Announcing the new XOOPS organisation
Posted by Herko on 2003/9/18 15:52:32 (5852 reads)
| Posted on XOOPS
Recently, the XOOPS Community has grown to over 11.000(!) registered members who use, adapt, hack, test, design and develop the XOOPS Dynamic Web Contentmanagement System. This success is largely due to the stable release of the excellent XOOPS 2.0 system. However, the organisation of managing the XOOPS community wasn’t equipped to deal with these developments, and was in need of a complete overhaul. This project was picked up by a group of XOOPS enthusiasts and we are proud to present to you the new organisation for the XOOPS Community.
The new organisation builds on 8 teams that organise an aspect of managing the XOOPS community. These aspects (and their Teams) are: Core Development, Module Development, Themes Development, Quality Control, Support, Documentation, Community Relations and Product Development. The Team Leaders of these teams together form the XOOPS Core Team, which acts as the ‘management’ of the XOOPS Community.
Core Development - Team Leader: Onokazu
This Team will focus on the development of the XOOPS 2 core. Starting from XOOPS 2.1, this will no longer include the Core Modules (like news, mydownloads, mylinks, etc.). Development of those modules will be transferred to the Module Development Team.
Module Development - Team Leader: Catzwolf
This Team will organise the development of new XOOPS modules, and the port of XOOPS 1.3.x modules to XOOPS 2. As stated above, this will include the modules that are now part of the XOOPS Core package (except the System module, of course).
The Module Development site will also house the Official XOOPS Module Repository. This will be the place where you can find as much XOOPS modules as possible. The XOOPS Module Development Team website will move to the xoops.org server (modules.xoops.org).
Theme Development - Team Leader: Philou
This Team will organise the development of new Themes for XOOPS. The Themes Development site will also house the Official XOOPS Themes Repository. Here you will be able to find and preview as many XOOPS themes as possible. The XOOPS Themes website will move to the xoops.org server (themes.xoops.org). Together with the modules and main website this site will form the XOOPS Network.
Quality Control - Team Leader: Ackbarr
This Team will set and monitor the quality standards for XOOPS developers and designers. We will set up a Certification system for XOOPS Modules and Themes, to uphold those standards. Certified modules and themes will get an official XOOPS Seal, signifying good coding, documentation and design.
Support - Team Leader: Tom
The Support Team will organise the way in which the XOOPS community at large will help its new users solve common problems, by establishing a network-wide directioning mechanism and setting up a logical way to channel each issue to the appropriate team.
Documentation - Team Leader: hsalazar
The Documentation Team will organise the preparation and edition of a comprehensive documentation package that will include introductory manuals, reference guides, tutorials and technical documents.
Community Relations - Team Leader: Herko
This Team will organise the relations within the community and with the community. This includes a members and partners program and a newsletter.
Product Development - Team Leader: malexandria
This Team will market the XOOPS 2 system as a product. We will let the world know XOOPS is a quality product, ready to use out-of-the-box. For this we will create XOOPS packs, each Pack a set of modules and themes configured for a specific use (gamers/clan site, community site, news site, etc.).
As stated above, the Team Leaders together form the ‘management’ of the XOOPS Community, the XOOPS Core Team. This team is lead by Herko, and ensures that all major decisions are made in good conscience and are in line with The Big Picture. The XOOPS Core Team also ensures that the Teams cooperate with each other and functions as a sounding board and sparring partner to test new developments and ideas.
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Very good initiative! This will bring XOOPS again a step forward!
Published: 2003/9/15 8:34 • Updated: 2003/9/15 8:34
Sounds like a step in the right direction to me. Let me know if I can help with modules or themes. ;)
Published: 2003/9/15 8:53 • Updated: 2003/9/15 8:53
Great news. Anything that can improve visibility and quality in XOOPS is always good.
Published: 2003/9/15 10:26 • Updated: 2003/9/15 10:26
great news! I wish you all good work!
Published: 2003/9/15 10:43 • Updated: 2003/9/15 10:43
Good job organizing Herko! Keep it rolling.
Boob..
Published: 2003/9/15 10:48 • Updated: 2003/9/15 10:48
Wow! This is great! Look forward to greater heights together!
Published: 2003/9/15 15:39 • Updated: 2003/9/15 15:39
Good thing !
Does it means that XOOPS becomes serious now ? (j/k)
Note : Nice promotion Philou...
Published: 2003/9/16 0:35 • Updated: 2003/9/16 0:35
Here we are then ! What a serious idea, and organisation.
Each leader did have his own XOOPS arround his devoted part : now it will all be grouped.
Dear XOOPS users : as X-Teams start a good structure, please (after a while for setup) contact your favorite team leader to take part in the job.
Let we finaly get/make good things faster and high level support.
Happy XOOPS !
Published: 2003/9/16 1:22 • Updated: 2003/9/16 1:22
Is there mailing list for each team?
Published: 2003/9/16 4:31 • Updated: 2003/9/16 4:31
I think it might be a good idea to set up Translation Teams as well. Similar to the way GNOME has it, we could have a team for Italian, one for French, one for Russian, one for Chinese etc.
Currently, most translations are for sure incomplete and full of typos.
Published: 2003/9/16 9:15 • Updated: 2003/9/16 9:15
Fantastic! Couldn't be better.
By the way, will we have to register for each of these sites anew?
Or our XOOPS account will be ported to work on all of them?
Keep up the Great work!
Published: 2003/9/16 10:14 • Updated: 2003/9/16 10:14
thank you team. keep up!
Published: 2003/9/16 10:18 • Updated: 2003/9/16 10:18
Quote:
Fireater wrote:
By the way, will we have to register for each of these sites anew?
No, we're working on a solid way to make it one big XOOPS site, where users are concerned.
Herko
Published: 2003/9/16 11:12 • Updated: 2003/9/16 11:12
I think that the initiative taken by the community is a step foward in the right direction.
This will differentiate XOOPS from other content management system or open source development in general.
Kudos, to the community.
Regards.
Published: 2003/9/16 12:10 • Updated: 2003/9/16 12:10
This is great news, it will benefit XOOPS in many ways.
Good job team(s) :)
Published: 2003/9/16 14:39 • Updated: 2003/9/16 14:39
Organization and sub-division of responsiblities in the face of well deserved growth is a good thing. It is a credit to the core members of the community who have driven XOOPS to this level. Congratulations.
In dividing the responsibilities, just be careful to establish very strong intra-team communications. Other large CMS communities (no names please) have struggled with this - developers alienating designers (and vice versa), core design changes alienating module developers etc. I'm not saying that this will happen to XOOPS but with "dis-integration" comes the risk.
In many ways, Herko and his Community Relations Team has the toughest job ahead. I would suggest that care and feeding of communications within the XOOPS community should rank right up there with the development and documentation activities. XOOPS will encounter growing pains and we all should be careful to contribute positively and with maturity when the inevitable speed bumps are encountered. Best of luck,
Tim Pascal
"interested lurker"
Published: 2003/9/16 16:43 • Updated: 2003/9/16 16:43
Great initiative, this looks like a strong and well-organized plan!
I have a couple of practical questions... perhaps you've figured this all out already, but since it has been mentioned yet...
1) CVS. How will this be set up? I think the options are (a) to have separate a 'module' (in the CVS sense, not the XOOPS sense) for each XOOPS module so everything is still in one repository, (b) to have everything under the 'xoops2' CVS module according the normal tree structure, or (c) to have separate repositories for core, modules, and themes.
2) Language packs. Currently there are language packs which apply to the core and the core modules. If all the modules are separate, how will languages be distributed? Will a "language pack" contain all the core language files AND all modules (or all 'certified' modules)... or will each module have its own language packs?
3) Several teams depend on one another. e.g. a core change can require a change in all modules or all themes. Of course we try to avoid this, but sometimes to move forward it is necessary. The need for communication was pointed out above, but should there maybe also be an 'Upgrade Team' that will package stable versions, and organize lists of core and database changes between each version to ensure that necessary changes are made to all other parts of the XOOPS system as well? Organizing all this info will be a fairly big job - keeping track of core CVS changes, keeping track of module and theme 'versions' when they are affected by core changes, writing upgrade scripts (which may involve module/theme version dependence on the core), etc...
That's it for now
. Great plan and great timing at this point of massive growth of XOOPS in terms of userbase, modules and themes!
Published: 2003/9/17 14:18 • Updated: 2003/9/17 14:18
These are good points. I think for the time being the upgrade team should be part of the product team. In the coming weeks I'm going to be recruiting people to be part of the Product Team.
Published: 2003/9/17 14:31 • Updated: 2003/9/17 14:31
Quote:
mvandam wrote:
1) CVS. How will this be set up? I think the options are (a) to have separate a 'module' (in the CVS sense, not the XOOPS sense) for each XOOPS module so everything is still in one repository, (b) to have everything under the 'xoops2' CVS module according the normal tree structure, or (c) to have separate repositories for core, modules, and themes.
My initial preference is option a.
Quote:
2) Language packs. Currently there are language packs which apply to the core and the core modules. If all the modules are separate, how will languages be distributed? Will a "language pack" contain all the core language files AND all modules (or all 'certified' modules)... or will each module have its own language packs?
A XOOPS Pack will be a set of preselected modules and themes, designed for a specific set of sites (magazines, gamers, etc.). These packs will
include the lang files for the included modules. However, languages are part of the modules themselves (as they are now). We're currently discussing alternative language
management systems.
Quote:
3) Several teams depend on one another. e.g. a core change can require a change in all modules or all themes. Of course we try to avoid this, but sometimes to move forward it is necessary. The need for communication was pointed out above, but should there maybe also be an 'Upgrade Team' that will package stable versions, and organize lists of core and database changes between each version to ensure that necessary changes are made to all other parts of the XOOPS system as well? Organizing all this info will be a fairly big job - keeping track of core CVS changes, keeping track of module and theme 'versions' when they are affected by core changes, writing upgrade scripts (which may involve module/theme version dependence on the core), etc...
Making sure the teams work together is my task as Core Team Leader
But from the start, this has been working very very well. We're a real team, all working on the same thing (but everyone is responsible for a different aspect). Organising it all is a difficult task indeed. Making an overview of what is available, and what needs to be done is a part of each teams responsibilities. The Quality Control Team plays a big part in this as well. We're thing about a Module and Theme Registry, where all modules and themes are registed, so we can keep track of what is out there. But there are many more ideas on this, too many to discuss here.
By the way, this was my 1000th post here
Herko
Published: 2003/9/17 14:47 • Updated: 2003/9/17 14:47
Congrats on the 1000th post. ;)
SOT: How does one go about joining a specific team. For instance, I'm interested in joining the module devolpment team. Many people have shown an interest in some of my hacks and mods, perhaps my best bet is to join the team and help intergrate these modifications as well as include my future planned modules. Just curious and I'm sure others are too about how to join the official team.
Published: 2003/9/17 15:06 • Updated: 2003/9/17 15:06
ATM I would contact the team leader directly and let them know of your interest, either by PM or if listed in their user profile, email.
Published: 2003/9/17 15:28 • Updated: 2003/9/17 15:28
On question 1,
I like Herko would prefer a) This would keep 'everything' in the one place and easier to find
Question 2,
My suggest would be to have module lang files with the modules or at least under the same tree as the module 'download', until the time comes when a better method as been found for dealing with Lang files.
Question 3.
I suspect like anything new, trial and error springs to mind
But seriously, a good line of communication goes a long way and up until now this seems to be happening.
I tend to find that if most changes are commented within the code, that does help a bit and should help keep things rolling along
I think this should be open to discussion between the three groups (Core, module and them) as to how we keep each other informed?
Published: 2003/9/17 23:09 • Updated: 2003/9/17 23:09
Quote:
1) CVS. How will this be set up? I think the options are (a) to have separate a 'module' (in the CVS sense, not the XOOPS sense) for each XOOPS module so everything is still in one repository, (b) to have everything under the 'xoops2' CVS module according the normal tree structure, or (c) to have separate repositories for core, modules, and themes.
Speaking as someone who spends way too much time on the CVSNT mailing list, I would suggest option (a). Having all the source in the same repository under seperate modules allows a lot of flexability with either CVS or CVSNT. You can set up entries in the Modules directory for combining all the XOOPS elements for a 'release' module like the single top-level XOOPS2 module you have now, yet still have them partitioned out logically for controlling permissions.
I have my CVS currently set up with XOOPS core and 3rd party modules in one, and the 'one time' stuff (e.g. INSTALL and UPGRADE directories) in another. That way, I set up my web server using the FULL and then switch it to CORE for production use.
Additionally, if there is a change that requires coordination among several teams, you can work that all out on a CVS branch--one branch, with each team managing their respective modules on that branch.
CVS is a real gem, extremely powerful if you know how to use it.
Thank You XOOPS team for all your efforts.
Regards,
Glen Starrett
P.S. Maybe it's my American viewpoint, but isn't it "organization"? Or is this a color / colour thing?
Published: 2003/9/21 0:56 • Updated: 2003/9/21 0:56
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