I been here in Bogota with Carlos Ruiz since 4th January, and had a series of meetings on many matters ranging from the war to the issues to the code release of iDempiere. I try to make some brief but important questions or points below which is now final and frozen. Any further updates will be at the bottom of this thread.
BACKGROUND: Carlos has two repos and Heng Sin has one. Carlos repos are ADempiere361 which we refer to as CarlosRuiz361 and iDempiere at BitBucket, which is a clone of HengSin's repo. Most agreed that HengSin's iDempiere OSGi completion is the way to go so this is our utmost concern that the path from ADempiere to iDempiere remains intact.
QUESTION: IS ADEMPIERE MIGRATION FROM 361 to IDEMPIERE CLOSED?
1.1 iDempiere bitbucket is public but the 361 is restricted. 361 has moved from Kenai to bitbucket as a private branch (restricted to contributors only).
1.2 Carlos continues to work on the iDempiere bitbucket by reviewing all patches acceptable from direct or indirect sources including ADempiere trackers.
1.3 HengSin has always been public. It is Carlos Ruiz's work that suffers erroneous QA and review of code and credit from the main ADempiere project that is in question. So this thread is to work towards a right solution that puts first things first - the code.
QUESTION: WHAT ABOUT CARLOSRUIZ361?
2.1 CarlosRuiz361 will be deprecated to iDempiere. What is in 361 is the migration pack and path to the iDempiere 1.0 release later. Those who follow it will have no problem converting or migrating or upgrading their instances to iDempiere.
2.2 Thus 361 is the ADempiere361 'forking point' to iDempiere.
2.3 The official ADempiere370 release at SourceForge.net/ADempiere has no path to iDempiere. Because no one is working on that here.
2.4 CarlosRuiz361 is restricted to contributors only. Those who have contributed some feature, bug report or fix directly to Carlos Ruiz will be given read access. Carlos will work less on 361 but more on iDempiere as the big jump. 361 will end with the migration path and pack.
QUESTION: WHAT ABOUT HENGSIN'S REPO?
3.1 HengSin's work is cloned by Carlos into his bitbucket repo of iDempiere.
3.2 HengSin wish to follow the GitHub policy of self management and allow his repo to be cloned freely by anyone.
3.3 Eventually Carlos iDempiere and HengSin's synch with each other but there maybe some minute lag or difference due to common peer review lag.
QUESTION: WHAT ABOUT CENTRALISED ID MANAGEMENT?
4. Since this is not well and timely managed by present ADempiere team, Carlos will setup an alternative Centralised ID server which has ID buffer zones that won't conflict with ADempiere IDs and shall last 2 years (which is more than enough as iDempiere production candidate is due to release this year which does not need Centralised ID Management.)
5. Only contributors, reviewers or direct bug trackers of CarlosRuiz361 can ask for a Centralised ID pass from Carlos Ruiz.
QUESTION: WHERE ARE THE TRACKERS?
6. In http://jira.idempiere.com
QUESTION: WHERE DOES THE COMMUNITY GO?
7. http://www.idempiere.com is the landing page to see where else to go for newbies, oldies and business of the day. This is open to contributors opinion. Release announcements will be made there and most here who are involved will be consulted.
8. The RED1 forum remains the zone of freedom - for the newbies, shouting page and unsure stuff - votes or opinion polls. Sourceforge.net/red1 remains as Jenkins QA stack and binary deployment zone.
9. The Googlegroup mailing list of iDempiere is open to public subscription to ask technical or support issues, but idempiere-dev mailing list is for contributors only.
10. SourceForge/iDempiere is also similar to the landing page and will direct the same stated here.
11. There shall be weekly 2 hour meetings (at #idempiere of irc.freenode.net) where Carlos Ruiz or anyone shall facilitate decision making and Q&A related to issues from the trackers or forums. The GMT time suitability is most likely night in Asia, noon in Europe and morning in Bogota.
12. Logs will be published in RED1.org forums or some wiki in future. There are no present wikis planned. Rather we allow anyone to publish in their own blogs or sites. We shall choose which site or page is the best information and link them in the landing pages. The issue is not no wiki but too much disorganised information that is confusing. So there shall be plain simple single pages for community to refer. Also self publishing best protect your brand credit and work merit.
QUESTION: WHAT ABOUT ADEMPIERE?
13. Ask them, perhaps they have more right to speak on this and not us. We are most concerned about a single important future roadmap of iDempiere and cannot focus on conflicts which we did not start. If rights were not harmed for us to contribute this would not have happened.
14. To avoid nasty 61 declarative posts there and some turn it into a war,
I have appealed to Carlos to avoid appearance and visibility in ADempiere project altogether. I will have to do the same. Any provocation from there can then be ignored. Furthermore, there shall be no commits whatsoever that require any rights in the ADempiere project. Thus any mismanagement of rights will have no impact. Work continue at the above stated repos where the respective owners have complete, absolute, final say over them and thus no conflict can arise. Users will tend to show respect and proper decorum.QUESTION: WHAT ABOUT THE MAIN DOMAINS?
15. Even though the abused domains declared as transferred were never done, we who never abused them shall figure out a way to surrender them. We won't go under the bus clinging to the property of the public good. Even though we shall go on some rail tracks to pose for a photo just to see if we can hear screams.
16. We shall surrender to foundations that fulfill the rules and practice of source-code maintenance, community trust and confidence. The present ADeV has suffered a severe loss of confidence as the last opinion poll indicated.
17. We are seeking to surrender to alternative foundations setup by the community which we leave to the community to prove to us that which deserve so.
QUESTION: WHY DON'T YOU RETURN TO ADEMPIERE?
18. There are long posts explaining all our positions on so many issues from code review, to trunk destabilization, to citizenship management that was never really addressed by those in charge. They refused to take popular opinion seriously. Nor want to hold official vote on the outstanding issues. Nor does the one in charge wants to meet me, even though i traveled thousands of miles to his place. The rest of the committees does not seem to care of the issues nor able to advice the head who can accuse me freely and yet seems too powerful - untouchable. So we vote with our feet.
QUESTION: ARE YOU A FORK?
19. You should ask ADempiere if it is a fork. I know it is sad you have to change 3 girl-friends before you settle for the 4th but blame the facts of life. So be fair to us. Again, we did not ask for forks, even from Compiere. But actions of those in charge forced us to this end.
20. We do not worry about dilution of ADempiere's brand or loss of investment in the ADempiere name. Look, no FOSS project or even proprietary project in the world remain as a singular long lasting name. All are in transitions and change to different names and makes. Today it can be iDempiere, tomorrow it can be Don Juan.
QUESTION: WILL YOU MEET US FACE TO FACE TO EXPLAIN?
21. I have always wanted to meet everyone. I will always strain to listen to very contrary opinion and then ask for the chance to explain this side. We can also agree to disagree. I seek to maintain high respect for all individuals irrespective of camps or cultures. But so far from most of my visits, the majority agree with one side. You figure out which side.
QUESTION: DO YOU THINK THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT?
22. When iDempiere, the real great future of open components and 3rd party marketplace plugins is finally out, anyone including ADempiere can take it and declare it as ADempiere 4.0 for example. This time the world and the community will know from where that version comes from. Yes, stealing will still occur - as Compiere, Openbravo and many others continue to do so but when well published, the origin and authors will be protected and honoured. Thus future is bright thanks to the rules and promise of GPL. But there will always be abuse and commercial interests. We seen them and now know how to handle them. But heh, what is most important we allow EVERYONE to take it.
23. But when you invest in iDempiere or any FOSS work always take the wise precautions. Participate more intensely. Brand your own service offerings or distros instead of relying on the core project name and do almost nothing. Do not just think of yourself that is making the money. Think also of those who are making the code. Otherwise i will strongly advice you to stick to Compiere, Openbravo or OpenERP or even ADempiere. You cannot have it both ways. Either use it in joy or contribute and have fun.
QUESTION: ARE YOU STILL OPEN TO BE QUESTIONED?
24. Of course. If there is one 'product', signature, trademark, hallmark from me at my red1.org is that you are always free to join/leave, criticise/shout, give/take and meet me. If there is one 'guarantee' from this product is that no important thread be it advertising oneself, as long as it is about FOSS, will ever get deleted. And one more very important guarantee - Information is Free, always, and thus no information hiding has and will occur.
25. You know my consistent principle over all these years - I honor and look up to contributors to call them 'priceless'. So i hope you will be one too.
26. You are free to comment here, or drop me an email if you think that is absolutely necessary to say something in private. My email is red1@red1.org.
red1
(finalised - no more edits. Further announcements will be further down this thread.)
