Hannes is looking for a benevolent dictator?

Comment by Torkil Johnsen on April 29, 2010 at 9:54am

This is what he refers to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_Dictator_For_Life

In short: He wants someone to represent the project and be in charge of making decisions, so the developers can spend less time bickering, disagreeing and working off-scope. The latter seems to be the case with the current design-by-committee status.

What's fun about that presentation is that I think he went on for over 30 minutes explaining what was wrong with Joomla, and he would probably have continued too, had he not been interrupted by the moderator.

I do not envy him that, and I'm sure he too would have hoped to be able to present all the exciting new stuff happening instead of having to make excuses. And that's probably also why he thinks "dictatorship" is the way to go.

Comment by Herman Peeren on April 29, 2010 at 10:31am

My impression was, that although we all know how a "benevolent dictator" works with Drupal and Wordpress, Hannes focussed on someone leading development, not representation of the project.

Hannes had more presentations, where he talked about the shiny side of 1.6. But it was good he held this honest and open talk. It was the only presentation explicitly referring to the situation of Joomla! in the last year.

Most slides of presentations and some videos will be published online; see:
http://www.joomladagen.nl/2010/terugblik
(that page is in dutch, but slides and some videos are in english)

Comment by Herman Peeren on April 29, 2010 at 11:20am

I agree with Brian: it is something that is of importance for the whole community.

The first day was the Business Day, the second the Community Day. Of course the two are interrelated and the border is not very clear. One could also say: the first day is mainly targeted to the people who use Joomla! professionally and the second is for a more general audience. As you would expect "hard core" developers to be at least present on the first day, they get the message.

But maybe you mean that it is not so wise to "show the dirty laundry" ("de vuile was buiten hangen" as we say in Dutch) on a businessday, where we also want to "sell" Joomla! and show outsiders how well it could be used to build some serious business with it.

Comment by Torkil Johnsen on April 29, 2010 at 11:21am

I think any person/dictator calling the shots and/or having the final word in development, would rapidly become the projects figurehead, whether we'd like it or not. I definitely can see many advantages of having one clear leader on the code side of things.

Comment by Herman Peeren on April 29, 2010 at 11:32am

I think that one of the unique aspects of Joomla! is the community structure. We should be very careful with that and that means also: learn how to handle the disadvantages of it.

Comment by Amy Stephen on April 29, 2010 at 11:41am

Good for Hannes for openly discussing our challenges. That's not showing dirty laundry, it's open and transparent and it helps people know where things really are at and how they can help.

We do not need a dictator. We can learn to use processes that help us reach consensus. More input into David Vega's ideas are needed about how to create a RFC system that enables communication and involvement in our roadmap and solutions. Discussion - and - Doc

Good job, Hannes. Great talk. You need to be a Development Coordinator on the Leadership Team. Certainly have been a great force on 1.6 and long-time contributor.

Comment by Torkil Johnsen on April 29, 2010 at 5:33pm

The RFC system, judging by the process diagram, seems like a lot of red tape to me, and almost the opposite of agile. The actual Development WG coding part of the process is not until step 8-9 or something, provided that there are no major obstacles to be tackled along the way. I hope I'll proven wrong on that observation, and that Joomla gets back on track…

Comment by Amy Stephen on April 29, 2010 at 5:59pm

Torkil -

OK, but, what can we do to open doors so that those who wish to contribute code (or have existing code considered) can make their case and build support and better ensure their wish might come true?

Please bear in mind that this proposal came out of the nooku thread and was offered as a way to help us communicate using agreed upon processes where people can get involved as users, or developers, or decision makers.

So, I really hope you can help us out here since our current approach of yelling at one another and calling each other names and saying interesting things about sun shining on shoes isn't working for us.

It's fine to say this isn't what you want. But, please don't stop there and help us figure out what will.

Comment by Ewout Wierda on April 30, 2010 at 1:48am

As always, be careful what you wish for. An organisation that allows a benevolent dictator is also one that can let a not so benevolent person take the reigns. So Hannes might be right but the risk is too large to take the opportunity should it arise.
Hannes did well to call a spade a spade, even -or especially- on a business day which could influence the commercial decisions people make, and which should therefore not be mis-informative by omission. The only thing I missed is a positive outlook on change.

Comment by Torkil Johnsen on April 30, 2010 at 3:52am

Amy, this is probably not the place for posting suggestions on improving WG processes. Still though, if I am to indulge, I'd say it could be benificial to have someone call the shots, as Hannes suggests.

Take for instance the work being done on pluralisation of language strings. I agree wholeheartedly with Hannes comment on the matter there. He says he finds it overly complicated and that "I just don't want to see people complaining that Joomla is slow, because we created a second scripting language just to implement pluralisation...". And while resources are spent on this second scripting language, the 1.6 release is delayed further.

Someone with the authority should have jumped in, stopped that in it's tracks and said: "Hey, let's get 1.6 out the door before we start adding new features — again".

The discussion has been going on since mid-April and the discussion involves 7-8 developers from what I can see. The discussion is initiated by Andrew, so I guess it's kind of hard for others to step in and try to stop it as the train has been put into motion by the head honcho himself, although Hannes really tries. Hannes has also been one of those who on several occations have tried to prevent scope creep in the past, to try to get 1.6 out the door. So he is making an effort, and is not afraid to speak his mind and call a spade a spade, as we have seen.

Another issue Hannes pointed out in his presentation, which I agree with, is the lack of accountability, or maybe lack of responsibility. People say they are going to handle a ticket, but they don't, and it just drifts off. Paying developers to develop might be a way to raise accountability for those paid developers, but what will it do with the feeling of responsibility with other developers? If I am not getting paid but my fellow developer is, I would certainly think he is more accountable and has more responsibility than myself.

As for the whole RFC process: Those 25+ boxes and the whole schema for that matter. Getting a new feature into Joomla should not be a daunting 25-step task. A more agile oriented process is much more to my likings, and in particular: Working software rather than comprehensive documentation — Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.

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