[Vtigercrm-developers] how to make vtiger more community oriented?

[Manilal K M]

On 14/06/06, Richie <richie at vtiger.com> wrote:
>
> I would like to get your views on making vtiger more
> community oriented. The reason for this is
> as follows :-
>
> a) It will free the core team for other tasks. Right
> now, we are facing a shortage of hands in
> fixing the issues,
> testing the product, documentation, etc.
>
> We would like these to be off-loaded to an extent so
> that we can continue further development.
>
> Things are working no doubt but in patches.
>
>
> I would like to bring in more accountability,
> automation and transparency into the
> system.
> Again, these will not be at the cost of flexibility
> and speed.
> The core team when left to itself can move very fast
> but we need to move together. I am sure
> we have people who have skills
> supplementary/complementary to those of the core team.
> The need is to make these work together thereby leading to
> a fast,nimble and efficient community
> thereby leading to a much better product.
>
>
> I am sure we have gurus on board who have 'been
> there, done that'. I welcome them to put
> forth
> their ideas on handling this issue.
>
>
> Richie
> _______________________________________________

Hi Richie:
  I have only very limited experience(less than 6 months) in vtiger.
Within this period I never felt that vtiger is a Open Source Project
neither a Community project. The developers never mind to respond to
development related questions. They may respond to some user related
questions,  but rejected developer questions. This is not good for a
Community project. Of course it's the highlight of Proprietory
projects, where the end user/developer has little control.

    I admit the fact that the developers are busy, but the fact
remains that if a community project wants to succeed, then there
should be somebody to make the guidelines for development and project
management. I have posted a number of queries regarding developing new
modules and module management in vtiger5. But none of them got a
satisfactory reply. They are simply ignored by the developers. I know
that vtiger5 is under development. But there are no changelog or
changes which a programmer can refer with the released code. I am a
member of other community projects like Horde and I was suprised with
the support. Initially I got immense support from the horde developers
so that I was able to learn the stuff in quick time and was able to
contribute some good patches.

  Inorder to make vtiger community oriented, the first step should be
taken from the developers itself. There should be some developer
documents, API documentation and above all good support in
Forum/Mailing List. I know that vtigerwiki has some stuff, but it's
insufficent for a programmer. I strongly believe that making a good
knowledge base is the key in Open Source Projects.

See the result of my postings in mailing list and forums:
http://lists.vtigercrm.com/pipermail/vtigercrm-developers/2006-March/000612.html
http://forums.vtiger.com/viewtopic.php?t=6631
http://forums.vtiger.com/viewtopic.php?t=4664
http://lists.vtigercrm.com/pipermail/vtigercrm-developers/2006-April/000804.html
http://lists.vtigercrm.com/pipermail/vtigercrm-developers/2006-May/000918.html

See the Unanswered Postings in Forums:
http://forums.vtiger.com/search.php?search_id=unanswered

There are more than 2000 Postings which are unanswered !!!

regards
Manilal