Discussions about eyeos 2.0

[Lars Knickrehm]

As most of you already noticed, eyeos 2.0 were not released at the first of January as we announced it earlier. Therefore some users started discussions about different topics, but all together in one single thread. In this post I will split these topics and explain you my personal point of view. (This view does not need to be the one of all company members!)

Alpha, Beta or Final
Situation: Some of you mentioned, that it is better to release a stable eyeos 2.0 system. They mostly defended our decision to keep testing eyeos 2.0 for some time.
Thanks for all of these answers! Actually our philosophy tells us to release just a totally stable eyeos system and we will keep this strategy, since it is the only expedient way for our users, other developers and us, ourselves.

Open Source
Situation: Actually some open source hard-liners (just let me call them that way...) try to force us, to publish the source of all parts of our project.
The eyeos project works together with its community and eyeos 1.9.1.x will finally be a totally community driven release (see last bold point), but our eyeos team owns the copyright over the current code and especially over eyeos 2.0, so we will decide when to release our code to the publicity and that is totally okay for (A)GPL projects. In my opinion we really do not need users, who have such an open source naivety.

eyeos 1.9.x
Situation: Many users mentioned, that we should continue eyeos 1.x for a while and we did so with quite a good success. Over the last months Matthew Powell and I were working on a new eyeos 1.x release, which has been released in early January. Since it is a bit more unstable as eyeos 1.8.7.x was, we will release a bug fix release, called eyeos 1.9.0.1 during the next days.
eyeos 1.9.1.x will be totally community driven. Matthew already has a lot of new ideas and all developers, who like to work on small and big sub projects can contact him. Just visit our IRC ( http://wiki.eyeos.org/IRC ) and ask for him. (Maybe you need to wait some time for an answer, since we do not follow the channel all our time.) I suggested a release date around early May.

[Steven_FR]

I really totally agree with you, butt .......

I have one major problem with 1.9 : The new grid you made (with fixed header) is great, but not usable
in real life. If I load a table with 300 entries FF takes ages to render it. I know this is a problem of FF,
but I really do need to be able to dynamically load tables. Like it's done in the widgets you use for 2.0
(which are, by the way GPL - Open source).
So, what I would like to know is if you are going to make available the bridge between php and these widgets.
And if so, when do you think a beta might be downloadable.
I have been looking into this, and think that it's not to ficcult (for me  ) to do it for the grid control,
So please advice what you would consider the best way for me to act now.

Kidest regards,
Steven

[truster]

Thanks for sharing your point of view, Lars.

Open Source
The eyeos project works together with its community and eyeos 1.9.1.x will finally be a totally community driven release (see last bold point), but our eyeos team owns the copyright over the current code and especially over eyeos 2.0, so we will decide when to release our code to the publicity and that is totally okay for (A)GPL projects. In my opinion we really do not need users, who have such an open source naivety.

1. Does that mean that development of 2.0 branch is not going to be community driven, or at least publicly readable? Because that smells like "use 1.9.x if you need local setup, otherwise...".

2. I assume that you're not using term "users with open source naivety" for people like me. After several announcements in during of last 6 months and in light of Dec2009/Jan2010 roadmap/schedule I gave some promises to our clients too. And it is really not pleasant experience with dead end of eyeos team communication line (another week of silence passed, you know). We have chosen eyeOS as well written open source codebase for serious clients work and now I was left alone with clients who are spamming me with emails/calls _when_ they will have their eyeOS workspaces based on qooxdoo - they are used to admin part of apps in qx ui for ages - THATS why we've choosen eyeOS, your plan to use qooxdoo for 2.0
Trust me, I do not need eyeOS "release" nor beta or whatever... I am just under pressure when I can not show to our clients "just new videos" from tool I can not use for them because I can not test it and there is no way how to learn its api. It is terrible situation from my point of view and we can't stand it for ever. Once again: I am not crying for bugfree release, just for access to code I need to see/use/work with to satisfy things I promised because of my trust in eyeOS team and blog. Nothing funny, I can assure you, and I feel quite stupid in this position that I am almost begging you for something you (team) promised several times and kept us all warm etc. Well, I'm not here for emotions, so one last thing: you IMO should rethink your "since it is the only expedient way for our users, other developers and us, ourselves" - end users and developers are not the same category of eyeOS consumers. And if you don't care about this part of consumers (us, who picked up eyeOS as opensource project with responsible team and therefore some future, as codebase for our clients), it SHOULD be stated at homepage red and bold.

I am not used to treatment like this from other open source communities, no matter how much I contributed/donated. As a long time qooxdoo developer I have to say (I speak for myself only): my excitement that eyeOS will use qooxdoo (which I know very well) is almost burned out, no matter how sweet your php-qx bridge is. I do not care if current 2.0 code is usable for production environment. But I do care if I can trust to what I read from other people - we did not assumed we will install 2.0 to clients these days yet - but we were SURE we would be able to work with 2.0 in our dev environment and 3 weeks is a big BIG change in our schedule. Even worse, more then 3 weeks after 1st release date, we are not sure when or even IF we will see it? Damned, that smells by something it is probably too soon to express, man.

One good thing from your post: there are no promises about 2.0 in your post.
Now the bad thing: there are no promises about 2.0 in your post.
Pick up one.

[Silencer]

Hi Lars,
thanx for your post. But what is it with the eyeOS information/community policy?
- nobody from the devs seems to be responsible for the blog comments on the 2.0 release posts at all
- I as a private beta tester feel totally left alone; there are no news about new beta versions & last changes/new features (for further testing) etc.
- there is still no answer on my question about the requirements for office & rich media file support
- you guys seem to be very busy, but there is no asking for help (blog posts/moderation, special testing etc.)
- as you are way behind schedule, why not give more people access to the private beta or better release a first public one for better bug hunting

I hope devs as well as members of the community learned something during the last weeks: to be honest and restrained.
In the last blog post somebody (who actually? please add the author in the wordpress theme) wrote:
"On our first internal release we invited some people to test it out. The result was that eyeOS 2.0 rocked, but it missed a lot of feedback for the user on some actions. It was not clear and the user could get lost during the eyeOS 2 usage."
I really hope this "status update" was posted to keep emotions down, but it leaves a bitter aftertaste. So how would you, Lars, describe the status of eyeOS 2.0?

[Alexandre MEJAT]

2. I assume that you're not using term "users with open source naivety" for people like me. After several announcements in during of last 6 months and in light of Dec2009/Jan2010 roadmap/schedule I gave some promises to our clients too.

Dear truster,

I am sure Lars did not mean you writing "users with open source naivety" but... I would. Come on !
YOU are brand new in the community
YOU never did anything for the project
but
YOU already promised eyeOS 2.0 to your "clients"
YOU are pissed off because it is "late".

The truth is that it is not "late". It has always been said that the 1st january release was supposed to be a beta version for testing purpose. It has always been said that a stable version would not be ready before weeks after the first release. But YOU already promised a full featured, stable products to your clients ? whereas you never contributed any line of code to eyeOS (from versions 0.8 to 1.9)

What kind of "professional" are you ?

ALL professionals I know, proposing open source projects and softwares to their clients ALWAYS propose the stable (sometimes old but safe) versions of a products. But NONE would never promise or even talk about a product still in development and for which they could not even do a test.

I really hope your "clients" will read this post and think twice before asking you to drive any project !

And if ever you think eyeOS development is too slow... just DO IT and propose to your "clients" your own code, your own product with your own release and communication policies. 

[Steven_FR]

Her her !!!
 

[truster]

I am sure Lars did not mean you writing "users with open source naivety" but... I would. Come on !
YOU are brand new in the community
YOU never did anything for the project
but
YOU already promised eyeOS 2.0 to your "clients"
YOU are pissed off because it is "late".

The truth is that it is not "late". It has always been said that the 1st january release was supposed to be a beta version for testing purpose. It has always been said that a stable version would not be ready before weeks after the first release. But YOU already promised a full featured, stable products to your clients ? whereas you never contributed any line of code to eyeOS (from versions 0.8 to 1.9)

What kind of "professional" are you ?

ALL professionals I know, proposing open source projects and softwares to their clients ALWAYS propose the stable (sometimes old but safe) versions of a products. But NONE would never promise or even talk about a product still in development and for which they could not even do a test.

I really hope your "clients" will read this post and think twice before asking you to drive any project !

And if ever you think eyeOS development is too slow... just DO IT and propose to your "clients" your own code, your own product with your own release and communication policies. 

Please, read my last comment (aka Lust) here http://blog.eyeos.org/en/2010/01/20/eyeos-2-0-presentations-hey-what-happens-with-the-dates/comment-page-2/#comment-10855

I'm afraid you got me wrong. I did not promised eyeOS to our clients. But I promised I will be able to show them solution (in whatever development stage), how our existing large apps based of CakePHP and qooxdoo can be used inside of qooxdoo UI of eyeOS 2.0. What is wrong at saying that PR (slience) of eyeOS is wrong and promises in during of 6 months ends as dreams or lies? Hm? I don't think that our company is new in eyeOS (thanks to yooxdoo) anyhow matters. If you want eyeOS to be good product, you surely understand most of my points. Our team panic has nothing to do with money nor our promises to clients. you didn't understand one thing: we have chosen eyeOS because we thought it is project (and surrounding team) with great history and future. I am sure IBM/Telefonica etc are able to see the same thing. Now, when 2.0 branch will be public, all my worries will be gone.

I am not calling for stable release, and it is last time I repeat it. Not precisely you, but people who disagree with me are continuously using magic word "stable". I do not care if stable 2.0 eyeOS will be tomorrow, or at Spring. I reall don't care. I just need access to code to be able read new approach/api, that's all. If you can understand what benefit comes from hiding source in front of competent people willing to give their free time, and also time of their developers they have to pay, tell me, please. Not sure what kind of professional are YOU, if you can get excited from things you made in mind and which are absolutely out of reality. If eyeOS team decides that release cycles will end with stable release in May 2010, I am OK with that. But - IF beta was announced for 1.1., it is difficult situation if we at the end of january still do not have access to code.

I know what you are after - just another someone who came just for criticism. It is not like that, I can assure you - because we (as a company) are NOT interested in installing/managing eyeOS for our client I am mainly talking about, they have their own IT department to do so. Problem as we see it is (or was):
a) we need access to new approach code
b) we are quite sad that clients have doubts or fun that we introduced them some project with team who is hiding or remaining silent like kids.

I really hope you lost some of your spite aiming to me now. I am not stupid, I run and drive team of smart people, and if some of our clients will see that I complain here because of lack of communication and our worries if IBM/Telefonica will affect code/release/strategy the bad way, I am pretty sure there is nothing what would make me look bad, my friend.

[truster]

I am sorry, Lars. After announcement that 2.0 branch will be public this week, my problems seems over, so I'm off topic here. Thanks for your time, code, keeping things going and people working, ideas turned into reality, well - I could continue if you're interested... I realize that my words "may not sound friendly" ;-) therefore I appreciate your courage to open 2.0 branch in front of us, wild hungry crowd. Public code is not the same thing like community-driven development nor stable/final release, we all know this. Thank you (team) for this decision, it can't harm you and will make our pure lives at end of January 2010 much easier.

[huno]

Hello,

That's very great news that you finnaly open your source for developper. We love your project so much that everybody start to become hysterical  However, i'm among of those people who are not programmer and i'm wondering when it'll be possible to see that new version (SVN server doesn't speak to me). Actually I won't ask you a date but just would like to know if there is a longgg way to go until a RC version or something we can try online ?

Hope that the community can work hand in hand on this project with more communication !

good job

[KanGouLya]

I think the best is to have 3 versionning branch evrytime opened for contribs (stable, testing, unstable) !
here we can said that :
- eyeos 1.8.7 is the stable version !
- eyeos 1.9 is the testing version,
&
- eyeos 2.0 the unstable developpement version.

With the maintainers organisation for every branch...