[TYPO3-timtab] [Announcement] Timo Webler as Co-Leader

[Ingo Renner]

J. Schaller wrote:

Hi Jörg and all,

maybe I need to clarify some things here...

> first of all it's good to see you coming back on the project. I
> apologize in advance should I overstep my bounds, but I wanted to
> voice some concerns from an outside perspective without knowing the
> internal relations of the persons involved.

A very short note on this one: I'm open to any feedback, after all this 
is Open Source and thus we all should be as open to any opinions as well.

> Somehow it feels as if your return to timtab has been somewhat abrupt.
> After this group has asked during years time and again for status
> updates, you had remained silent. Finally, someone picks up your slack
> and the first thing you do is take the project away from them. Is that
> a good way to encourage the community to contribute?

This is all cool, I really welcome and am happy about new development 
happening. Nevertheless, as the founder of this project I'd like to 
reserve the right on some decisions especially when quality is concerned 
or things are moving in directions I'm not happy with. I guess we know 
that there are other extension projects out there where sometimes it 
feels that contributions are less welcome or are even blocked from some 
single maintainer.
This is not the goal I'm looking for, instead I really welcome any 
contributions as long as things are of good quality. I hope we all can 
agree that we want to build and deliver good quality software that is 
easy to use.

> I don't know anything about Timo Webler (except that it states on
> forge "Timo Webler has not signed the Contributor License Agreement")
> and the quality of the job he's going to do, but I know that Lina has
> achieved a lot in just a few weeks and has shown an enthusiasm that
> this extension has been sorely lacking over a long period of time.

Let me assure you that I know the quality of Timo's work and that I 
trust him.

> Wouldn't you think that the work already applied merits bringing Lina
> into the extension team and rewarding her efforts by teaching her
> about possible code improvements rather than extending a brief thanks
> and basically brushing her off?

I surely hope nobody is offended by this announcement. The main purpose 
of the announcement and Timo's main task is to have an eye at quality 
assurance and laying ground for further improvements by first bringing 
the existing code base up to current coding standards and use of current 
APIs.

Lin is listed as a member on TIMTAB's project page already and has 
commit privileges.
http://forge.typo3.org/projects/show/extension-timtab

The process of filing issues and committing them only after review may 
at first look like added bureaucracy or the like. However, I should 
mention that in my role as a core developer as well as extension 
developer I have always been concerned about delivering quality patches 
and software.
As mentioned in the announcement we have found some issues with coding 
style. Having the review process in place will help to iron these out 
and - just like you suggested - to tell people about the DOs and DON'Ts.

Also I don't know whether all the code committed by Lina was actually 
created by herself as there was some mention about a BTUG code sprint 
where others helped to improve TIMTAB. I'd rather like to see every 
contributor register as a member at the forge project.

I'm sure that the review process will lead to spreading knowledge about 
CGLs and best or good practice integration with the core.

So in the end I think it's still a win win situation for a lot of 
parties involved here.

* I can be assured that the project keeps moving in a good direction 
although not having to look at it all the time
* We all get notified about (planned) changes by email as issues, 
feature requests, and tasks are filed in the project's issue tracker and 
can thus comment on them.
* New contributors learn about the CGL and core integration of extensions
* The TYPO3 community will get a top class extension


One more thing that might help to understand the issue:

When I developed TIMTAB, I did this in my spare time so you need to 
understand that there is quite some enthusiasm and sweat involved also 
from my side in the first place. It's probably not like the relation to 
your first born but still a very close relation to some piece of code. 
In Open Source we should be able to hand over projects to other people 
if we can't find the time to look after them our selves. Thus I'm happy 
to see development happening again. However, to being able to hand 
something you have such a close relation to over to somebody else you 
need to have trust in that person or team. Trust however can't be build 
in a day, this takes time.

In the end, once I gain confidence that there is somebody who I can 
trust in terms of quality, understanding of the extension and the 
visions and ideas involved I would still like to hand over the project 
to this person or team.

To gain this trust needed though, I've put up that QA process to see how 
things are evolving and share the visions and ideas for the projects 
with new contributors until I'm convinced that I can hand over the 
project without having to fear sleepless nights about what is going on 
with "my baby".


> Again, I apologize for my stating my perspective of things

No offense taken here, as I said I'm open to every opinion. In fact I'm 
quite happy someone brought this up so I may clarify these things. It 
would have been worrying if things would have been taken as given.


Hope this helps, all the best
Ingo


P.S.
The decision to put Timo into place as Co-Leader was solely my decision. 
TIMTAB was developed by me in my spare time and so dkd has not taken any 
influence in this decision. The choice for Timo was just a very 
practical one as he's in reachable distance and currently implementing 
TIMTAB in a client project.

-- 
Ingo Renner
TYPO3 Core Developer, Release Manager TYPO3 4.2