 This is a post that's been lying around in various forms as a draft for over a year. I've dusted it off and decided to publish after the series of announcements made by the Joomla team over Christmas. The announcements were about decisions concerning the Joomla Extensions Directory where I'm an editor. The decisions were to remove extensions that were for Joomla 1.0 only, weren't licensed under the GPL or violated Joomla's trademark. Over the holidays, I've been talking closely with people who agree with the decisions and those who don't. There are a good number of people on both sides. After listening carefully, I'd like to make several proposals in order to help us move forward effectively. Proposals for the Joomla TeamOSM BOARD MEMBERSHIP
A strong move would be to increase the amount of community involvement and transparency involved in running Joomla, particularly Open Source Matters. Here is a rough idea of how it could be done. The Open Source Matters board will expand to consist of 12 members with 8 needed to ratify a decision: - Three members of the core team
- Three community members (forum mods, JED, translators etc.)
- One treasurer / financial adviser responsible for publishing detailed annual accounts on joomla.org
- One legal adviser with strong expertise in software licensing laws
- One JED developer
- One board member of another open source project
SERVICE ON THE BOARD
Members serve one term and then must step down for the duration of time served. Elections might happen every year in June (as an example), but the method of election and time served will vary: - Core team: Elected by other core team members, one per year. They serve for three years
- Community members: Elected by community members, one per year. They serve for three years
- Financial adviser: Elected by board. They serve for two years.
- Legal adviser: Elected by board. They serve for two years
- JED Developer: Elected by other JED developers. They serve for two years
- Other FOSS Project Expert: Elected by board. They serve for two years
Proposals for Commercial Joomla Developers
ACCEPT THE GPL AND TRADEMARK DECISIONSThe Joomla trademark decision is closely in line with the policies of Drupal, Wordpress, Ubuntu, Linux and most other major open source products. It's not identical, but similar enough to be entirely reasonable. The GPL decision was really announced 18 months ago. Developers now have an additional six months to plan and adapt. Again, the decision is very closely in line with how Drupal, Wordpress and others operate. BE PROACTIVEConsider putting forth some of the effort required to build a thriving developer community. The JCD-A has an admirable list of principles on its website. Why not take those ideas a step further? Here are some ideas: - Make JCD-A membership a mark of highly-ethical, customer-centric Joomla businesses
- Actively cultivate and built good relations with the Joomla team
- Ensure all JCD-A developers offer a no-questions-asked 30-day money back guarantee
- Insist on the removal of all call-home code from members' extensions
- De-list members who violate these principles or receive too much negative customer feedback
- Adopt these ideas from Brian Teeman. He has proposed a Joomla version of Apple's "Made for iPod" logo
Constructive Criticism Please
Last year we ran a series of interviews with GPL developers who expressed a wide variety of views. There's also been a good number of GPL business posts. I've always tried to provide constructive criticism and analysis to both sides so in that spirit, only comments that do the same will be published: | 
Comments
I remember that 18 months ago, I was just getting into Joomla and the GPL decision (on extensions) was a big concern for me. Joomla seemed to fit my needs more than Drupal or Wordpress at the time, and the great extensions available for Joomla was a large part of that. I didn't want to get into something like Joomla that was going to have major conflict moving forward.
Today, Joomla still meets my needs and my client's needs the best, but I still haven't seen a great example of a GPL business model.
I know you did a series of interviews with big-name Joomla-ites at the time, and I know people like Eddie Andrews have tried some new things business wise.
It would be interesting to hear from people that have changed their business model due to this decision, and how they're cash flow has changed (for better or for worse).
To be clear, I'm not sure where I fall on this issue. I understand both sides and why they want what they want, but I haven't gotten my brain around it yet. I know this can be a heated topic, so here's to hoping this thread doesn't blow up!
I just have two comments
1. Whilst expanding the board of OSM is definitely a positive step it is worth remembering that officialy OSM only exists to serve the wishes of the Core Team and does not exist to run the Joomla Project.
2. As for GPL my only comment is that the decision for all other Open Source licences to be rejected. I still don't see the argument for this either legaly or moraly and definitely not historicaly. Remember it is OpenSourceMatte rs Inc and not GPLMatters Inc.
Nothing suspicious there - the JED naturally fluctuates. Its not really the issue at hand.
This is self promotion of course, but I just want everyone to know there is a place to list your hard work. We've always been frustrated that there was no place to list our templates (other than Best of Joomla).
We also offer the ability to sell commercial or distribute free items for those who don't have their own site or are looking for an additional pipeline.
Best,
-Kyle
Our current board consists of:
Lorenzo Garcia
- JED Editor
Dave Huelsmann
- Treasurer
- Global Moderator
Wilco Jansen
- Development Coordinator
Ryan Ozimek
- Third Party Developer
Wendy Robinson
- Global Moderator
Rob Schley
- Third Party Developer (Assume that is what you mean by JED developer)
James Vasile
- Legal adviser with strong expertise in software licensing laws.
- Sits on the board of the Gnome project (maybe others).
Elin Waring
- Forum moderator
So from your list:
1. Three members of the core team.
None.
2. Three community members (forum mods, JED, translators etc.)
Taken care of.
3. One treasurer / financial adviser responsible for publishing detailed annual accounts on joomla.org
Taken care of, though I think the reports are still being worked on (not sure).
4. One legal adviser with strong expertise in software licensing laws
Taken care of.
5. One JED developer.
Taken care of.
6. One board member of another open source project
Taken care of.
Not too bad already... Interesting that a couple of years ago most people had never heard of most of those people
- Louis
What problem are you hoping this would solve?
I see conflict in our community specific to licensing. From my perspective, that decision is behind us and I do not ever want to go through anything remotely like that again. I'll release code with community guidelines in mind. If it doesn't work for me, I'll do something else, but I accept the guidelines set forth.
The fact is copyright holders decide licensing and any one who contributed code that is now part of Joomla! can enforce the terms of the license. That isn't something an appointed or elected board gets to decide. Even if a code base is forked, the copyright holders rights are not diminished in the slightest.
I think it's really important to remember that.
We have horrible factions in our community. Is that the problem you hope a new governance model could address? And if so, can we accept the licensing guidelines and work together on improving the project and code base and increasing involvement needed to keep central operations working?
That kind of movement I can really support. I would welcome anything that helped our community heal. Frankly, we can begin that now with anyone who is willing to join in - you will be welcomed. Steve can help connect you to Joomla org - I can help connect you. I encourage anyone doing business with Joomla! to contribute to the project - get on the bug squad - start writing docs - answer questions in the forums. Be a part of the working community.
I'm very optimistic about the project's future and hope we can build a more enjoyable community. I want to move on and put away those difficulties we have had in the past and leave them there. I think most people feel that way.
Those are some interesting ideas although I'm not sure I fully understand what you are trying to achieve by structuring the OSM board in that way. For the last 6 months or so, there have been no Core Team members on the board... that might not be common knowledge though. So, technically speaking, the board is 7 community members and a legal adviser. The community members fill in the legally required position of a board: secretary, treasurer, and president.
I imagine the goal of adding an outside extension developer to the board is to increase the developer communities' voice within OSM and that is a noble goal but I'm not sure how feasible it is. For example, how do you have a community of several hundreds to a thousand people of loose organization and even looser association hold an election? How do you determine who is eligible to vote? For this to be possible, you would need some sort of association and I personally don't think the JCD-A is inclusive enough in nature to fit that purpose. I've wanted to create an "Association of Joomla Professionals" for some time but I've yet to find enough time to make it a reality. We can talk more about that later if you want.
What is your thought process for having a member of another OS project become a member of OSM? I can imagine several ways in which that could be helpful but I don't know if your thinking is the same as mine.
Lastly, why do you have different members serve different term lengths?
I don't want to start a debate about OSM here... I'm just curious about your ideas.
Other open source projects have a more open election process that might be worth investigating
RSS feed for comments to this post