There are users that decided to continue using Evolution when Revolution was released in 2010, and while I think that number is going down (don't have data to back that up, but just seeing less and less of Evo), there still are users building new sites with Evolution today. I do not want to go into the Evo vs Revo debate here or disrespect Evo users, but... despite
recent-ish releases I think building new sites in Evo is a bad idea. The only time it really is updated is when a critical security issue finds its way to the MODX security team, at which point the pull requests are reviewed so it gets some bug fixes and small features too.
At some point last year there was this uproar of Evo enthusiasts which basically boiled down to people venting their frustration about Evo not being developed further. Difficult questions (with plenty of internal heated discussion too), several forks and bad PR. The answer at the time was a blog post "
Clarity, Focus and Simplicity" which for the first time mentioned MODX3 and introduced some ideas for it. It also provided some clarity on Evo's (and Revo's) End Of Life (EOL): after the release of MODX3, Evo/Revo will be provided maintenance releases for broken functionality and security issues for at least a year, and security for another year. So, kinda what has been done for Evo since 2010.
There's one thing, though, that I don't like about what was promised for MODX3, which is a migration path from Evo to MODX3, which
was repeated yesterday. I can understand the need from users, but there's not even a straightforward migration path from Evo to Revo despite promises throughout the years (Provisioner somewhat helps). How on earth is a migration path from Evo to MODX3 going to happen?
I'd like MODX3 to succeed and having to keep backwards compatibility or migration paths (from something that we can't even migrate easily now!) is going to hold MODX3 back. And then, when MODX3 launches, but there's no easy migration path, the community will be disappointed and a promise will have been broken. If Evo users did not want to move to Revo, I don't see why they would want to move to MODX3.
I want to suggest the project team to make a difficult decision and reconsider the Evo migration path promise. Announce Evo's end of life - providing links to the alternative forks - while releasing security releases for the next year as has been done for the past years, so the Evo chapter (which has been a good ride) can be closed in 2014 instead of 2016.