RE: [Phpgroupware-developers] Re: Standard source code header and php Documentor

[Christian Böttger]

G'day!

> I absolutly agree with you. But that was not what i did mean.

fine

> 
> Your company wrote a article in a important german computer 
> magazine about phpgroupware. 

No, not my company wrote an article, I did. The magazine in question is the
iX magazine, www.heise.de/ix

And it was not an article about phpGW, but it was intended to be an article
about open source alternatives in the groupware area. phpGW was one of the
examples, but not the only one.

> After reading this article, the reader has the feeling that
> you are the only german contact about phpgroupware. 

That was surely not intended. I have had quite a number of comments from
readers not having this impression.
a) it was not an article about phpGW in special. phpGW was one of the
examples, amongst others.
b) the iX policy do normally not allow for an author promoting a single
project if he's too closely affiliated to that project or product(*).
Authors are choosen by iX and in this case the agreement was that it should
be an overview article about different definitions of groupware, general
problems etc and of course some open source examples. And it was. So the
normal expectations from iX readers would be that an external persons writes
something about one or more products/projects, not someone from the project
team at all. 
The other general rule is that such an overview article focuses strictly on
released versions, at least beta versions, not on HEAD branches etc.

(*) This is different from other magazines as LinuxMagazin or php Magazin,
just to name some.

So if a reader concludes from this article that I claim to be the only or
just any of the project representatives, he would have to conclude that fact
as well for TUTOS and Kroupware, which in itself would have been a
contradiction.

> That did not give you a good standing in the german developer community.

But it has been really a misunderstanding.

> Why was it not able to mention that there is a german phpgw website
> avaiable?

The main reason was that I had to struggle for each line, as the article was
well over the agreed limit. It was not meant to hide information. I guess
there is or could be a link from the main phpGW side to the phpGW.de site.

> Why can't you write a short message to the mailinglist, that 
> you will write such a article?

Because I had to write the article well ahead of the publishing date and
under quite immense time pressure. If it had been a special article about
phpGW alone, that would have been a must. But as phpGW just served as one
example amongst others, it more or less slipped away. 

> That's what i mean with "communicate and integrate"!

It was not meant as a phpGW promotion article, as stated above. And it was
meant (from the iX) as an outsiders view, not an insider view.

> 
> Do you know the motivation of a opensource developer? 

Oh yes.

> Most developers just code for their ego or for building their perfect toy.
And now 
> do you come, and tell us about whats all bad must be fundamentaly changed.


No, not this way. At least it would run along the line "what would have to
be changed to 'sell' it for that part of the commercial market that we know
and operate on".

> You can say it with nice words, but you must not. This is something about 
> missing social competence. But that's not important for your employees...

Again not right, I'm afraid. I have never stated that social competence is
of no importance. I just stated that the "hard" job skills override this
sometimes when hiring someone. And even if not, someone new to hire has
primarily to fit in the exiting team within the company; this kind of social
skill might well greatly differ from the ability to express one self in a
foreign language in purely written communication.

And it works two ways again: one of the very first mails I got from the team
was in very harsh words accusing me that I don't understand the GPL and was
asserting a claim (in harsh words again) (which we stated we are willing to
go along with before (publishing the code we produce)) which was in this
wording and this situation not coverd by the GPL in a strict sense.

> How do expect to become accepted?

I don't think that I can influence your acceptance any more; even if I hope
this might prove wrong. Mainly I aim at the code being accepted (the useable
parts of it), once it's ready for submission. I don't really care about the
acceptance of my person, as long as it doesn't hinder the acceptance of the
work I supervise.

 
> If you do it right, you can motivate the people to work with 
> you togehter.

Still we will have to live with the fact that the goals (in terms of
requirements for some modules e.g.) of our company (and any other) may only
have a partly overlap with that of the project. I hope we can focus on the
overlap and not too much on the differences.


> No need for patches, no bothering discussions, no bothering 
> emails. 

That would be ideal, but I have never seen this in any cooperation, may it
be in FOSS or R&D or commercial.

> We had already very hard discussions in past on this list, but we 
> always moved forward to a better solution.

We hope that this will be the case here as well.

 
> I can understand that you need to reach some milestones, to 
> earn money, and just want to start. But that's not the way it works. You
need to start
> slowly, to become faster later. 

Well, yes. But it's sometimes not a matter of *wanting* to reach a
milestone, but simply to have to.

> I'm not against you, i just want to show you, where you did 
> fail in the past, to integrate into the community.

Well, I will just have to live with your judgements anyway. Others may judge
differently.

> 
> I hope this was enough proof.

I did make some points clearer, see above. So it was helpfull.

> 
> I'm against such childish discussions. Wo did say when what?? 

Well, if there are misunderstandings, one has to talk about it.

> I think we all should know now, what we think the others did 
> wrong. Just let's looking forward. And try to circumvent the old mistakes.

ACK.

Regards

Christian