[OOTB-hive] [ADDONS] What do we want from an Order-managed addonlisting?

Wed Aug 17 12:57:43 BST 2016

After an initial stream of replies, this topic has fallen silent again.
It has become clear that we won't come up with a plan via any form of async
communication (regardless of mailing list or any "new" tool). I feel this
needs some form of face-to-face communication / collaboration over a
defined amount of time to work / argue this out and either come up with a
common denominator plan or a redraw of what ADDONS can / wants to be.

I would like to ask everyone:

a) Would you be willing / available to do some kind of web session / web
meeting in the next couple of weeks to discuss ADDON goals?
b) Would you be willing to use the next Alfresco Global Virtual Hack-a-thon
(23rd of September) to discuss / finalize ADDON goals and work on an
initial sets of addons to be listed / reviewed / whatever we decide to come
up with?

Regards
Axel

On 25 July 2016 at 20:33, Axel Faust <axel.faust.g at googlemail.com> wrote:

> First of all: Sorry, I forgot to reply to the list in my response to
> Tahir. I still have to get used to using Google Mail more regularly now..
> Thanks Tahir for including that in your counter-response.
>
> "So in my personal case if the plan doesn't change we still hold on to
> something we thought 2 years ago and didn't provide the result we wanted."
>
> This very thread is intended to come up with a plan (or THE plan) that we
> can work with, which may be very different from the old one from 2 years
> ago.
> And forgive me for saying, but "first provide result and then look on
> fine-tuning them" was essentially what I was trying to kickstart with my
> draft + reviews and see how well that turned out. So how do we go about
> that this doesn't happend again?
>
> If there are other people willing to start without a plan, do stuff and
> come back and refine it later, I would be very happy to see that succeed.
> Given previous experience, I have my doubts and would wait for it to bear
> the first fruits, before I risk spending my time...
>
> Kicking the entire ADDONS business to the curb and killing any intention
> to come up with an addon listing is a very real consideration already
> discussed on the board, and I personally don't have any intention as well
> to continue with something that just won't work. So I hope there are other
> people interested in this so this becomes a real discussion about plan /
> "what to do", and desn't remain a back-and-forth between Tahir and myself...
>
> On 25 July 2016 at 20:03, Tahir Malik <tahir.malik at contezza.nl> wrote:
>
>> I don't think “getting our act together” is working at this moment. So
>> probably our plans aren't suitable for us to work with, in this case I'm
>> clearly referring to myself.
>>
>>
>>
>> So in my personal case if the plan doesn't change we still hold on to
>> something we thought 2 years ago and didn't provide the result we wanted.
>>
>>
>>
>> For me personally this would mean 2 things:
>>
>> 1.       Get everyone in our team accepting that we need to change the
>> way we work and maybe first provide result and then look on fine-tuning them
>>
>> 2.       Leave the Addons team and start a new one to still valuable
>> contribute to the community
>>
>>
>>
>> I have no personal issues with anyone of you 😊, but this just doesn't
>> seem to work for me and I'm being honest and hopefully it's respected.
>>
>>
>> Tahir Malik
>> Sent from Outlook Mail for Windows 10 phone
>>
>>
>>
>> *From: *Axel Faust <axel.faust.g at googlemail.com>
>> *Sent: *25 July 2016 17:26
>> *To: *Tahir Malik <tahir.malik at contezza.nl>
>> *Subject: *Re: [OOTB-hive] [ADDONS] What do we want from an
>> Order-managed addonlisting?
>>
>>
>>
>> You may already be jumping ahead to the inclusion of addons in Honeycomb,
>> which isn't necessarily the same as including them in an Order-managed
>> listing (which would be just on our web page with potentially different
>> kinds of badges differentiating "self-certified" from "reviewed").
>>
>> "First things first": Reach an agreement on what we actually want from
>> addon listing and how we want to get there, to have a sustainable process
>> before we exhaust / frustrate ourselves in uncoordinated actions.
>>
>>
>>
>> ADDONS never had a problem with suggesting addons for inclusion in either
>> the issue tracker or the wiki page you linked. I had already merged the two
>> together to form a backlog (https://github.com/OrderOfTheBee/addons/wiki/
>> Addon-review-schedule) of addons to be reviewed. But unfortunately,
>> there was never any real effort on reviewing these.
>> Why would we need an "updated list of rules" when we never really had any
>> formal rules except for a draft? (which by the way includes a provision for
>> source code to be accessible, but leaves it open in what form)
>>
>> One result of the discussion in this thread could be the definition of
>> pre-conditions for an addon to be considered for inclusion in a Honeycomb
>> distribution. This would obviously involve DISTRO in terms of how we want
>> to provide Honeycomb (tieing into the Honeycomb vision thread Jeff
>> started). But I'd like for ADDONS to "get our act together" and finally
>> come up with a review / listing process that all aggree on and actually do
>> the potentially boring, but necessary work of processing all those addon
>> suggestions...
>>
>> Jeff's suggestion was that "self-signed" would mean the addon author has
>> reviewed her addon herself based on the criteria catalogue we define.
>> At that point there would potentially be very little verification /
>> review on our part (except the really simple stuff, like license / source
>> access / release bundling) and it might be flagged in our listing as such
>> ("developer assures she complies with best practices but YMMV"). This
>> "self-signed" self-registration of an addon could also act as our input
>> funnel for a more thorough review, before we put our "stamp of approval" on
>> it. Such an addon could then be reviewed by DISTRO for inclusion (which
>> could be a different level in our "stamp of approval" collection).
>>
>>
>>
>> On 25 July 2016 at 16:47, Tahir Malik <tahir.malik at contezza.nl> wrote:
>>
>> Okay... still some things are unclear right now.
>>
>> First things first, we need an updated list of addons:
>> - https://github.com/OrderOfTheBee/addons/issues/1 --> haven't been
>> updated since october 2014
>> - https://github.com/OrderOfTheBee/addons/wiki/
>> Candidates-of-our-favorite-free-open-source-add-ons --> october 2015
>> - Probably update the wiki of 2015 and merge those together
>> - https://github.com/share-extras/ --> Include all of them updated since
>> 2015?
>> - What do we do with the Hackaton(s) list(s)? Are some of them ready to
>> be included in the Honeycomb edition?
>>
>> We need an updated list of rules on how we include "self-signed" Addons.
>> - Is having the code on github a must? I've seen multiple 'cool' addons
>> which aren't on github, but are 'free' to use as-is
>>
>> Cause these aren't addon's we've tested I wouldn't suggest just supplying
>> them with no way of disabling them if needed by a user.
>> So DISTRO guys is there a way to disable certain addons on install?
>> We should have a configurable list of enabled/disabled addon's on
>> installation or creating a bundle/image.
>>
>> *From:* Douglas C. R. Paes
>> *Sent:* Friday, July 22, 2016 3:20AM
>> *To:* Jeff Potts, Tahir Malik
>> *Cc:* Ootb-hive
>> *Subject:* Re: [OOTB-hive] [ADDONS] What do we want from an
>> Order-managed addon listing?
>>
>> I liked the self certified add-on idea.
>>
>>
>>
>> Em qui, 21 de jul de 2016 13:30, Jeff Potts <jeffpotts01 at gmail.com>
>> escreveu:
>>
>> One more thing...
>>
>> The process I described sets up a simple hierarchy of add-ons:
>>
>> Un-trusted or Self-published: Add-ons that are freely-available in the
>> wild, on GitHub, on addons.alfresco.com, etc.
>>
>> Self-certified: Add-ons that the owner says meet all of the "must" items
>> on the OOTB Add-ons Best Practices Checklist
>>
>> OOTB Approved: Add-ons that the Order of the Bee have agreed by voting
>> that an Add-on does indeed meet all of the must items.
>>
>> Jeff
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 11:24 AM, Jeff Potts <jeffpotts01 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> I don't think anyone is proposing that the order has to test or fix any
>> add-on.
>>
>> What is being proposed is that we have some sort of process for vetting
>> add-ons, and Axel is pointing out that simply having a list hasn't been
>> enough. It requires volunteers to actually look at each add-on and evaluate
>> it against the objective criteria Axel has compiled.
>>
>> I think what has been lacking are volunteers to do that work and a
>> prioritized list of add-ons that need to be vetted.
>>
>> Perhaps people who own those add-ons should be the ones to make a first
>> pass at the criteria. Have them self-evaluate. Then they can be the one to
>> submit their add-on to the community with a "self-certification" that it
>> meets the criteria. The group can then spot-check their favorite "must"
>> items and vote +1/-1 on including the add-on. A down vote due to the
>> failure to meet a "must" item must be addressed, then the submitter can
>> request again.
>>
>> This hopefully reduces the burden on the addons committee and
>> automatically narrows the list of add-ons to those who are motivated enough
>> to do their own check against the list and hopefully make improvements in
>> their code.
>>
>> If we do a good job communicating the value of being an OOTB-vetted
>> add-on but an add-on owner still doesn't think it is worth the effort to be
>> listed, that probably means they aren't invested enough in that project.
>> And if that's the case, we don't really want their add-on on this list. And
>> if it's a good add-on that has simply been abandoned, some other community
>> member can fork it, self-certify it, and submit it.
>>
>>
>>
>> Jeff
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 6:30 AM, Tahir Malik <tahir.malik at contezza.nl>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Axel,
>>
>> I want to propose a different setup for our Addons community.
>> Instead of thoroughly testing other people's code and fixing it where
>> needed we should add all the (functional) working Addons in the edition and
>> fix the addons when they seem to have a problem.
>> This could eather be in the github issues or we forward the issues to the
>> rightfull addon's party and help them fix it.
>>
>> So what you'll get is that instead of having 3 addons, you'll have at
>> least 15 addon's which will definitely have more value than what we
>> currently have.
>>
>> And I think we should next to Addons also add Patches to the list. I've
>> created multiple patches in the past (and still do) on community and we
>> should just bluntly add them and take the responsibility to fix them if
>> needed.
>> If too much issues with them, discard them.
>>
>> So the goal is exactly the same, only the approach it different and
>> you'll have more result in less time and hopefully will have a compellingly
>> more valuable honeycomb edition than we now have at the moment :).
>>
>> To put this further we should have a pre-req list for these addons:
>> - Should be running on at least one client production system
>> - We should have at least tested the addon functionally
>> - etc.
>>
>> The same for Pathes and we need to make sure that we can supply the
>> Addons/Patches on different Alfresco Versions.
>> So the puppet/docker config should keep a list for each Alfresco version.
>>
>> Next to this I want to in the future let our team create Addons, that
>> could be 1 fully new addons we decide (let's say in the hackaton) or 2
>> pickup half working addons from the community and make it work.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>>
>>
>> [image: Contezza]
>>
>> *Tahir Shazad Malik*
>>
>> *email*
>>
>> tahir.malik at contezza.nl
>>
>> *mobile*
>>
>> +31 (0)6 14 77 50 82
>>
>> *office*
>>
>> +31 (0)848 68 89 02
>>
>> *website*
>>
>> www.contezza.nl
>>
>> [image: linkedIn] <http://nl.linkedin.com/in/tsmalik/>
>>
>> [image: Twitter] <http://twitter.com/tahirshazad/>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Axel Faust
>> *Sent:* Thursday, July 21, 2016 12:48PM
>> *To:* Ootb-hive
>> *Cc:*
>> *Subject:* [OOTB-hive] [ADDONS] What do we want from an Order-managed
>> addon listing?
>>
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> as our previous ADDONS mailing list was closed due to inactivity, it is
>> time to contemplate the state / future of the committees work.
>>
>>
>> Initially, the committee was set up to compose, review and manage a list
>> of Community addons / tools that we as the Order can recommend to users of
>> Alfresco either because they fit a very specific niche of features, are
>> qualitatively exception or simplify specific use cases immensely. In
>> comming up with a process / guideline to review and accept addons in such a
>> list we had some discussions about criteria but little concrete progress
>> was made. At some point I started to compile a draft criteria catalogue (
>> https://github.com/OrderOfTheBee/addons/wiki/Inclusion-criteria-overview)
>> to help me structure my ideas and be used as a concrete basis for
>> additional debate. Response had been mixed, I created two addon reviews as
>> showcases and asked others to try and use the catalogue for their own
>> reviews to gather feedback as well as input for potential changes (both
>> detail or general direction).
>>
>> Since then, nothing has really happened in the committee. For me it
>> became clear that I could do little to encourage others to either try their
>> hand at a review or come up with a concrete counter-proposal of how we want
>> to go about compiling a list. Additionally, I was burdened with a higher
>> load at work and didn't really find the time to continue doing reviews by
>> myself, and neither wanted to since doing stuff unilaterally defeats the
>> purpose of a committee / the Order. I am confident I can rectify my problem
>> with the work load now that there'll be a couple changes in my work life.
>> But engagement by other members is still crucial and initiative has yet to
>> been demonstrated in this particular area.
>>
>>
>>
>> My question(s) to you now:
>>
>>    - Do we still (want to) consider it an objective of the Order of the
>>    Bee, to compile a list of addons / tools that have been qualitatively
>>    evaluated (in some sort), and to have that list provide added value over
>>    what is already provided by addons.alfresco.com or any potential tool
>>    that may be introduced with the new community platform?
>>    - How do we want to go about compiling such a list?
>>    And here I don't mean minute details (GitHub issues vs. whatever task
>>    listing), but questions about "output artifacts" (what is part of the
>>    listing), "inclusion criteria", "distribution of effort", "committment to
>>    review schedule / targets"
>>    - Who wants to (regularily) take part in addons-related activities
>>    within the Order (and hasn't previously been aware of what you could do)?
>>
>>
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Axel
>>
>>
>>
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>> --
>>
>> Douglas C. R. Paes
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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