[OOTB-hive] CE looking bad?

[Richard Esplin]

Thanks for the reasoned response Boriss. I want to add one thought to your 
email.

On Friday, May 22, 2015 16:52:38 Boriss Mejias wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> Here are my thoughts after reading all the emails:
> 
> Regarding the community and Alfresco Inc.
> 
> - I understand the feeling of some of the members of the community that
> have lost trust in Alfresco management> - I really appreciate Gab and
> Richard's emails. It shows that a good bunch
> of Alfresco engineers care about the community, but most importantly, it
> shows that there are internal changes in Alfresco Inc where the community
> will benefit from. We need to have more patience here.

I think Axel summed it up perfectly in IRC:

"[Thursday, May 21, 2015] [13:03:19] <AFaust>  resplin: Too bad we can't do 
virtual trust-fall exercises to overcome some of the tension that people seem 
to have."

Thomas De Meo likes to say that the only real way to build trust is through 
consistent execution.

Alfresco management has always struggled to fit Community Edition into their 
business plan. They recognize its value, but have also regarded it with 
suspicion. This was really severe in the period of 3.0 Labs, and the result 
was bad for the open source product, bad for the community, and ultimately bad 
for Alfresco Software.

It seems like as soon as the company had figured some things out, we had a 
series of management changes and had to restart that learning process. I 
understand why that leaves everyone nervous.

But it is also useful to recognize that it isn't just some of Alfresco's 
engineers who love open source and Community Edition. A number of the product 
managers, product marketers, and other leaders do too. That has helped the 
accelerate the learning process. Honestly, I think we are now doing a better 
job at communicating, listening, and collaborating than at any point in our 
history. And the quality of Community Edition reflects that.

Every open source community I have participated in has a certain level of 
distrust due to the conflicting economic motives of the participants. But the 
fundamental beauty of open source is that we can tolerate a certain level of 
suspicion and still collaborate. We have the legal protections of the LGPL. No 
one in this community can force anyone else to act according to our 
preferences, beyond the terms of the LGPL. The most we can hope for is 
forthright communication so that we understand where other people are coming 
from. Our goals overlap enough that we will all benefit even if we are also 
pursuing our own objectives.

I think the Order of the Bee has been very constructive at building those 
bridges, and I am glad to be a part of it.

Richard