller or bigger degree inactive developers joining another project) and so little on the positive (3 new core developers joined, roadmap for XOOPS 2.2 published, access to nightly CVS versions of next XOOPS version - and more)

We are looking at the future - not at the past (feel free to euphemisms like "He who does not know his past knows not his future" but I'm not going to dwell at what has happened and what could have happened. I'm going to make sure that XOOPS 2.2 is released next month whatever people want me to or not)

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We focus on the negative because the postive aspect of your development is already there, visible for everyone to see and feel. We need to raise the negative issues to resolve what has gone wrong in the past. To ignore that, you also ignore future possible growth and development.

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Of course, you need to look at the future. Wasn't my point nor to repeatedly mention the past but to give comments coming from outside the whole XOOPS environment. As a none developer but a business user I couldn't care less for the nightly CVS versions, although a great asset for the developer - never leave business/home users like us behind. They are/ will be part of your future growth.

C.

Sorry Coreace, my reply wasn't specifically at you but at the thread and feelings in general.

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And I am pointing at what we are actually doing to resolve those negative issues.

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And how will it fit into the current XOOPS release? Will it be merged back?

I think, the concern of many of us is that instead of focusing on making XOOPS the best CMS out there, there will be more and more forks, and those of us who are NOT developers will suffer from it by not being able to have one standard installation with all of the best features.

I can assure you that we will strive - as we have always done - for the best website platform we can give you.

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I am sure of that, and I DO like the roadmap.

But I also wish that there are some people on board who are taking care of the management and organization, so we can ensure that we retain all the best developers on board.

Let's face it - the competition of other CMS systems is big, and we should be working smarter and faster than the others :)

I am very encouraged by the recent development (e.g. the XOOPS foundation), but we should also try to reach out and get as many of the talented developers back on board as possible. I've managed couple of OpenSource projects and I know that it's not an easy task, but if successful, the payoff is huge. The key words are: Attract and RETAIN!

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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.

Will I make this become a major issue? No. The XOOPS community deserves better than the loss of a developer crippling us.

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.

I promise in the future to be more supportive when suggesters are to become responsibles - but commitment can only come from the persons themselves.

hear, hear!