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The Joomla Question - a personal opinion

What is Joomla?

For the time being, a renamed, rebranded, bugfixed CMS based on Mambo (plus the project structure, sites, and community around it). Many hours of work by many voluntary people. Yours for free.

What should it soon be?

If all goes well, the upcoming 1.5 version will

• lay the foundation of most future development work by providing a brand new framework with clean code,
• have an internationalised interface with UTF-8 based language support, and
• feature a new API for 3^rd party developers to hook into.

Where is 1.5 now?

You can take a look at the task list , where you can see what is complete, what is not yet started, an estimate of work hours etc..

You can also do some reading on the developer blog about some of the new features and changes.

Where is it supposed to be or go in the future?

Check out the roadmap, listing such nice things as

• the long requested « user and access control system » which Hannes is currently working on for his Google Summer of Code project,
• full version control of content which is very important in some business and governmental environments -as is also
• compliance and accessibility;
• multi-site capabilities;
• cross database support ...

Where are the problems ?

1. The above looks like a plan, right? Is it really?
   There was never any document published apart from the roadmap (outlining planned features, but no general goal and giving no dates at all) about the global mission set for Joomla!.
   
   A business trying to decide if Joomla is suitable for their website project has no means of making an informed decision (which will remain more or less valid as time and versions go by), because there is no data available, and development changes directions all the time. It might be the nature of Open Source projects, but it doesn't help.
   
   Example: an international corporation, wanting their site usable by employees (and parts of by customers, maybe also business relations etc) in various countries, looking at dev status and information available at the time of Mambo 4.5.2 would've thought: ok, 4.5.3 will allow us to have users from all these countries access and use the interfaces (front and backend) in their own language. Cool, beta is supposed to be out soon, let's wait a few weeks and test this.
   Guess what? The split created Joomla!, lots of time and energy were invested in creating the new project structure, name, brand, team, etc..
   Today, almost 2 years after 4.5.3 was supposed to go beta, there's still no new code with this feature. This is one example. Which I have by now overused...
   
   
2. Next problem is, answers to important questions are hidden all over the places.
   

   Let's say: I need to know if by the end of 2006, ACL will be available in Joomla because I need to launch a site with this feature Jan. 1^st 2007.

   What are my options?

• Check out the Roadmap: listed under «..features that we intend to incorporate into future versions.. » I do find « New user and access control system », but I also read « ..should be used as a guide only and is subject to change at any time. » So I'm not really sure. I find a list of Google Summer of Code projects from 2005 further down, such as « Content Version Control: A robust system for providing true version controlled content to meet many legislative and organisational requirements » which « will be progressively implemented in Joomla! ». Not on the list of 1.5 features!?
• I decide to check out this years SoC, and find the project for User & Access Management. Cool, but as last years projects are not integrated a year later, would this years projects be available in 2007?! Doubts.
• I think: the community should know, let's ask them. Off to the forums. Now, where do I post this... I find the Joomla! 1.5_Dev forum and start reading a bit, hoping to find out more.
• 1^st sticky thread I see « Joomla 1.5 is so significantly changed from 1.0 that there is no 'upgrade' path... » Ok, no worries, I plan to start with 1.5.
• Next one, from January 2006: « Joomla 1.5 is an alpha version. » It's August now, still no beta or RC.. ok, let's keep reading.
• Oh, interesting post about UTF-8, some things I didn't know. « ... all languages with one encoding. In addition, RTL support and the language packs for back-end, installer and help system, make Joomla! 1.5 a complete package for use in any language or combination of languages. JoomFish will be the icing on the cake » sounds really like something I'd want.
  But what's this « JoomFish » beast..? Onwards.
• Yeah, links to Documentation! Let's take a look at these! First page: the dev site! Oh, but wait, there's a link I hadn't seen before: Dev Status! And here it says « Joomla! 1.5 is in the pre-beta phase » Hmm.. is that more advanced than alpha? Text there was last updated in April.. let's try something else!
• Help site! What's here then.. FAQ? 3 items, none relevant to ACL. Poke around some.. nothing more. Back to the forum then.

• Last sticky: cool, in Forum Purpose, it does say « Get intouch with the developers ».
  Maybe someone asked here already? Let me look some more before I ask again...
  YEAH, finally, that sounds just right: Timeframe question: ACL !
  Lemme read that.. wow: the exact question I have! Now, answer...?
  Only thing I find is one comment from a Development Team member: « At the moment it is not the plan to implement this already into 1.5 stable release but we are intenting to get this out as soon as possible after the stable release » ouch!
  1.5 stable? So far, I only saw alpha or pre-beta mentionned, that's the past 8 months..
  Too bad then, gotta find something else!

Now maybe 1.5 will be ready much faster than this person thinks, and maybe ACL will also get some more help once SoC is over and make it into something usable faster.. he'll never know. Because the info is unavailable. And he'll find another CMS featuring ACL. Which he'll recommend to others...

So what, one less user.. plus the ones he tells about it. And yup, untill the next one comes along, looking for accessibility and standards compliance for a government site.. I'll spare you the results this person will come to, you can try this little imaginary search yourself.. but in the end, he'll also use another CMS. And the ones he talks to about his experience too. And the one needing version control. Multi-sites? Try to find any info about this!

3. Cumulative tasks, or Who does what on the Joomla! Project?
   The project is apparently run by some of the main coders: « The core team has entrusted Johan, Shayne Bartlett and David Gal to be responsible for delivering this process »
   These are also the people with the best knowledge about the Core code, so the ones answering the most in-depth questions on the forums. The ones writing the most articles on the dev blog. Attending venues and meetings.
   Looking at some numbers: close to 47000 forum members, 700 listed extensions, almost 37000 Forge members with over 1000 projects.. the responsability is huge! I understand why Andrew Eddie, previous project leader and main coder, stepped down. Why risk a similar burn-out again?
   Can't there be a non-coding project coordinator / leader?

So, why am I still around after almost 3 years now?

• I'm not using Joomla to earn my living, so some of this stuff I don't like, but I can live with.

• I like the CMS, the looks of it, the ease to install and extend a site with it.

• There are extensions to get around most of the shortcomings. Sometimes a pain to use, especially if you need to upgrade your install, but everything is there.

• The community. That's you people having read this far. Thanks to folks such as Vavroom & Elpie (even if you leave), Stingrey, Masterchief, infograph, Alejandro, Amy (yes lady, you are listed!).. my friends on the french forums.. shouldn't have started to list, sorry if I forgot your name here, please forgive me..

• The people on the Core. If you can stand the pressure, I can too. Mine is less

• Some of the stuff I suggest is accepted, so I feel I can contribute something. Better than mugging old ladys after dark

• Parce-que je le vaux bien, lol. (in English I'd say "for the fun of it" I guess..or "why not?")

1. to vent
2. because it never changed and still bothers me
3. free as in free speach
4. hoping to make it better
5. share another view -noone has to read it, right?

Comments (5) >>

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Amy Stephen said:

OK. That was really sweet to include my name; especially with people of that quality. Geesh! Thanks, Joe. I am really humbled. That meant a lot to me. I think the trick is staying out of those goofy threads! Why does that happen all of the time? I, too, understand Andrew leaving the lead spot - he is just too nice for that. What a year you all have had! What a setback to time it took just to move and reorganize. But, sometimes you have to take a couple of steps back before you go forward. So, here we are. I don't even know how I got here but I swear to you I felt pulled in and I am committed to staying at least until v 1.5 is out. As I was walking this morning, I was asking myself what if it is one more year before v 1.5 is released? And Joe, I decided that is okay. I am in. I am here. Those boys coding have given it everything they've got keeping up with security problems this year and rebuilding the whole damned thing and I am going to stay to see the cake (BTW: where are your food analogies - did you eat this time before you wrote?) when they take it out of the oven. I am going to be there to tell them good job. That is for certain. I do pity the poor bastard who has the entire community on his back for the ACL rewrite. I sure did love that German kid. I shall remember him fondly! Maybe I will start heading down the hacker road doing code reviews and testing to help the young lad out. He's worth saving. But, this community has to advance. It is time for us to grow up and take on some responsibility and some leadership of our own. Give that some thought, Joe. That's what is next. A real community! What should that be like? Hm? I am completely serious. Joe - You make the journey fun. And, it?s great knowing someone really cares about what is going on. You help keep energy and optimism high. It is an honor, Joe, knowing you. Thanks! Now - stay away from that thread! Nothing good in there. Yuck.

August 02, 2006 | url

Elpie said:

This is one of the best, and most objective comments I have seen to date on the public face of the Joomla project. Thank you for mentioning me (unofficial leader of the Eyez fan club when you tried to leave, if I recall right - oops! Hold that thought, I had better go get proof!) ;D I wish you well in your journey with Joomla and hope that it's not too much longer before the first real Joomla release. If all comes to pass, it is going to be a great product. Whether its worth the wait or not depends very much on (a) how long you wait, and (b) what fun things you can do in the meantime to kill time. ::) Amy, if you are really interested in community-building, I have quite a large and extremely informative collection of research papers on Open Source communities. This is a fairly new field of academic research but some of the findings are well worth looking at. Building a community takes a LOT of work and requires a real drive and commitment to making it succeed - it can be very useful to look at how successful OS projects have achieved this and at the projects, which in themselves were great code, failed because of lack of a critical mass of the necessary mix of community members. This is an area I have been interested in since I first started getting involved in community-built software (in the days before it was Open Source, when we just made things for free LOL). If you are interested in it, let me know and I can get some papers to you. Building a community amongst 46 thousand forum users will be an incredibly difficult task, probably not made any easier by the fact that few of the "founding members' aka the class of August 2005, are still around. New users are often new to Open Source as well, so I don't envy you your dream. Good luck to you.

August 03, 2006 | url

Marc said:

Hi Joe, it seems as there are more people (for gods sake: rats) leaving the sinking ship... http://www.mademyday.de/Blog/Web/Schade-eigentlich.-2.html I know that you`re not the polemic kind of guy, but I had to write this down since I started my own business with mambo/joomla and was afraid of the future of joomla/my future. I hope we don´t lose track of each other, I always appreciated your objective point of view. regards, Marc (aka MadeMyDay)

August 05, 2006 | url

Amy Stephen said:

(-correct term) for Joomla! to ensure quality? Aside from the whole eyeball claim, IMO, that work must be outside of Joomla! proper -- if for no other reason than to build in transparency of purpose and process for obvious reasons. I care very much about how we interact with one another. The forums can be a snake pit, and I have a list of five "communication patterns" that we need to figure out different ways of handling. People might freak out, but, we can't have those threads anymore where people get hurt and for what reason? Nothing is resolved. HUGE priority for me. I do love Eric Raymond's five parts to the Hacker Attitude. I love "Freedom is good" because, it is! Freedom is really good! And, we are our own worst enemies when we fret over who has control. We are free! And then "The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved." And so, it dawns me there are many problems, including community building that need other people to focus in that area. And we are FREE to do that! We are not waiting for Mom and Dad or Christmas, Joe. We are free! So, Elpie, email me This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it and we'll grab Joe and whomever else is interested and get rolling. So, lady, you can rest for a bit, if need be. But, you ain't going nowhere. Sorry! (Marc - you can take a quick break, too, but then back you come. This ship is not sinking! It is sailing proudly! )

August 06, 2006 | url

Amy Stephen said:

Joe - apologize for crashing your blog and talking to Elpie! Elpie - please email me This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it - I absolutely would *love* to learn from you. Look - you and Vavroom have put your hearts into this. Right now, it's I am certain, a bit confusing and sad. I have felt confused and sad many, many times and I have nothing invested in this compared to the two of you. So, a break, a breather, that's cool. I can respect that. But, we have work to do. So, when you get a chance or if you want to talk, please email me. I would love nothing more than to get to know you better. You are one interesting, smart, and knowledgeable woman. Marc - I don't know who you are but, you have a cool looking site. I need to learn German. Man. So, since your site looks nice, you can also have a little break. But, I know people in Germany who are my friends. And, one day, I am going to tell them to swing by and pick you up on their way to Joomla!. You need to peacefully accompany them. We will have a bite to eat and a nice beer and it will be okay. Thanks, Joe! BTW - did you see Brad said Beta for San Fransisco? I have not forgotten the black leather coat with the penguin.

August 09, 2006 | url

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