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Revisiting Decision Not To Allow Linking To External TWiki Distros

Note: This disussion resulted GuideLinesLinkingThirdPartyDistributions, which as accepted within the community at the FreetownReleaseMeeting2008x01x21. Thank you KennethLavrsen for the initiative! -- PTh

discussion refactored from TWikiInstaller. Original statement from Kenneth has been altered to give more background

At the Rome TWiki Summit CrawfordCurrie - part of WikiRing (but not speaking for WikiRing) - was the main driver in blocking for TWIKI.NET to add a link from the download pages to the TWIKI.NET free but not open source distribution.

We have the recent months had links added to external TWiki Installers on the betas and release candidates for 4.2.0 which are links to external distributions for which we do not have the sources available.

I still cannot see that I have any access to the sources and build process of these WikiRing distributions. In an open source project we need to be able to build these installers ourselves.

Either we get the sources online on our common project resources and not as links to outside commercial entities, or all these links have to be removed. We cannot have two different standards. Same rules have to apply for all.

-- KennethLavrsen - 10 Jan 2008

Not sure why you are blasting this out publicly, rather than just dropping an email to Sven - who is, as I understand it, sharing release manager duties with you - but you are right, you need to be able to build the install packages, and there shuld not be links to external distributions.

The installers were developed by Sven in support of (my) client, and I must be sure that none of their proprietary information leaks into the checkin; apart from that, we should be able to checkin. Sven has been one of the the main people triaging bugs recently, which I think is higher priority and has taken precedence. We can ask him to raise the priority of getting the code filtered and checked in, though I suspect it will have to be on an "as it comes" basis (i.e. don't expect much, if any, doc on the build process), so it is likely that Sven will still have to execute on the actual package builds. Sven, any comments?

-- CrawfordCurrie - 10 Jan 2008

I don't want to take anyone's eye (especially my own) off the 4.2.0 release work, so had planned to complete the work to a OSS releasable state soon after the 4.2.0 release. As is the case the OpenIDContrib release, this plan was set many months ago, when I first thought that a 4.2.0 release was imminent.

I'm concerned that you feel that your discussion in Rome can be used as though it were an agreed standard. I was unable to attend that meeting, and I have seen see little record of this discussion at the summit. Yes, I did find one small mention in the minutes, and I'm sure I would have commented had there been any attempt at ratification of the proposals made during that meeting. I don't currently have and opinion wrt blocking of TWIKI.NET links - I simply have not seen enough discussion to form an opinion.

The installers install the standard TWiki 4.2.0, with only one topic added - pointing out who did the work.

This is the first feedback I have had with respect the installers that was not a complaint that they were too hidden on the TWiki.org site - I thus wonder if you are being customer focused, or just using this question for some other purpose.

I suggest that you move this discussion to a more appropriate place.

-- SvenDowideit - 11 Jan 2008

It is a great surprise to me to learn that Sven and Crawford does not agree on the "linking agreement" made in Rome. When the agreement was made it was addressing only TWIKI.NETs desire to have a link from the TWiki download pages to their supported versions so noone felt it necessary to follow up with an open Codev discussion about the topic.

I honestly thought that the Wikiring partners coordinated more and talked more with each other about how they are promoting their brand, so it looked suspicious that TWIKI.NET was told that they could not be allowed to link to their distributions but Wikiring can link. But now we can all see from the comments above that there is nothing suspicious about the situation. The decision from Rome has simply not been very visible to those that were not there. There is only a small peep about it in the minutes.

It has been a long time since Rome and we have all gotten comfortable with the OSS commitment from both TWIKI.NET and Wikiring.

And it is clear that this subject has not gotten discussed enough with the community that were not represented at the summit in Rome.

My personal view is that I can live with any decision.

But it has to be the same rules that applies to everyone!

I do not plan to argue more in this discussion. I will yield to the ones that have strong opinions for or against.

I am happy to hear that Sven in any case have planned all the time to release the sources for the Installers and I am perfectly OK to wait for Sven to find time to package it all up.

So the specific question to discuss is: "Shall entities like TWIKI.NET and Wikiring be allowed to link to distributions of TWiki that may or may not be fully open source, that are external to the twiki.org site?"

You'd better reach an agreement before we release 4.2.0

-- KennethLavrsen - 11 Jan 2008

The Guideline that this discussion ended up as: GuideLinesLinkingThirdPartyDistributions

The Download Page for a specific TWiki version

On the download page for a specific release the top section including the blue rounded corner box can only contain links to the current release of fully GPL open source (built from only TWiki's svn) downloads that are hosted on TWiki.org.

Below the first section we add a section for Additional Downloads of TWiki

In this download section anyone can add a link to a download if the following conditions are met.

  1. The links must be directly linking to - or lead to a page from where you can download a distribution of TWiki. Not just the generic homepage of your organization.
  2. The distribution must meet one or more of the following criteria
    • The distribution adds additional extensions such as skins, plugins 3rd party programs which have been tested and confirmed to work with TWiki.
    • The distribution is a pre-configured version of TWiki for a specific OS or other purpose.
    • The distribution is packaged with an installer.
    • The distribution is packaged as a virtual machine.
  3. A description of the source of the distribution is allowed. This can be text and one logo maximum WxH 100x20 pixels.
  4. The description must contain the exact version of TWiki that your distribution contains.

On the download page we additionally link to a generic page OtherTWikiDistributions on which the rules are more open allowing anyone to add an entire section with a short description of the distribution and several links to different versions and add reasonably sized graphics.

The OtherTWikiDistributions topic

  1. The links must be directly linking to - or lead to a page from where you can download a distribution of TWiki. Not just the generic homepage of your organization.
  2. The distribution must meet one or more of the following criteria
    • The distribution adds additional extensions such as skins, plugins, 3rd party programs which have been tested and confirmed to work with TWiki.
    • The distribution is a pre-configured version of TWiki for a specific OS or other purpose.
    • The distribution is packaged with an installer.
    • The distribution is packaged as a virtual machine.
  3. Each provider can add one section headlined with heading level 2. A banner or logo of maximum 468 x 60 pixels (standard full banner). Must be plain gif, jpg or png with no animations or flash.
  4. First come first served. First to add their link gets at the top. Next provider adds below.

-- Contributors: KennethLavrsen, SvenDowideit, CrawfordCurrie - 11 Jan 2008

Discussion

I want to be very clear. In my mind there has been NO decision . There was a proposal that was discussed in Rome, but without any attempt to get those proposals agreed to by the community at large, it does not constitute a decision.

Part of the reason that the WikiRing partners have not discussed it in detail (nor do I see this as a WikiRing issue), is because I have been waiting for those few that were in Rome to show the community the respect it deserves. Simply telling us that the discussions in Rome are binding to us, unless we happen to challenge them, is not acceptable.

I re-iterate: I have see the arguments for and against, so have no fixed opinion.

And no, I'm not delaying the 4.2.0 release just so this can be talked over.

This single issue is only a small part - I'm much more concerned by the opinion that those in Rome were somehow empowered to reach decisions for the TWiki OSS project.

I suggest that those of you that were in Rome, consider carefully how you have failed the majority that were not.

-- SvenDowideit - 11 Jan 2008

I tried to make it clear when we were discussing the external linking issue in Rome that I was speaking as an individual, as a TWiki.org contributor, and not as a representative of the WikiRing. I hadn't realised that message was not received in clear by those involved until I was surprised by a mail from Kenneth this morning. My points were intended to apply equally to all external commercial link targets.

Let's just be clear what the discussion was about. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was that TWIKI.NET asked the summit if it was all right to add a link to the TWIKI.NET site from the TWiki.org downloads site. When I asked if that link was to a free distribution of TWiki that added value over the distribution available from the downloads page, I was told no, the distribution from the TWIKI.NET site did not add value.

I still hold the view that we should not link to commercial distributions that do not add value over what is available from the twiki.org site. I have absolutely no problem when a commercial distribution adds value - for example, when the distribution is packaged with additional plugins to address specific markets, or installers, or anything else that marks it apart from the distributions that are freely available from TWiki.org. But without that added value, such a link is pure parasitism.

Another point that I believe I made abundantly clear in Rome is that I have absolutely no problem with contributors - individuals or organisations - branding their own (non-core) contributions. In fact, I'd love to see company logos on each and every Plugin and Contrib. As well as being advertising for the companies who contributed, it's also advertising for TWiki, as it demonstrates the involvement of those companies in the project.

I hope this make my position clear. I welcome more open debate on this point.

Now, on the installers. The installer packages were developed by members of the WikiRing on behalf of a client. The client wanted those installers released to open source, and that is exactly what will happen, as described by Sven above. Because the installers represent significant value over and above what previously existed, I think it is reasonable to expect that we should be able to brand them.

FWIW I don't think this would be an issue if we had stuck to the anticipated timescales for 4.2.0.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 11 Jan 2008

With my TWIKI.NET hat on:

I must admit, this takes me by surprise. We have been 12 people in Rome, the majority of active core developers attended the summit. There we discussed the relationship of the TWiki.org community and TWIKI.NET, which I introduced in the TWikiDotNet topic last spring. It was my understanding that we had an agreement that we are working on a win/win/win solution for the community, TWIKI.NET and users. TWIKI.NET promised to actively supporting the community, and indeed it delivered:

  • Promoting TWiki through PR channels and analysts (see for example how TWiki is positioned in the latest Gartner report on Team Collaboration and Social Software 2007)
  • Organize and sponsor first ever TWikiCommunitySummitRome2007 for the developers community, even sponsor some lodging and flights.
  • Organize the second of the TWikiCommunitySummits in the Silicon Valley
  • Organize and sponsor successful TWikiMeetUps
  • TWiki.org hosting:
    • Secured expensive equipment from Sun, more hardware on the way
    • Secured half cabinet for hosting, cost jointly coverd by Plug and Play Tech Center and TWIKI.NET
  • Sponsoring enhancements to core and extensions (TinyMCE plugin, discussion forum, more to come)
  • Referring work to consultants

The last bullet point just started, I expect this to become very large. The pond of wikis in the enterprise is so big, if the community and TWIKI.NET work together, consultants will have more work they can handle. But we all need to pull on the same string in order to succeed. And not compete within the community.

So, this is what RodBeckstrom, I and others understood in the Rome meeting: In exchange to sponsor expensive hosting and other services, TWIKI.NET would get a link in the download page. (Compare that to the existing links in the twiki.org homepage: There are already links to current sponsors, namely Sun Microsystems and hosting providers Fastmetrics and Fastservers.) I am wondering if those who want to revisit the Rome agreement want TWIKI.NET to reduce sponsoring the community and to return the equipment to Sun?

I do not recall that someone stated that the TWIKI.NET distribution "does not add value". The Certified TWiki distribution (still in Beta) adds value: Installation program, automated updates, ships with many pre-installed plugins and some TWiki applications, has default content to have a good out of box experience for businesses starting with a wiki.

When asked, RodBeckstrom made it clear at the Rome meeting that TWIKI.NET's purpose is to be a profitable business; that is, TWIKI.NET needs to build up a good client base. The link in the download page will provide the company with new sales leads. In return, the company is able to refer more gigs to consultants, sponsor more code and usability enhancements, and grow the whole ecosystem. This is part of the win/win/win solution. Together we can secure a big chunk of the pond (facing the competition of other enterprise wiki providers.)

With my community lead hat on:

Besides the release meetings, I see the TWikiCommunitySummits as the most important gatherings for the community. I encourage everyone interested in the TWiki project to participate in the upcoming TWikiCommunitySummit2008Q1 in mid February. Face to face meetings strengthen relationships.

(Tomorrow Sat during daytime I will be offline, trying to get a L1 certfication to launch high powered rockets.)

-- PeterThoeny - 12 Jan 2008

Peter, thank you for your calm and considered response. I think we are reading from the same page. The notes from Rome - TWikiCommunitySummitRome2007 - are clear; It was strongly expressed that the download was the twiki.org open source download and that links to other distributions would get a secondary position and would link to the general website and not to the download page.

My statement above was intended to clarify my personal view on links to commercial distributions that do not add value. I may be wrong, but I came away from Rome in the belief that the free TWiki download available from the TWIKI.NET website was the same as the open source software, and that was the subject of the discussion, not the certified TWiki distribution (which AFAIK was not publicly available). But it is moot; the minutes of the meeting reflect what we discussed, and I am in no sense reneging on that.

The main thrust of Kenneths' points above, is to accuse me of double standards by "allowing" links to an external site, after "blocking" TWIKI.NET from having similar links. Let's be clear about this:

  1. As can be seen from the Rome notes, I did not block a link to the TWIKI.NET site.
  2. It has been clear from the start that the software used to build the installers would be added to the open-source repository. The fact that it has not happened yet is IMHO no justification for flaming two of the most active contributors to the project.
  3. Sven hosted the installers as a service to try and help people considering adopting TWiki. The installers represent a significant value-add over the current build packages.
  4. Even if I wanted to, I am not in a position to allow/disallow anyone from linking to or from TWiki.org. I am not even an admin on this site.
Please, let us consider these accusations as FUD and move on.

We need to focus on the real point that Sven is making above, namely that the decisions in Rome were decisions between the 12 who were able to attend that meeting, and his view is that those decisions were not clearly communicated and are not binding on the community. This is a general question about process, and it's important to get it answered before February; viz. does a summit have a mandate to make decisions that are binding on non-attendees? Faced with being unable to attend in San Francisco, this has become an important question for me as well. Is the summit able to make any decisions that are binding on the main open source developers, when none of them are in a position to be involved in the decision-making process?

-- CrawfordCurrie - 12 Jan 2008

The Rome summit was rushed out too fast and as a consequence people like me weren't able to attend it ... which I deeply regret as it had such a good impact on the project.

Reading all of the above, i.e. Peter's comments with is TWiki.net hat on, is revealing a deeper problem of understanding TWiki.net's role. To make it clear, TWiki.net is a for-profit company and as such must act accordingly. This means that it strives to broaden its impact and visibility. On the other hand there are more for-profit companies than just TWiki.net that have to make money with TWiki. Some of them are constantly contributing their work back to the TWikiCommunity. Some of them aren't visible at all in here (I'm not speaking for them). The point is, that while competition is good, such a prominent link from OpenTWiki to CertifiedTWiki is an unfair bias. Or in short: will other distros than those two be visible in the same place?

There was a yet short discussion about a TWikiFoundation, which I think comes into play here as well. Other Open Source projects (e.g. http://www.kde.org) do have an foundation to eliminate some of the problems that we are discussion here. Such an entity will be able to neutralize and relay sponsors, organizing meetings, summits and marketing activities. TWiki.net currently set out to fill that gap for the TWikiCommunity. Howeve, I am in doubt that it can without biasing the TWiki market too much. The situation for TWiki is different from those Open Source projects, where the company was first an the community formed later. It is the other way around for TWiki. So TWiki.net simply can't be imposed ontop of TWiki.org. In the end TWiki.net is more of a "yet another company" in an environment of corporate activities all around TWiki ... which the TWikiCommunity desperately does need to develop , but without losing control and without running into just one direction.

-- MichaelDaum - 12 Jan 2008

I have read through all the discussion around.

I am contributor to a couple of plugins - recently could not contribute much because of busy schedule at different tasks.

At a Users Level:

I have tested the the Certified Version of the "TWIKI.NET". I have been using Open Source Version for a long time on couple of Projects Collaboration sites with differnt levels of users (techie/non-techie). Showed the TWIKI.NET version to couple of my non-techie, they liked it. I will be able to pull my non-techie users to use TWiki at the same time i can retain my techie guys around. Non-techie are willing to use TWiki while they were not willing to use Open Source Version.

The competition is increasing in this space (wiki/collaboration) - definitely we need support from big guys/companies/ and the Young contributors/developers.

At high level:

TWIKI.NET is definitly adding value. Let us think TWIKI.NET as one person who really want to contribute to the community and want to grow community with "TWiki Everywhere" line in mind. We, as a contributors want to add value to community (and everyone is earning bread butter by providing support smile ). I see TWIKI.NET as young contributor to the community.

To convince any guy at high level at Enterprises - they need to see marketing, advertisements, lot of blog activity around. TWIKI.NET is trying to get all this done for community - more advertise => more installations => more users => more support required (even if it becomes killing application requirement of support will always increase)=>everyone earns - this is win-win situation.

My views: It should be allowed to link external distributions, including TWIKI.NET. It will definitely help community and the end users. We all contributing to serve the users.

-- SopanShewale - 14 Jan 2008

At the moment, most things are open source and shared among the community. Transparency is high to say the least. With TWIKI.NET in the picture, not only it adds control over TWIKI.ORG from its conspicuous presence, but it inevitably diminishes the essence of open source community due to TWIKI.NET's characteristics.

How will the community benefit if the path is towards the dependency of TWIKI.NET?

Similarly, we don't see PostgreSQL download page leading you to EnterpriseDB, do we?

-- KwangErnLiew - 14 Jan 2008

It is one thing to give a prominent link to a sponsor's home page to show gratitude.

It is quite something else to offer, to people who go to twiki.org to download, two differently sourced distributions instead of one.

Let's not confuse the two issues in our discussion.

-- SueBlake - 14 Jan 2008

When I started this topic it, my statement was that the same rules should apply to all. Either we allow linking to external downloads or we do not.

If we do allow we need an agreed criteria. And a criteria based on "adding value" may sound right but who will make the law, be the judge, the jury and the executioner on which distros add value and which do not. If TWIKI.NET seels some subscriptions, make money and spend some of that money investing in the development of new features (already happened with parts of the Wysiwyg editor) - then they add value. If TWIKI.NET promotes TWiki as a product then more people download it, more will report bugs, more will provide patches, more will buy services from consultants. Same with Wikiring. They brand themselves. People that are familiar with TWiki knows that if you need a consultant then Wikiring is where you find the best competencies and inside knowledge of TWiki beyond comparison. And no discussion about them adding value either. The installers will soon be open sourced and available on TWiki.org and then the Wikiring "problem" will be resolved. But we have had some months where there has been what appears to be a two standards and it has on the top of it not been communicated very well.

When a company sponsers something there is an agreement between the sponser and the receiver. This topic should end with such an agreement.

I see TWO choices

  • Either we ban all linking. I do not recommend this. We all loose on that. We all need all the exposure TWiki can get.
  • Or we make a Guide line.

Let me draft the beginning of a guide line. It also addresses Sue's concern which I share 100%.

Guide line doc created as replacement of this. GuideLinesLinkingThirdPartyDistributions. Included above

These criteria would match the current Wikiring installer downloads except the links would have to be moved away from the blue box and the first section.

These criteria would match TWiki.Net's distribution once they provide a download that matches the release TWiki version.

On the OtherTWikiDistributions TWiki.Net could link to their current 4.1.2 based download.

That was a proposal to start from.

-- KennethLavrsen - 14 Jan 2008

Excellent. This is a proposal that I can work with - though I've added a few things.

To make sure I'm interpreting your proposal correctly, the Windows etc installers at TWikiInstaller would have to be in the Additional Downloads of TWiki release 4.2.0 section only, until such time as the entire build tool is brought into twiki's svn. Then it can be considered as a normal part of the OSS TWiki release process - obviously the branding would change as it stops being a WikiRing provided extra.

-- SvenDowideit - 15 Jan 2008

Yes. You interpret that correctly.

-- KennethLavrsen - 15 Jan 2008

I also like Kenneth's proposal. I'm slightly concerned that there may be other value-adds that don't fall into the listed criteria - for example "the distribution is bundled with other value-added, but non-TWiki, tools" - where we would still regard the additional value as being worthy of a link. But I guess we can deal with those cases as and when they arise.

Who takes responsibility for ensuring these criteria are met?

-- CrawfordCurrie - 15 Jan 2008

Please, can we make sure that "the distribution is bundled with other value-added, but non-TWiki, tools" are also dealt with explicitly? I have done work to integrate Trac and TWiki - as can bee seen on http://develop.twiki.org/trac and expect to bundle that up into one package at some time in the future.

-- SvenDowideit - 16 Jan 2008

Hey SvenDowideit, impressed by your work of integrating of TWiki with Trac. The Trac is becoming more and more famous in the small size projects because of issue tracking and tight integration with Subversion. We definitely need Plugin/Add-On which provides us similar experience with Subversion on TWiki - I am looking forward you sharing the work with community.

Your work is very much appreciated - Good Job.

-- SopanShewale - 16 Jan 2008

Sven. I meant extensions in broad perspective. Bundling with non-TWiki extension such as Trac, Joomla, an ERP system - all good examples of bundles that are probably better linked to an outside location than uploaded as a TWiki.org resource. We will see integration between tools happening more and more and it is not easy for normal non-geeks to get to work. And why should such resources be kept secret from people visiting twiki.org? smile

-- KennethLavrsen - 17 Jan 2008

It seems my proposal has been accepted. Naturally we can refine it as time comes but I think we have a guideline that all can live with.

When we release 4.2.0 this will be the guideline. I will create the download topic based on the guideline.

-- KennethLavrsen - 19 Jan 2008

Creating a GuideLinesLinkingThirdPartyDistributions

-- KennethLavrsen - 19 Jan 2008

I have been too busy to follow this interesting discussion in a timely manner, my apologies.

I think SueBlake hit the nail on the head: Let's make a distinction between showing gratitude to sponsors and linking to distributions. TWiki.org is an open source community and should remain autonomous.

Here is another idea, and it could take the fuel out of the debate on this page: Let's take a step back and ask this is the key question: How can we achieve the independence of the TWiki project and at the same time show gratitude to sponsors? I think the answer is simple and clear cut. In fact, we already have it for a number of years: In the homepage we show links to sponsor's home pages. It is very obvious that these are sponsor links, e.g. there is no confusion of which version to download. So, if we treat the sponsor links as banner ads it is very clear that these are advertisements.

As listed earlier in this page, TWIKI.NET already spent a good percentage of its limited funds on the .org. It also secured over $100K in hardware from Sun and is about to spend a considerable amount on hosting. (Sun only gives equipment to companies; even if it would do so to individuals, I am not sure who is willing to accept donations of that magnitude as an individual on behalf of a community that has no legal status (tax questions etc). Certainly I would not be able to as an individual.) In Rome we had the agreement that TWIKI.NET would get a link in return for all the support it does for the community. At that time we did not define what form the link should be. And that has caused a lot of confusion and waisted CPU cycles.

One question is, what is considered "a sponsor"?

  • One side is very clear: Companies that spend money which directly benefits the community are sponsors. We currently have Fastmetrics and Fastservers that sponsor hosting, we have Sun sponsoring hardware. We also have many companies, such as ILOG, Wind River, Carrier Corp and other spending money by engaging TWiki consultants (C-Dot, Skyloom, etc (aka WikiRing brand) and others) to improve parts of TWiki. We have TWIKI.NET sponsoring projects, marketing efforts, community events and more.
  • On the other hand there is the community where many people contribute ideas, spec, code, docs, testing and fun. To pick one example, Arthur of Visible Area is sponsoring the PatternSkin. He is not spending Euros per se, but he is donating a lot of time. So do others, such as Crawford, Sven, Kenneth and many more.

We cannot put a monetary value to the latter part. If we do, we might end up in endless arguments who contributed more. That is why it is important to distinguish between "sponsors" (companies spending money to support the TWiki project), and "contributors" (people spending time to improve the TWiki project). Both are vital to the success of TWiki. It is a symbiotic win/win relationship if done properly (we have ways to go to improve on that.)

Going back to the link question: Instead of defining what links should be allowed, in the interest of the independence of the TWiki project, it might be better to:

  • Keep the download links clean, e.g. show only links to packages that are built by the community (or packages that are about to be build by the community (so that we can allow Sven's installers))
  • Allow the key sponsor (sponsors?) to show an ad that is clearly understood to be an advertisement.

To make it more concrete, here is a mockup of the download page with a dummy banner ad for illustration:

Sponsored Link
• TWIKI.NET support subscriptions

Download TWiki Release 4.2.0

TWiki is a flexible, powerful, and easy to use enterprise collaboration platform. It is a Structured Wiki which can be used to run a project development space, a document management system, a knowledge base, or any other groupware tool, on an intranet or on the internet.

MOVED TO... See the full feature list

Release download information

Date Stable? Download Version Type Code Name
2007-03-03 smile zip, tgz 4.2.0 (rFIXME) Production FreetownRelease

Other ideas, feedback? I am looking forward to find a solution that is acceptable to the majority of stakeholders.

-- PeterThoeny - 20 Jan 2008

I find that gobsmackingly inappropriate.

-- SueBlake - 20 Jan 2008

Having links to external resources adds value in itself as long as it is done discretely and this is what my proposal does allowing just a tiny little logo and having the OtherTWikiDistributions topic where it is clear that it is a page pointing to commercial sites.

I would like to clearly separate sponsorship and links to download resources. My proposal does not address how to link to sponsors. That is a different discussion that I am happy to start.

Adding a large banner to the download page - Sue says "gobsmackingly inappropriate". I could not have said it better myself.

And how many milliseconds will pass before someone says they want a Wikiring banner the same size. And then I will announce the "Lavrsen independent consultants" so I can have my banner also.

Sponsors should be handled in a separate discussion and with a different set of guidelines.

Sponsors and linking and display should be taken into the overall redesign of the twiki.org homepage so that potential customers get a clear path to getting paid services when they know they have a need for having a professional path to installation and maintenance. Or they need a software developer to make a new plugin or integration with other 3rd party software.

Sponsors of servers and bandwidth should have discrete but visible logos everywhere so here either bottom bar or left bar seems most appropriate. We already have this on d.t.o. and that never disturbed anyone.

Again this proposal is about linking to external distributions. Not to consultants or sponsors. 3rd party distributions is also Debian packages, Red Hat packages, Kenneth Lavrsen's special build etc that may evolve and not at all be commercial.

-- KennethLavrsen - 20 Jan 2008

I like the OtherTWikiDistributions idea. The download page could then provide a simple link to the OtherTWikiDistributions topic. Of course sponsor's logos should have their place on the twiki.org home page along side the Sun logo. At the end of the day, from the community point of view, it's probably better if someone sticks to the community distribution and contributes directly into the open source project rather than using a paid for distribution. Moreover you don't want to scare away potential future contributers by showing off the commercial part of the business so prominently.

-- StephaneLenclud - 21 Jan 2008

I like Kenneth's idea of a OtherTWikiDistributions topic where companies can list their distributions.

I'd like to point out that with the current proposal TWIKi.NET will not be able to get a link on the download page because there is non-GPLed code (an installer), there is a registration form, and distribution is not yet ready for 4.2.

The community spirit is most important to me, I support what the community wishes. At the same time I hope we can improve the mutual support and trust between community and commercial entities. That was my point all along, to work on a win/win/win for community, users and companies with commercial interests.

-- PeterThoeny - 21 Jan 2008

Note that a revised proposal was passed with all votes for and none against in one of the largest release meeting we have seen.

I have positive hopes for us all. Thanks you. smile

The sister proposal of this: GuideLinesSponsorPresenceOnTWikiDotOrg was not voted on because it has been added too late for people to have made a decision but a temporary decision was made to allow release of TWiki 4.2.0. See FreetownReleaseMeeting2008x01x21.

Thank you all for carrying this to a decision. I think we have found the future form for this type of decisions.

-- KennethLavrsen - 22 Jan 2008

"I'm much more concerned by the opinion that those in Rome were somehow empowered to reach decisions for the TWiki OSS project."

Just a thought. Apparently, this discussion has been closed and a decision has been made. My question: why do the participants in this discussion and the drafter of the resultant guidelines feel empowered to reach decisions for the TWiki OSS project?

I'm not trying to be destructive here, but i have not had a chance $dayjob wise to participate in this discussion and so. Beyond that, i believe there is only a very small part of the actual potential community active on Codev. I think most of us have at one point said Codev is scaring away potential contributors and community members. It is scaring away me, i don't like these discussions, they are too scattered and having to type coherently in this small (4-line) box doesn't help me either.

I say this, because in organising the Dutch TWiki meetup i have found out that basically no-one is keeping up to date with Codev in NL. Yet there is a lot of interesting TWiki deployment and development going on in NL. So how can we claim that a concensus that has been reached on twiki.org is a 'community decision'?

To make things clear: i'm not being destructive here Kenneth, i'm merely asking what others think of this. I am curious. I have no intention of contending the decision made above.

-- KoenMartens - 24 Jan 2008

Koen

I put this proposal on the agenda for the release meeting 21st of January. The agenda was sent out on the developer mailing list. And I have never seen as many people show up as we had that night.

There is no longer any God King on this project. Not even the core team has the power to make this kind of decisions any longer. It is the community that makes the decisions at the meetings which are open to anyone. And the decisions are always made after a debate on a codev topic.

The idea is - if you participate - you have influence. If you do not participate - you have no influence. The people that work hard for the project are the ones that seek influence.

I am a Danish citizen. If I vote I have influence on who governs the country. If I stay home on the sofa I let others decide for me. I know you are very politically actives so you also know that only a small fraction of a population are involved in politics and that those - like you - that invest time in influence are the once that shape the future. And I admire and respect people like you!

But you touch an interesting point Koen. How do we get more people involved with the Collaboration and Development (Codev) part of TWiki?

The problem is not that we make decisions. The problem is that so few participate. Is it too hidden how we work? Do people know that they have influence if they show up? Are we too scary to new ones? Or it is that they just don't care? Or do they trust us?

-- KennethLavrsen - 24 Jan 2008

Kenneth, you are right of course, i should have paid attention if i was interested. Better luck next time. I'll be sure to read the irc logs, curious who showed up!

Anyway, ignore my idly wondering about what actually defines 'the community'. It seems to work out sort-of at the moment. Of course, and i believe i've read some other topic or comment on this somewhere, it is odd to decide on things like project web site policy in a release meeting. Perhaps the name, release meeting, is confusing me.

I think key to getting and keeping people involved, in any volunteer effort, is being interested in the people themselves. Meetups are a great way to foster this, because idle conversation is the best way to bond. It also shows the project is alive, and something one would want to be part of. Anyway, digressing.

-- KoenMartens - 24 Jan 2008

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Topic revision: r30 - 2008-01-24 - KoenMartens
 
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