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Joomlas current state (08 sept. 06), and wondering where it will be, when?!
Where is Joomla at one year from it's birth? Johan, project leader, has a
blog post about the past year, a short look back which is a good read
but leaves some questions unanswered. Here's some thoughts of mine.
1. Joomla! 1.0.x
- 12 versions in 12 months, means a lot of
updates, which sometimes did break things when they were supposed to
fix... of course, it is necessary to close security holes asap, but
this should be prioritized by the whole team then , tested, and other
considerations put on hold. 9011 Posts in Upgrade forums.
- More and more sites hacked / cracked (7314 Posts in Security
Forums) lately: this indicates Joomla! is very popular, but also
indicates there are serious concerns about security issues, no mater if
it's in core as my own logs seem to indicate, or in 3rd party
extensions.
Conclusion:
- as good as it is, either 1.0 gets some more serious attention, or it's
obsolete compared to the new framework being coded for 1.5.The
register_globals setting just made a major mess out of many components.
Maybe it is a bad setting, but .x versions are not supposed to do that, and this is an officially recommended setting now.
- security concerns shouldn't be left to recommendations on the forums for users
to look up; get 1.0.x tight against known hack attempts, and bug
free if possible, and then integrate all possible recommendations into
the code, maybe even a new section under Help integrating the other
recommendations, so users do not have to go look for them.
Edit 09/09/06: point just proven for example by this forum post...
Although a nice article, I don't really like a few parts of it.
- This article explains 1.5 is (going to be sometime) the new project which will finally differentiate Joomla! from Mambo.
Johan says that when starting dev again as the new Joomla! team, they decided to "choose a safer solution by doing a short and quick release", that "international community pressure, especially from the French community, convinced [them] to go for a shorter release cycle", and that "it would soon become clear that this was a vital mistake."
Maybe that became clear, but it wasn't communicated, and this article
makes it kinda look like this was mainly the "French community
pressure" which led to wrong decisions.
This pressure was indeed
high, because it was left over from before the split/fork/spoon, when
word was out Mambo 4.5.3, which included an
internationalized administration, would be released soon (at least
beta); SVN (CVS then) was already looking good.
Back then, a
translatable admin was available as a core hack; hard to maintain, yet
widely used by international communities. We all know what core hacks
are: mostly trouble and update problems. Where are we today, over a
year later? Right at the same spot: either using a core hack, or
hardcoded translations, one per community (so you can't use admin with
contributors speaking different languages).
There are good reasons
for 1.5, but it still would've been better after the 1.0 rebrand to get
Mambo 4.5.3 code ready for release (coded by the same team, remember?),
which would've eased the pressure for sure, gathered new steam; and
THEN started the recoding of the core. Well, too late now.
- "1.5 still is a minor release.", expected to "keep a 80-90% backwards compatibility rate", as Johan says in this post . But then, in the same post "1.5
is a showcase of where we want to take the project. U could think about
it as our statement for the future. The concepts used in 1.5, the new
framework, refactoring, ... are the groundwork for Joomla! 2.0."
In the blog posting, the changes and recoding towards the new API /
framework are described as finally starting on some of the points
planned for Mambo 5!? You can't update a 1.0 site to 1.5, only migrate.
I fail to see logic in all this.
Either you realize (which apparently you did) the code needs a complete
reworking; and take the decision the time has come to do so (that
would've been a year ago). Then you tell everybody so, start planning
etc and get that killer version out, including the missing parts
everybody agrees on (ACL, NBS, OOP and any other acronyms I might've
missed here, internationalization of course). This would make a loong
wait understandable.
Or you use the existing code (4.5.3) to get a
first version out with the announced and awaited major feature, even if
it does not meet all future requierements, and go from there.
You can't update to 1.5 as indicated before, and (from the blog) "Alot of the larger features (ACL, NBS,...) on our roadmap can't be implemented in a backwards compatible way" which means Joomla! 2.0 will requiere a new site again, and will break, again, many (?) existing extensions?! hum
3. Joomla! 1.5
Unfortunately, 4 months after the announced beta date, there's still no news about an ETA for the beta (I asked today ..).
Everything looks good to those who access SVN (developers, coders, some
long-time users), but the awerage user has no idea when to expect what.
But this is what users need and expect, Louis. Inside, first hand details
and explanations. Don't just talk to the coders, they can indeed follow
SVN, talk to the whole community about what's going on!
Look
at willebils SoC reports: some stuff is way too technical lfor most
basic users, some is really interesting background info, but there was
regular info available all during the SoC duration, plus a final
report. Excellent job, he should've also gotten a part of the price
money for his contributions. What happens now?
" The summer of code projects are targeted almost fully towards the next major release; Joomla! 2.0." (from The Summer Ends )
So: ACL not before v2? (as an example) , and currently there isn't even
a beta for 1.5 out? ouch! What good is a roadmap update now? I really
don't understand the decision processes.. All said and done, final conclusion? If my son is born before 1.5, I'll have better things to do anyway 
(ask AMY if you feel you need to know the date!) Thanks for reading anyway..
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