Friday 05 March 2010 1:45:12 am

Although I am convinced that eZ systems has the best intentions with them community, I do appreciate the fact that eZ's investors expect a return on their investment. Working out a profitable business model for Enterprise Open Source Software appears to be difficult. Since 2002, I have seen eZ Systems trying various business models (percentage on projects referred to partners, network support, professional licenses, dealer network), some of these more successful than others. But maybe during these times, there is only a sustainable business model for EOSS, but not a profitable business model.
Anyway, to get to the point: count me in for (contributing to) the community maintenance releases (every two/three months?). I feel I owe my clients this service, since my sales arguments include 'regular updates'. However, I would not be surprised to see access to the public SVN repository restricted in the future as a result. Community maintenance releases could undermine eZ's Enterprise services. Community funded maintenance releases would probably work best for eZ Systems. Community contributed maintenance releases should probably be hosted on some sort of community fork or some distributed VCS (see also http://share.ez.no/forums/suggestions/switch-to-git), controlled by the community.

Certified eZ publish developer with over 9 years of eZ publish experience. Available for challenging eZ publish projects as a technical consultant, project manager, trouble shooter or strategic advisor.

Friday 05 March 2010 10:02:19 am

I can only agree with what is said by the other people here, there was a big lack of communication to those who were not able to attend the conference in Geneva. The slides from Atilla's presentation are not enough to clear out the lack of maintenance releases, they do not even mention the old maintenance releases as far as I saw, which for me does not clearly equals "there won't be any maintenance releases anymore". Also, what Peter said here, "such releases would only be available for eZ Publish Premium customers", did not ring a bell to me that it concerns all the separate patches and not the old maintenance releases (certainly not Peter's fault of course), as I do know that eZ Publish Premium can distribute separate patches as well.

Count me in for the community releases. Has there anything changed to the build process since I left eZ Systems? I was building the 4.x series so I know the process. In case things have changed, please point us to the documentation on it (if that is open-sourced).

Also, I am a bit skeptical on the statement of having .0 releases bug-free, as I see that the software development process already fails for beta releases. Normally a beta release is considered to be feature-freeze, what was not the case with the current beta, as the new feature for customized and translated admin menu items was simply not working as I think it was intended (was it tested with a real scenario?). Still it was released "as is" in the first beta, and now changed for beta 2. I know there is sometimes a thin line between feature and bug but IMHO this was clearly a feature change, so why not fixing this before releasing beta 1? Or are eZ Publish beta's not considered to be feature-freeze? See http://issues.ez.no/IssueView.php?Id=16226 for the background info. Maybe my understanding of the feature was wrong, as I did not find much information on it except for the comments in the INI files.

independent eZ Publish developer and service provider | http://blog.coomanskristof.be | http://ezpedia.org

Saturday 27 March 2010 12:58:51 pm

I am happy to announce you I've been preparing a first test build of eZ Publish 4.2.1 community release. Feel free to test it and let me know if any issues occur.

The test build is available from http://code.google.com/p/ezpublish-community/. There are lightweight packages with and without ezcomponents. I do not plan to make any full packages for now. For the difference between those, see http://ez.no/download/package_description.

More information will soon be added in the wiki of the project at Google Code.

independent eZ Publish developer and service provider | http://blog.coomanskristof.be | http://ezpedia.org

Sunday 28 March 2010 7:49:55 am

If you tell me which part sounds aggressive in your ears, I'll be happy to remove it or rephrase it. I think you're maybe confusing criticism with aggressiveness. I just wanted to explain clearly on the project page why this project was started.

To the downloads I will add "-community" in the future.

independent eZ Publish developer and service provider | http://blog.coomanskristof.be | http://ezpedia.org

Sunday 28 March 2010 10:24:46 am

Hi Kristof. I'm gonna be a bit straightforward and say aloud what I think: the description of the ezpublish-community project is very close to being agressive. I perfectly understand the reasons why you work on community maintenance releases, and think that it is great, but you could also do so without attacking eZ systems.

The reasons why maintenance releases are no longer done has been explained many times, and widely accepted. You could perfectly explain this project without using this tone. And I'm sorry if you feel attacked reading this :-)

I can't see where the text is aggressive. It is straightforward, sure. But doesn't it quite accurately explain the case? To be honest, I don't see any judgment passed in that opening text.

--
Company: mediaSELF Sp. z o.o., http://www.mediaself.pl
eZ references: http://ez.no/partners/worldwide_partners/mediaself
eZ certified developer: http://ez.no/certification/verify/272585
eZ blog: http://ez.ryba.eu

Monday 29 March 2010 2:20:47 am

Well, I can understand where it would be seen as non-agressive, but my point here is that it clearly says that eZ Systems has stopped maintaining community versions in order to focus on business and commercial goals. Which is at best 50% true: it is part of this move, but the other part is also to focus more resources on new features and provide real stable releases instead of focusing on multiple bugfix releases, but I don't think this'll ever be mentioned. But this is my own point of vue.

Now Kristof, I know you think eZ Systems is just a bunch of greedy bastards, but the community version you're releasing still depends on work you will never be charged anything for. It is a very easy criticism, and I don't see it required here to make this effort successful.

If it's the mentioned reason on the project page that bothers you, I will simply remove it and just mention that eZ Systems stopped providing maintenance releases. Period.

eZ Publish also contains certain contributions by the community which were provided completely for free, without charging them for it (to just mention a big one: the start of eZ Publish 4, PHP 5 compatibility). The community also reports issues (sometimes with patches), tests new alpha releases, etc... also for free. Therefore I believe eZ Systems also has the reponsibility to take care of what it has been presented like a good house father. Open source works in two ways, not in one way. eZ Systems does something for the community and the community does things for eZ Systems. In this case we take something. Yes, also without being charged for it, it's still free software (as in free beer), isn't it?

independent eZ Publish developer and service provider | http://blog.coomanskristof.be | http://ezpedia.org

Monday 29 March 2010 3:14:55 am

Look, a bonus! 2 links to eZ Publish Premium in the project description :)

Haha, it really wasn't what I was asking for (and I don't really have a right to ask for anything here, just explain & suggest), you know.

I perfectly understand what you mean regarding the two ways exchange between community & eZ Systems contributions, and it still is a core part of how this CMS is built, imho. On the other hand, having a community extension integrated into the CMS isn't just a business aspect, it benefits everybody, community & business. eZ Systems is not evil, and the community isn't evil.

Bertrand Dunogier
eZ Systems Engineering, Lyon
http://twitter.com/bdunogier
http://gplus.to/BertrandDunogier

Monday 29 March 2010 6:54:10 am

Well, I can understand where it would be seen as non-agressive, but my point here is that it clearly says that eZ Systems has stopped maintaining community versions in order to focus on business and commercial goals. Which is at best 50% true: it is part of this move, but the other part is also to focus more resources on new features and provide real stable releases instead of focusing on multiple bugfix releases, but I don't think this'll ever be mentioned. But this is my own point of vue.

I've got a feeling that you're not entirely easy with the fact that eZ Publish will no longer have at least one packaged bugfix release for given minor version ;) I mean - isn't it difficult to communicate to people (especially newcomers) who are looking for good open source software and believe that a) there is no such thing as bug-free software, b) frequent bugfix releases mean good support? At least for the less commercial projects... I really can grasp the new approach, I will get used to it, I'm sure I'll see the increased quality and innovation but that is a challenge nevertheless, isn't it? ;)

Anyways, I don't think you should be angry at people for calling this new reality as they see it...

--
Company: mediaSELF Sp. z o.o., http://www.mediaself.pl
eZ references: http://ez.no/partners/worldwide_partners/mediaself
eZ certified developer: http://ez.no/certification/verify/272585
eZ blog: http://ez.ryba.eu

Thursday 06 May 2010 10:34:45 am

Due to family circumstances I am currently not able to finish the community builds. Anyone willing to take it over from here can contact me.

independent eZ Publish developer and service provider | http://blog.coomanskristof.be | http://ezpedia.org