XOOPS: Draft Proposal Team, Second Report

Once again, the Draft Proposal Preparation Team would like to apologize for the delay in getting this report out to you, the XOOPS community. Every time we think we're ready to publish, something unexpected comes up... your patience is much appreciated.

A lot has happened in the past few weeks. During it all, the Draft Proposal Preparation team has been pursuing its goal to come up with a recommendation for the future organisational structure of the XOOPS project that will try to satisfy as large a section of the community as possible and form a solid basis from which to get on with the business of creating a CMS worthy of it's motto, "powered by you!"

The team's last news report described the circumstances which lead to the Team's creation, the first steps that had been taken and the rough plan for how the proposal would be drawn up. A wiki describing the process was set up here and has been updated to reflect the progress of the last two weeks.

In the last news report here, it can be seen that the process up to the drafting of the proposal's Preliminary Goals has been completed. If one refers to the wiki, one would see that an agenda was drafted and that work up to and including Stage 4 (Agenda 1:"Team discusses and develops procedures") has been finished. Stages 5 & 6 ( "Agenda 2: "General principles for the proposal" and "Agenda 3: "Main functional units of the project") are in progress.

During the month of November, working with input from interested parties in the community (international as well as those based on xoops.org), Stages 5 & 6 were completed.

In discussions on Stage 5 (Agenda 2): General principles for the proposal, the four basic principals of the proposal were decided on as being:

• Democracy
• Open Participation
• Simplicity
• Flexibility

Discussions on Stage 6 (Agenda 3): Main functional units of the project, brought the Team to the same conclusion as many others have suggested, namely that the following work groups should be created:

• Core Development and Code Standards
• Module Development and Distribution
• Design
• Documentation
• Support
• Communication

One other team that was discussed was the Systems administration work group.After much debate, the team recommends that this work group be purely functional, and rather than be involved in project management, should act on the instructions of said "upper" or administrative level of management.

For a much more detailed brief on these discussions and considerations, please refer to the wiki.

Stage 7 (Agenda 4): Cooperation with the current XOOPS project management bodies is still being discussed, though the team has been especially encouraged by the written commitments received from both the current Project Council and the XOOPS Foundation in which they expressed their support for the initiative and their intentions to act on the recommendations made in the final proposal.

At the end of the first week in December, after what has probably been the most hotly debated discussions, Stage 8 (Agenda 5): Outline of the draft proposal reached completion.

Work on Stage 9 (Agenda 6): Development of the full proposal is currently underway and is all that remains before a proposal can be presented to the community for assessment.

Having made more than 1,500 posts in over 60 topics, the Team would like to thank all contributors to date, especially those from the International XOOPS Community. As before, the team is keen to gather feedback at any time during this process. Members of the community with views and suggestions are encouraged to visit the updated wiki for a more detailed description of the discussions that have been held to date, as well as the conclusions drawn from them. Feedback can be added to the comments of this news release.