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

[Manilal K M]

Richie,
    At many points I have to hear the blame from my Management Team
when deployed an Open Source CRM for my company. All these time I was
patient and tried to convince the Management that VtigerCRM is the
best solution. I tried to fix some of the issues and share them with
the community. But I was actually disappointed in the way in which a
community project is behaving., that is why I attempted to criticize
the community.
    I started with SugarCRM but found that even though thay talk of
open source it's not a pure Open Source project. I was disappointed,
but then delighted when seeing the first release of VtigerCRM. I
approached it with great enthusiasm and found that, this is what I was
searching for.  Now hearing your words, I feel the same delight and
enthusiasm.
<quote>
"Let us make a beginning. We over here, will keep the past in
perspective so that the same mistakes are not committed again"
</quote>

Now it's time for action. I have some small suggestions to improve the
project(from a community & FLOSS perspective) from my limited
experience in FLOSS projects.
There needs to be a clear vision about the communication channels for vtiger.

1. Vtiger Forum -- As you have said Forums may be restricted to
end-user help and announcements. I would suggest to remove
forum-topics like *Developer Forum*, *Code Contributions*, *Feature
Requests* from http://forums.vtiger.com. The Developer Forum and Code
Contribution can be merged to vtiger-developers at lists.vtigercrm.com.
The Feature Requests and Bugs should be posted at TRAC
(http://vtiger.fosslabs.com/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/report).

2. Bug Tracker - There are SPAMs coming out in the ticket system so
Anonymous post should be avoided either by user registration or using
a captcha program.

3. Mailing List:- The mailing list should be meant only for developer
discussions. All code contributions, patches etc.. should be posted
only at vtiger-developers at vtiger.com. It would  be nice if the mail
address is shortened to vtiger-dev at vtiger.com. All  official members
should be subscribed in the mailing list.

4. IRC - I think the #vtiger at freenode.net is not at all active.
Developers should try to join if they are free. The IRC discussion
should be logged somewhere in the webserver so that it provides a
reference to new members

5. Wiki:- The wiki should be revamped for different categories of
documentation. The users community may be allowed to update the
end-user documentation. The spam problem persists in wiki also. So
users may be allowed to edit the articles only after registration. The
Wiki should cotain atleast the following topics:
1. Installation & Configuration
2. End-User Documentation
3. Developer Documentation
4. Module Documentation.

6. WebSite:-Some links in the website should be re-organized. The Link
to Mailing List, Forum, Bug Tracker, IRC, Wiki etc.. should be
specified in the *Support* section of http://vtiger.com. Currently it
points to the "Knowledgebase of vtiger" which is meaningless.

7. Community & Commercial Services:- I would suggest a clear
bifurcation between the commercial services and community services.
This could be attained to certain level by using two different
domains. AFAIK, vtiger possess vtiger.net and vtiger.com domains. It
would be nice to have .NET domain for the community services and .COM
for commercial services. But the sites may be interlinked also for
easy acess.
     VTIGER.NET provides the Community/FLOSS services. It includes the
 bug tracker system, forum, mailing list, wiki, blogs other
documentation etc.. .
     The VTIGER.COM hosts the commercial services like online demo,
products, webcasting, rates for support, vtiger hosting services, and
other purchasable products.

(as Sergio mentioned the mailing list link was not present in the main
page instead it's in the forums.vtiger.com home page)

8. Domain Names:- Currently vtiger uses a number of domain names for
their various services and utilities. This is the list in my
knowledge:
    1. www.vtiger.com -- Primary website
    2. www.vtiger.net   -- Blogs, Redirects to http://blogs.vtiger.com
    3. vtigerforge.com  -- vtiger forge, redirects to
http://vtigerforge.fosslabs.com/
    4. forums.vtiger.com  -- Discussion Forum
    5. vtiger.fosslabs.com -- Bugtracker, vtigerforge
    6. api.vtiger.com  -- API documentation
    7. blogs.vtiger.com -- Blog
    8. vtigercrm.com -- redirects to vtiger.com
    9. lists.vtigercrm.com -- Mailing List
I don't know whether there is anymore to add to this list. However
it's very difficult to remember all these domains. Otherwise I need to
use the del.icio.us to bookmark all these links. I would suggest a
clean usage of domains. Initially after setting up the domains you can
redirect to the old stuff and later update it with correct domains.
  1. www.vtiger.com -- Primary Commercial Website
  2. www.vtiger.net  -- Primary Community Website
  3. forums.vtiger.net -- vtiger user forums
  4. wiki.vtiger.net -- Vtiger Wiki
  5. bugs.vtiger.net -- Bug Tracker
  6. api.vtiger.net  -- API documentation
  7. lists.vtiger.net -- Mailing List
  8. vtigerforge.com -- vtiger forge
  9. blogs.vtiger.net -- Blogs
I think this will be easy to remember. It would also nice to have a
common user registration system for all of the above community
services. I'm aware that this is not a easy thing to attain and it's
not a emergency feature. But this would ensure unique identity in all
the community services. The commercial services should have a separate
registration system.

Some of the suggestions abt release schedule have been already
discussed, so I'm  not repeating them. I think the suggestion list has
become a long list. :)
I know that many of the above said suggestions may take some time to
get implemented. We are ready to contribute and wait for a better CRM
and a better Community. I would support vtiger in all the ways.

regards
Manilal