Community Concerns

Quote from: dinocorn at May 09, 2014, 08:00 PM

I agree whole-heartedly with their decision to terminate my position at the company.

I told you not to use that blink tag

I see quite a few valid points and concerns in the OP. Well summarized.

These are questions I have been asking myself lately. Especially concerning progress.

I wouldn't think of the concerns stated as 'complaints'. If you care for something I find it only natural to speak out if you have questions or concerns. Rather than silently *shrug* and go look for an alternative.
I've been using MODX since 0.9 or so and while I'm not a the most social or active community member I take the liberty to be... well, concerned. Because I think it's an amazing, one of a kind tool.

I'm not a huge fan of swarm intelligence.
The dev team has proven to be open to suggestions and able to make the right decisions. I think the product speaks for itself. I just do hope that being an LLC now isn't changing or influencing these processes in any bad way.

While I'm not against the idea of a 'Foundation' I think the main problem is simply communication (means: the lack thereof). Be it a foundation or a company: in the public perception no communication translates to 'nothing to communicate'.

Which is fine.
As long as you communicate that.

JP, now that the emotions have subsided and you've had a chance to discuss with Ryan. would you be able to share the knowledge you have on this "new direction"?

based on the initial post, this seems to be a concern within the community, and I believe shedding light (is little as it may be) on the situation would help.

Quote from: Askarii at May 09, 2014, 09:35 PM

JP, now that the emotions have subsided and you've had a chance to discuss with Ryan. would you be able to share the knowledge you have on this "new direction"?

based on the initial post, this seems to be a concern within the community, and I believe shedding light (is little as it may be) on the situation would help.

I don't think I should say more than the decision was made that it was best for me to no longer be on the team, and while I don't support how it was handled at all, or even fully understand why, after experiencing how upper management reacted to the direction I was pushing for, I now agree that it would not be possible for me to stay on-board. Had I been been brought in on the discussion and given options, I would have resigned immediately.

Had I been been brought in on the discussion and given options, I would have resigned immediately

It's comments like this that highlight that there are two tracks of discussion going on around the future.

This comes down to two key areas, leadership and communication.

Who is driving? Only one entity can drive a bus. Leadership.

The people on the bus need to know the destination. Communication.

This is not about whether a commercial entity can coexist with an Open Source project. It's not even about who should be putting resources in to it. We all know that there is no obligation for a commercial entity to contribute to an Open a Source project.

It's all about ownership. Currently the project is owned by MODX LLC - they provide the direction, manage integrations, and contribute the most to the venture.

The question is, should this be the case?

Who manages the roadmap? Who manages communication? Who drives the bus?

These questions are coming up because rightly or wrongly, people with a stake in MODX clearly have a view on how these things (direction, integration, contribution) are handled.

Circling back the original quote - it is clear that this vision exists - it's also clear that the view is that the Community has a limited voice in this.

If this is the status quo, that's ok - honesty and integrity rule.

For the record, I think that the MODX team are doing a great job of raising the profile of MODX CMS and growing adoption. There's a clear strategy going on here, which is fab.

Maybe the discussion should centre around what is growing a commercial entity or an Open Source software product?

Quote from: Askarii at May 09, 2014, 06:01 PM

This could come out as harsh, but people complain. And the worst case is people who complain and do nothing to fix the situation. MODX is opensource, if you want "quality" updates and progress, pitch in, contribute. Don't just complain and wait for MODX LLC to "invest" their time and money, they too have priorities that are not necessarily the platform itself.
This answer also applies to the features/extras question.

Well that didn't take long. One of my prime bugbears in the past couple of years with MODX has been this attitude of "got a problem, don't dare complain, fix it yourself you whiner". I don't see this response in any other open source community I am involved in and I believe it has reached a level in the MODX community where it is actually censoring valid criticism and also, more frustratingly, removing any accountability for bad decisions. It certainly wasn't present when I first came to the MODX community and I believe that its just a small but influential number of vocal and possibly over-stretched community members who introduced this 'attitude'.

Community members don't necessarily have the time, resources or skills to address a particular shortcoming themselves at a particular time. That should not disqualify anyoe from being able to highlight and champion a problem with the platform. By using the platform, by encouraging clients to adopt it, one is contributing to the community albeit in the most basic way. If folk are listened to and issues are at least credibly queued if not immediately actioned, they are much more likely to contribute more meaningfully themselves down the line when they have an opportunity. The important thign about this attitude isn't so much that it's harsh, it's that it's actually counterproductive as it discourages new community members.

It is exactly because of the "they too may have priorities that are not necessarily the platform itself" issue that the split I called for earlier needs to occur.

I see mentions of ownership of the platform here. As far as I know, the codebase is GPL. [ed. note: freelancewebdev last edited this post 9 years, 11 months ago.]

Quote from: freelancewebdev at May 10, 2014, 03:10 PM

Well that didn't take long. One of my prime bugbears in the past couple of years with MODX has been this attitude of "got a problem, don't dare complain, fix it yourself you whiner". I don't see this response in any other open source community I am involved in and I believe it has reached a level in the MODX community where it is actually censoring valid criticism and also, more frustratingly, removing any accountability for bad decisions. It certainly wasn't present when I first came to the MODX community and I believe that its just a small but influential number of vocal and possibly over-stretched community members who introduced this 'attitude'.

I agree with you on this, and I believe my previous post needs some re-writing & explanation.
What I was referring to were (when saying "do it yourself") was in regards to EXTRAS more than the MODX core. Sorry for the lack of distinction.

While the attitude itself is not desirable, there is a reason for its appearance. In contrast with many other opensource projects, MODX community, for a long time, depended wholly on MODX LLC team for improvements (of any sort). That situation just isn't viable. My bets bet being that's where the "attitude" originated.

Now if we look at the source of the problem, most people (starting with Mark Hamstra) have very clearly pointed it out: distinction between MODX LLC and MODX (project) is necessary to void this complex situation and losing the "attitude".

To sum it up, I agree with the proposed idea. However, it lacks definition, direction, structure, we should work on that.

After some thought and talk with others, reading what has been said etc.
We all agree on one thing: MODX LLC and MODX (FOSS) need to be clearly distinguished.

Now, an important point that has been brought up is that MODX (FOSS) has expensive infrastructure, it has to handle hosting (not MODX Cloud), forums, wikis, listings, extras provider, CMF provider etc. etc. Anyway, it's apparently thousands of dollars a month, excluding all maintenance & development time that goes into these infrastructures. Obviously: MODX LLC is paying for all of this.

So then come around the questions:

• Who will cover these charges? The community, maybe.
• Will it be reliable? Maybe.
• Do we want maybe and uncertainty? No.

And that's the reality, the situation we're facing. We know the solution (I mentioned it above), now we need a solution and a smooth transition.
I think the best approach would be to progressively separate LLC from FOSS by breaking the dependency between them. At the moment all the infrastructure is managed and tied to LLC. It shouldn't be that way.
Of course, we need the LLC backbone. So while the community should strive to separate the two entities, it should also strive to keep LLC as a major contributor to MODX FOSS.
In the end, what I'm proposing is purely an administrative/technological split, the rest remains the same. The first step is to bring the community to easily distinguish both entities. Once that is achieved, we can start moving forward.

With modmore we donate 10% of revenue to the MODX project no strings attached. The average is around €300 a month now (with this month having a major peak thanks to the launch of ContentBlocks). While I don't have any insight in how much the infrastructure costs (though I have heard "thousands" before as well), that's a start.