[Typo3-dev] The Right Crew

[Jean-Baptiste Rio]

Kasper Skårhøj wrote:
> Hi Guys,
> 
> Thoughts kept buzzing around in my head this night and finally forced me to 
> get out of bed early :-(
> 
> CONCERN:
> A true concern I have is this; How do we channel all the great resources from 
> the TYPO3 community into a unified effort on the development of TYPO3 which 
> does not compromise the quality or impose great levels of overhead.
> 
> I need your help on the answer, but to prime the ground I will tell you about 
> how I see myself and evaluate my personal skills as crucial for the success 
> until now. This is NOT to be seen as a defense speech for what I have done! I 
> don't need to defend any of it and I'm pretty proud of TYPO3 including its 
> quirks. 
> 
> BACKGROUND:
> As the initiator and chief developer of TYPO3 I think I possess at least three 
> key criteria that were necessary for this role:
> 
> 1: Vision
> 2: Pragmatism
> 3: Stamina
> 
> Vision: I have been visionary about concepts that solve realworld CMS problems 
> (TCA / TER / TemplaVoila / TypoScript / ImageProcessing / Workspaces etc). I 
> have also been visionary about the architecture of procedural programming in 
> a language like PHP although unorthodox at times and not classic OOP at all.
> 
> Pragmatism: I have been willing to compromise when the degree of importance 
> fell below a certain limit in order to actually release working code. I never 
> believed that my code could not be improved, but I did believe that if I kept 
> circling around in constant obsession with architecture I would not serve the 
> overall vision.
> 
> Stamina: I kept going and going and going. I realized that to be successful I 
> would have to concentrate on TYPO3 at the expense of business opportunities, 
> education, other interesting areas of the web and the distraction that awaits 
> around every other corner in life. Many times the grass has looked greener on 
> the other side, but without my discipline of commitment TYPO3 would not be 
> what it is today.
> 
> Now, what happens if I lacked one of these:
> - Without vision there would be no product of interest.
> - Without pragmatism the vision would be in alpha-state for eternity.
> - Without stamina we had raised a tombstone back in 2002
> 
> 
> THE RIGHT CREW:
> Does every member of our future TYPO3 crew need all of these skills?
> 
> Vision: Not everyone needs to be visionary, in fact only a few might be 
> preferable. I don't think visions are our problem. Maybe it could be a 
> problem to agree on which visions to follow. Yet, a more serious problem is 
> how the visions of functionality and code architecture can be adopted by 
> those who are going to implement it (if we assume they are not necessarily 
> the same as the visionaries)?
> 
> Pragmatism: One a continuum from visionary-coder-releasemanager the visionary 
> could do with almost not pragmatism, the coders would have to live with a 
> mixture and release managers must be very pragmatic. The interesting focus is 
> the coders in the middle, because their responsibility is to make sure things 
> are working today and tomorrow but in the long term pay attention to the 
> visionaries direction. How can this be implemented in a way that doesn't 
> break backwards compatibility between each release and at the same time is 
> inspiring to coders?
> 
> Stamina: This one is - unfortunately - necessary for every link in the chain. 
> To build anything as teamwork it is critical that every team member can be 
> trusted to carry his part to the end. The unfortunate thing is that most 
> people involved in volunteer work think that they can feel less committed to 
> the cause because they are not paid and usually prioritize their paid work 
> and opporties higher assuming that everybody will understand. Maybe others 
> will understand but it just doesn't solve be huge problem it creates: When 
> people are constantly running in and out of volunteer commitments it 
> generates huge amounts of wasted overhead in the form of training, social 
> investment etc. in the team! The impact on the volunteer context is even 
> worse than for a company because a company could pay someone to deal with 
> such overhead while in the volunteer context it is OTHER volunteers who waste 
> their time on training a new volunteer that just disappears a few days, weeks 
> or months after.
> To make matters even worse for our online community it has been the general 
> experience that people slip out even easier because they don't risk to face 
> their abandoned team bodies in the local supermarket.
> 
> 
> 
> How, people. I'm sure you all have great intensions and plans for version 5 of 
> TYPO3 and I'm all excited about discussing them. But how on Earth can we make 
> sure that such a discussion is not just another play with verbal buzz-muscles 
> that wastes time that could have been fruitfully used on practical coding? 
> 
> How can we make sure there is a crew to make it happen at all?
> 
> 
> 

Hi Kasper,

In advance, sorry, my english is too bad to be able to deeply present 
all the things i could develop if it was french. I regret it because you 
open a real interesting subject.

1 - I've read for many weeks a lot of discussion about technology 
architecture (XML vs Typoscript, Smarty concern,...) but finaly, i've 
seen nowhere the real true question (IMHO): What is Typo 3 ? Is it a 
end-user software, a content management framework, a toolbox, maybe a 
little of all three...

You said
> Vision: I have been visionary about concepts that solve realworld CMS problems 
> (TCA / TER / TemplaVoila / TypoScript / ImageProcessing / Workspaces etc). I 
> have also been visionary about the architecture of procedural programming in 
> a language like PHP although unorthodox at times and not classic OOP at all.
But what was your vision about the aim of Typo3 ?

2 - Typo3 an End-user software ? As end-user software, i mean : you 
install, you open, you write content, you have your website. That's 
people are waiting for a CMS tool but in fact, IMHO Typo3 is NOT a 
end-user software, but mainly a very powerful webmaster administrator tool.
> How do we channel all the great resources from 
> the TYPO3 community into a unified effort on the development of TYPO3
So, what community are you talking about ? Developpers community, 
webmasters community, users community ?

3 - If the goal of Typo3 is to be a end-user software, the line is 
clear: we have to stop to extend it, and use all the resources to make 
it simplier to use, improve and multiply the "click and use" functions, 
and provide sets of "working together" extensions built for different 
sites goal (i.e. offer diffent packs, one for business site, one for 
community site, one for art sites, ...). At the same time, we have to 
reduce the number of extensions, to have ONE extension per main function 
(one newsletter extension, one RTE, one flash, ...).

4 - If the goal of Typo3 is to be an Content Management Framework, we 
have to clearly define a whole specification for this framework, define 
what technologies are allowed for what letter in the MVC model, state on 
a Common Develeloper Interface and mission the core team to be The 
Guardian, a sort of Quality Assurance Team who "labellized" the 
extensions provided by the community (understood here as the developper 
community).

IMHO the two goals imply two different ways of management of pragmatism 
and stamina.
A - End User Sofware way :
-> Pragmatism is to use the simpliest technology for the user point of 
view, whatever is this technology => XML for example is definitively NOT 
an end-user technology, typoscript is simplier except that we need to 
improve the way we can assist basic users (error explanation, coding 
assistance,...)
-> Stamina is to have good teachers, and intermediate people who 
document, explain, show, demonstrate how to.

B - CMF way :
-> Pragmatism is to build Typo3 on standard and open source components 
in order to reduce the amount of time people need to spend to produce 
good code and quality components : XML, ADOdb, CSS, Javascript, DOM, 
LDAP, and other functionnal global components (LaTeX for reporting, or 
Flash for example), ruled the development.
-> Stamina is to have a core team which spend time to integrate 
components developped by the community, test them and labellized them.

May I just write a few lines of my personal project : At the moment, i'm 
deeply looking into Typo3 to see how i can use it as only a data 
management framework, in order to have a data management software, not a 
website, and to able to develop my own business with an open-source 
business solution . And really, i'm not far to believe that IT IS 
possible. I only need to add a master-detail screen plugin. I've 
delevoped an experimental extension to produce reports based on LaTeX 
framework which parses Typoscript in the LaTeX document so that i can 
include my database contents, and i can now produce specific reports in 
pdf and html.

So, to resume : What is the goal, what is at the end of the road ? If we 
know, it'll be easier to have a roadmap.

Just M2P,

Friendly,

Jean-Baptiste