[OOTB-hive] OOTB concepts: mission and code of practice

[Heiko Robert]

Boriss,
please see my answers inline.

On 20 August 2014 11:57, Heiko Robert <heiko.orderofthebee.info at ecm4u.de 
<mailto:heiko.orderofthebee.info at ecm4u.de>> wrote:
>
>     [...]
>
>     I worked for Oracle several years and I prefer a mission similar
>     to DOAG (http://www.doag.org/en/ - the german oracle user group).
>     This is a registered association and their members have different
>     roles: expert members, members, professional members, employees,
>     sponsors, ... Their events have an excellent reputation and Oracle
>     is doing well to promote this oranisation.
>
>
> That looks good, however, if I understand correctly, they work with 
> the Oracle products exactly as they are released by the company, 
> right? they don't work on customisations or new features? they just 
> use it as it is?
Not in general. e.g. in that ecosystem robust solutions were created for 
missing or bad working features (e.g. easier replication), HA solutions, 
monitor solutions integration with other products which compete with 
other Oracle products. Although Oracle is closed source it allows to 
extend missing features by installing extensions and packages or apps 
using the APIs. It would be nices but there is no requirement for open 
source if you want to extend a product when it's designed for that. Open 
Source is always helpful if the API and extension points are not well 
documented and if its buggy. My understanding is that Alfresco code is 
only touched for patching, right?
In general everyone expects impartial, non softened feedback, 
recommendation, opinon and support in a differnt manner from the DOAG. 
Maybe this should not be subject of OOTB but then this should be 
clarified and would avoid misunderstandings.
>  [...]
>
>
>     * OOTB should be postioned as a independant, visible moderator and
>     as an organisation of Alfresco Experts, Customers, Partners.
>     Alfresco employess can contribute content, feedback, working time
>     but should never have an active role or vote - otherwise it will
>     never be independant.
>
>
> Richard was explaining us that RedHat people also get to vote on 
> CentOS decisions, but their participation is limited, and that doesn't 
> takes independence away from CentOS. We still need to define voting of 
> Alfresco employees that are part of the order. It's going to be 
> discussed in the GOV (Governance) committee.
If the bee team manages the open source part of Alfresco I agree to your 
comparison but this is not what we are talking about, right? The bees 
are not managing the Community Code nor create fork.
I agree on feedback and colaboration on creating tutorials, best 
practice instructions or make some internal technical discussions public 
etc. but for this Alfresco employees don't need to vote.
What about creating features and functions which may touch Alfresco 
interests? In that case we may discuss the independence of Alfresco EE 
partner employees as well.
I think Alfresco should get a role as a permanent guest and advisor. 
Richard will definitly make a good job as advocate for the bees at 
Alfresco but it's role is also to be a lobbyist for Alfresco.
>
>     * ECM and Alfresco is nothing just for fun. It would be great if
>     we could combine this but we should present ourself as a
>     professional organization which is also visible for the end users:
>     the companies and the ISVs - but these companies don't care about
>     t-shirts, drinking beer, they prefer solutions, expertise and
>     skills - so the mission should have also an answer to this. This
>     should be also reflected in the accessability of the organization
>     (PR, internet presentation, official speaker, ...).
>
>
> The Marketing committee should address this. However, we cannot remove 
> the fun of it. If working with Alfresco and the order is not fun any 
> more, then it won't be worth doing it.
Sure first GOV and then MKT
>
>     * OOTB could be an excellent platform to organize and moderate the
>     requirement specs, creation, maintainance of missing features - no
>     difference if it will be open or closed source, if the result will
>     be for free or not. We have to be creative to find out working
>     models which work long term.
>
>
> I don't see how can we build a community around a closed source 
> solution. Can you elaborate on this?
I understand Alfresco as an open source service platform. This is in 
most cases not a solutions itself and needs often other services and 
products wich don't necessarily are open source. Alfresco includes other 
(open source) products even there are much better and affordable 
products (we all know the reason why). One example is libreoffice. Why 
should wee accept these limits and not alternativly use/include/test 
better, affordable, commercal ones? Following the example: there will 
never be a satisfiying and working alternative to integrating M$ 
products in converting MS documents. If you would be able to collect all 
the money partners, SIs already spent in work around to these 
limitations you will get a very big budget.
I understand as one goal of the bee team to push the CE and to help out 
with expertise. This means that there is a need to integrate, compare 
and support commercial products where required. Maybe I'm alone with 
this opinon but it's worth to clarify. Integrating commercial products 
shouldn't be limited to the EE and may help Alfresco in general. I'm not 
talking about a competition to Alfresco but creating a community for 
creating enterprise solutions which allways produces and maintains some 
added value to the CE (think of loftux claim for the office hours).
Your company is the best example: why shouldn't FRED officially support 
CE (beside the fact that you're not allowed to provide services for CE)? 
Why not fixing issues if there are some? Why not collecting money to get 
this work done? Nobody says you need to brake the rules you agreed to 
Alfresco.
>
>     * I would prefer a better name which includes Alfresco in any way.
>     OOTB is complicated, long and nobody sees a relation to Alfresco
>     and the mission. The name could be a slogan but only insiders
>     understand what is the story about. Transparency should be also a
>     subject for the name - otherwise we will have allways the smell of
>     geeks, nerds and complicated people.
>
>
> Picking a name with Alfresco on it is problem for a couple of reasons
I know this discussion very well and was part of it several times in the 
past but if we take care that there is no room for misinterpretation 
nobody is able to prevent us to include the Alfresco name in the Project 
name (e.g. "Alfresco Professional User Community"). It would be very 
hard to position the OOTB name outside the developer community and irq 
channels and therefore requires much more efforts in marketing to create 
a link in mind to Alfresco for the outside world where the potential 
Alfresco users live.
> Absolutely true. I think your input is welcome in the governance and 
> marketing committees.
Agree I'd love to do so and we should get some common consens on GOV 
before we continue in any other activity. I'm not quite sure about the 
motivaton of the board since even most of the board members are EE 
partner employees. So making interests transparent may help to 
understand the mission of this team.

We should show the same spirit of openness in interests and mission.

Heiko
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