Betwixt and between

Betwixt and between, an intermediate position; neither wholly one thing nor another. Ever been in such a position before? Last week I felt very much betwixt and between. This post is my way to untangle and clarify.

Being awarded

Last Saturday, 7 May 2011 I was awarded with the Joomla Person of the Year J!OSCAR for outstanding personal achievements, my contributions to Joomla 1.5 and the innovations in Nooku.

The J.O.S.C.A.R.S (the Joomla Open Source Creative Artistic Recognition Awards) are organised yearly during the JandBeyond conference and aim to recognise people in the Joomla community for their work contributing or using Joomla.

I didn’t expect to win an award. I wasn’t nominated for this years awards after winning the Code Junkie JOSCAR on last years conference. I’m really honoured to have received this award from a jury of peers. However, It didn’t feel right when I received it and looking back a week later, I feel this was not my award to win.

Earning merit

In my work as project manager and lead developer of Joomla I have always tried to implement governance by meritocracy giving authority to community members based on merit they earned.

A meritocracy is a common governance model for open source projects used by for example Apache and Mozilla.

The more proficient the developer is in contributing towards the project - developing new features or maintaining existing code - the more they are required or the more the project necessitates their contribution, and thus the more senior their informal position becomes. Those who contribute more code, and have more of an effect on the direction or status of the project, will tend to have more seniority and influence and gain more respect.
Quote from wikipedia.

I made my last SVN commit to Joomla 1.5 on the 11th of January 2008 and my last direct contribution on the 18th October 2008 finishing the removal of legacy libraries and legacy code from 1.6. Unfortunately that branch and work was never used.

I was recognised for my work on Joomla 1.5 by the Joomla community in October 2008 when I received the MVP (most valuable person) award for Joomla from Packt Publishing. While in the past 3 years I have worked exclusively on Nooku and gained merit in the Nooku community. I feel that I’m being awarded for my status and not for my contributions. That goes against everything I believe in. Moreover, my Nooku contributions are seen as competition to Joomla rather than the spirit they were contributed.

Setting it right

A lot of hard work on Joomla 1.6 was done by three very talented and young developers who formed the Joomla 1.6 Release Team in 2008-09 : Hannes Papenberg, Gergő Erdősi and Ercan Özkaya.

They deserve a lot of kudos, credit and respect for their work. Unfortunately they never received any. On the contrary. In a mail sent to the project leadership on the 4th of September 2009, Andrew Eddie, Joomla Founder and 1.6 Development Coordinator wrote :

Hannes, Ercan and Gergo, you have been handed on a platter an asset worth millions of dollars. You have a great responsibility to look after that. It’s not your personal playground and not your place to say “right, I can play with it however I want now” … But overall, the Release Team is not actually “managing” the release. True project management is completely absent. … I think this comes down to lack of experience, lack of mentoring but quite a bit of “that doesn’t interest me”

Hannes, Gergo and Ercan, all three very talented developers, who deserve to be awarded for their work on Joomla 1.6. Instead they got to carry the burden of a failure that was not theirs to carry alone. I have no doubt that they made mistakes. It’s not the mistakes we make however that define us but what we learn from them. Hannes wrote a heartfelt blog post about his experiences and lessons learned on Brian Teeman’s blog in July 2010.

In November 2009 the Joomla Project announced they had decided to pay Andrew Eddie and Louis Landry to continue the development of 1.6. Gergo and Ercan moved on to contribute the Nooku and Hannes found a place in the Molajo community in 2010.

If there is anyone who deserves to be awarded for their work it’s these three young, talented developers. Therefore I dedicate my Person(al) Joomla of the Year JOSCAR to Hannes, Gegro and Ercan for their dedication, their collaboration and most importantly their contributions to Joomla 1.6.

Thanks guys !