[Vtigercrm-developers] 2016 thoughts & reflections

[Tony Sandman]

> and I wish you could surprise me in 2017.

Surprise is not a second name of Vtiger....

Happy New Year


Tony

On Wed, Dec 28, 2016 at 5:54 PM, Błażej Pabiszczak <
b.pabiszczak at yetiforce.com> wrote:

> I never thought you would publish Vtiger 7 code :] I must admit that you
> surprised me.
>
> I don’t know why but I was certain that people who had developed 6.0
> version also worked later on 7.0, in particular, because Vtiger claimed to
> have about 30 active developers. I reviewed the code from Vtiger 7.0 in
> detail and I can see that there aren’t too many changes and most of them
> are related to the interface, new look and feel and a few new
> functionalities.
>
> In practical terms, there haven’t been any new changes between 6.1 and 6.5
> [maybe just multi-template support] and trac.vtiger.com and
> code.vtiger.com are still being forgotten/ignored. Therefore, I thought
> that Vtiger put much effort into Vtiger OnDemand. When I evaluate version
> 7, I look at it from the perspective of 3 years because only OnDemand
> version has been developed. If I revised it as changes from version A to
> version B, I would say changes are alright. However, I revise it from the
> perspective of 3 years, so changes aren’t satisfactory, especially for me. If
> I had to estimate the work time for people, I would assess it as 1-2
> developers [what about the remaining 28 developers?] who have developed
> OnDemand version [I don’t count the changes that haven’t been also added to
> the community version].
>
> When your human resources for the project development are so limited, you
> should resort to work or help of others. When I reflect on the development
> of the community version, I see hundreds of bugs which haven’t been fixed
> for years, and basic functionalities that don’t work [e.g. migration
> between versions - nearly every migration pack has errors that weren’t
> fixed in the subsequent versions].
>
> When you published v7 I saw that all the changes published at
> code.vtiger.com were completely ignored [as if they never existed], the
> community’s work has been disregarded, and many great changes won’t be
> moved to the new version. Many of you, who are happy about the release of
> v7, should first of all understand that this is a marketing move [first
> they make you wait for a few months for a new version, then they publish a
> version that has nothing to do with community, and then you got months of
> stabilization in front of you]. When I recall the migrating script 5.4 ->
> 6.0 I get chills and I can already imagine what the migrating script 6.x ->
> 7.x is going to look like, even though there are just a couple of changes.
> Because how can you prepare a decent update package when you don’t even use
> it yourself?
>
> The new version has been published, but apart from that nothing has
> changed, because there’s still nobody to update it, all the questions,
> comments and errors from community still won’t be taken into consideration.
> The community doesn’t know what to do, so some will wait, some will move
> on, some are happy with what they got [which means they’ll sell paid
> modules and the fewer changes the better for them]. For the community
> members to be able to introduce changes into the system, they’d have to be
> able to actively communicate with the developers, and this hasn’t changed
> for years.
>
> I look at projects from a completely different perspective - the quality
> of code - which hasn’t improved in the 7.0 release. That's why I’m also
> disappointed because 6.0 version introduced a lot of changes in quality and
> it should be continued. Unfortunately, I don’t know why [maybe lead
> developers resigned] but the quality hasn’t improved since 6.0. However, it
> doesn’t mean that 6.0 was perfect code-wise but it introduced new quality
> and if it was continued, then after 3 years there would be some really good
> code in 7.0. Unfortunately, Vtiger 7 is a blend of 6.0, 5.4 and in some
> places even older versions such as 5.1, 4.x etc.
>
> Vtiger has the greatest amount of errors in code [over 42 thousand,
> including 532 Critical, 4889 Major, 20021 Minor, 17102 Info -
> https://insight.sensiolabs.com/projects/302bc9b8-5a04-
> 4405-ac50-ba10d2bc953c] from all the projects I know [Vtiger, coreBOS,
> SuiteCRM, SugarCRM, EPESI, oroCRM, ODOO, YetiForce], and these errors
> influence the development, security and transparency. Over 70% code
> requires refactoring and 7.0 version only generates additional code instead
> of fixing bugs which sometimes have been in the system for 10 years. I
> don’t know why Vtiger doens’t follow any standards in designing PHP
> applications that have been described for example here:
> http://www.php-fig.org/. You may think that it doesn’t matter, but when
> you aren’t selected for a very large project only because of the low
> quality of the system, you will understand that if you don’t invest enough
> energy into the quality, it will influence your business sooner or later.
>
> What if you stop at one version and just focus on fixing and stabilizing
> it? Maybe a custom fork whose only purpose would be to deliver a stable
> version?
>
> A great example would be coreBOS, which for almost 3 years [since March
> 2014] has been concentrating on fixes only. What effect did they achieve?
> Unfortunately at Github they only got 11 issues, 27 people watching them,
> and 332 downloads at SourceForge. From the practical point of view, coreBOS
> is Vtiger 5.4 with hundreds of fixes as far as code formatting is
> concerned, and some minor changes that don’t impact code quality at all,
> because this project doesn’t comply to any standards whatsoever, ie.
> http://www.php-fig.org/. It also includes over 35.000 errors [659
> Critical, 10050 Major, 8278 Minor, 16594 Info]. Additionally, just like
> Vtiger, this project requires code refactoring [more than Vtiger does,
> because Vtiger 6.0 brought many positive changes, which were not included
> in coreBOS].
>
> VTE CRM is the same example as it was forked from 5.2.1 version but they
> haven’t changed it since then, so all security vulnerabilities are still
> present. What novelty has this fork introduced, except dividing the
> community and creating a little monster which won’t be developed? SensioLab
> 50.000 errors [3300 Critical, 13774 Major, 9386 Minor, 23475 Info]. It
> introduced some commercial modules… and nothing more. I don’t know how many
> forks like that have been created but if I haven’t heard about them, they
> probably weren’t successful. I understand that these companies try to earn
> money from paid modules but, as a result, customers receive a worse product
> without any perspectives for the development and on a low degree of
> security. I’m trying to understand why Vtiger pushes us away and those, who
> can develop a modern CRM system, build semi-finished products that have no
> perspective for the highest possible development level.
>
> Creating a product that keeps evolving requires a team of programmers who
> develop their coding skills on a daily basis, a team that grows together
> and has adequate financial resources to be able to keep going on,
> regardless of the number of clients in the first years. If you think you
> can take Vtiger 7 and start developing it independently, then you will most
> likely not be capable of dealing with the burden of development and
> responsibility, because it requires looking at it from the perspective of
> several years, not just from a one month perspective.
>
> Currently, a few systems are developed very dynamically [especially
> commercial systems] because they have enough financial resources. These
> systems are Base, SalesForce, Dynamics, SugarCRM… Do you consider where you
> are going to be in 2, 3, or 5 years time if Vitiger’s community is already
> so divided, there are hardly any financial resources and no one takes care
> of the quality and security? Last 6 months I have been negotiating with 2
> very large companies that want to deploy a CRM system on a large scale. Do
> you know what are their opinions about open source? In order for us to take
> part in the procedures, they had to conduct functional, performance and
> security tests. We had to make a lot on changes in the engine over many
> weeks, so that we wouldn’t be ashamed and our system could pass the tests.
>
> I understand that the current situation is very satisfying to 2-3
> companies that sell Vtiger modules...and they won’t be too keen on
> accepting changes, because the more flawed the system is, the easier it
> gets to sell some tiny feature for 100€. However, in my opinion, this
> attitude is not only harmful to the Vtiger community, but to the entire
> open source community.
>
> I’m no longer as active here as I used to be, and I guess this is how it’s
> going to be, and it’s due to the fact that Vtiger doesn’t have much to
> offer anymore. I wish I was wrong, and I wish you could surprise me in 2017.
> --
> Z poważaniem / Regards
>
> *Błażej Pabiszczak*
> *Chief Executive Officer*
> M: +48.884999123
> E: b.pabiszczak at yetiforce.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> http://www.vtiger.com/
>
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