Posts tagged joomla
Why Nooku
I have been asked this very question many times in the past three years. So far my answer always has been : “I am passionate about creating free software, building web architectures and collaborating with others”. While this is 100% true it’s not the complete answer.
Being removed
A little over three years ago my involvement in the Joomla project was abruptly ended. On the 20th of October 2008 I received the following mail
… you have been effectively inactive for more then a year now. Because of this we concluded that you have no plans to be actively and constructively engaged with this team any more … We would like to thank you for your huge contributions to the project. Without you the project would absolutely not be where it is today.
Two days before, on the 18th of October, I had finished my work on the removal of legacy libraries and legacy code for Joomla 1.6. My last SVN commit to Joomla 1.5 was made on the 11th of January 2008, only 9 months earlier.
Still on 20th October 2008 my SVN access was removed. Suddenly I was no longer allowed to contribute to the very project I had put my heart and soul into building.
Almost ironically a week later I received the most valuable person award for Joomla from Packt Publishing.
Jumla needs you to lead us
The first weekend of September I traveled to Florianopolis, Brazil to speak at the annual Joomladay Brazil. I was among 4 international guests who the Brazilian community had nominated as keynote speakers for this years event.
Joomla ‘for’ or ‘from’ the community
Talking to organizers and community members during and after the event I learned about their concerns, frustrations and anger around the Joomla trademark processes and policies.
I learned about the creation of Joomleiros.com (a real joomleiro), the issues with the joomla.com.br domain (official open letter), the disappointment over only receiving an apology and the feeling of letdown when being pointed to just another email address by Open Source Matters, the holder of the Joomla trademark.
We need you to lead us
These issues are not new. I have heard similar frustrations from many event organizers and community members all over the world in the past years.
Joomla is ‘the’ Platform
In the past 6 years Joomla has seen an immense growth capturing almost 3% of the internet. Most still see Joomla as a CMS. Even Joomla.org states :
Joomla is the worlds most popular open source content management system. With 2.7 % of the internet running on Joomla the software is used by individuals, small-sized & medium size businesses and large organizations worldwide to easily create a variety if websites and web applications.
Reality is that Joomla is no longer just a cms. After 6 years of collaborative innovation Joomla has become a web platform, extendible by over 8000 extensions build on a powerful framework.
We use this platform to build products for ourselves, for our clients, and for our peers. The framework that sit’s at it’s heart is our shared toolkit we (should) improve together so that those products can thrive.
The Joomla Dilemma - A story about punk, freedom, passion, pirates and future.
Video from my keynote presentation on the Joomladay Greece 2011. You can find the slides here.
Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Do so by removing any personal interests, emotional feelings or religious beliefs. If you are unable, respectfully step down.
The Joomla Dilemma
The Joomla Project is our tree of life. We feed of it’s fruits. In order to allow it to produce and grow it requires our continuous nurturing. If not, Joomla will die.
In my keynote at the Joomladay Greece I addressed the dilemma between project and product, while Joomla as a product is growing and is used on 2.5% of all websites on the internet, Joomla is failing as an open source project.
Finding a healthy balance between project and product will be key to continued succes.
It’s our community, our technology, our product or project - let’s not give anyone the illusion of control over its future. Let’s claim back our Joomla. Let’s break down whatever stands in the way of original ideas, experiments, open minds and progress. What say you ?
There is no them nor we, there is only us
In recent discussions with people from the Joomla Project I have been made aware of a growing perception among the Joomla leadership that Nooku is not only a direct competitor with Joomla, but also that Nooku is trying to actively take developers away from Joomla.
Nooku is a project for developers, integrators and hackers alike. We aim to bring developers together. We prefer collaboration over competition to grow our code and we welcome anyone who is willing to contribute in a constructive and respectful manner. We accept that we are all in this together, striving to create better software; striving to make ours and others people’s lives easier.
The commons in which we - The Nooku Community - work contains software under an OSI-approved licence free from usage restrictions with guaranteed freedoms to use, study, modify and distribute it – “free software“. Our Nooku contributors each work at their own expense in order to achieve a shared outcome that benefits all, including
themselves.
Vision
Just over three years ago, on 12 February 2008, and only a month after we released Joomla 1.5 I started working on Nooku Framework.
My personal vision for Joomla always has been to move away from CMS and towards a web application framework. The work I did in 1.5, building the Joomla Framework, was a first step towards that goal. Unfortunately, we never fully succeeded separating CMS from framework in 1.5.
At the end of the development cycle of 1.5 I was convinced that the better approach was to build a new framework from ground up instead of trying to refactor it top down. That’s how Nooku Framework got started.
Project
For the first year I did most of the work on code myself. Today, Nooku is a growing innovative open-source web platform made by a community of passionate developers from all over the world.
We have an active team of 12 people, 20 contributors who signed our Contributor Agreement and nearly 400 subscribers in the developer’s discussion group. That’s a lot of bright and creative people.
Platform
On the 4th of February 2011, nearly 3 years after I made that first commit. I had the pleausre of attending the first ever Joomlanight in Stockholm, Sweden to talk about all the great innovation going on in Nooku and to introduce the Nooku Platform.
We are moving to a world dominated by web apps, instead of web sites. It’s clear that the mobile web is becoming mainstream in a big way. On top of that, the iPad and tablets and other mobile devices are changing our world and the way we build web applications.
Future
Exciting challenges lie ahead. Seperating CMS from framework is not enough anymore. We need to build a platform that allows developers to quickly build ‘native web apps’ that can run on many different devices.
Equipping Nooku for this challenge will be key. Our RESTful Nooku Framework architecture is first step in that direction and with Nooku Server we are adding a powerful web platform to easily deploy your web solutions.
We are not there yet. Great progress is being made. Focus and collaboration will be key in the coming months. However with a growing community of developers I’m confident that we are well underway to make good things happen !
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Frameworks, Forks and Distros. Oh My!
I was guest on the Joomstew Radio last week. In the first part of the interview we talked about the Nooku Project, Nooku going GPLv3, our recent team workshop and our plans for the future.
The second part of the interview focusses on my recent blog post ‘Fork or distro, a matter of intend’. We touch on the topic fork, distros, upstream contributions, collaboration in an open source community and look at the challenges the Joomla Project is facing at the moment.
Fork or distro, a matter of intent
The announcement of Molajo spurred up the discussion in the Joomla community about the pros and cons of distributions and also raised the question if Molajo is a distribution or a fork. Let consider this question for a moment.
Molajo, a Joomla 1.6 distribution
Yesterday, the ATAAW community announced Molajo, a Joomla 1.6 distribution. On the roadmap for Molajo are a number of new features that didn’t make it into Joomla 1.6 such as as usability improvements, new frontend and backend template and additional administrator tools.
More importantly with Joomla 1.6 still in beta, Molajo is also a great way to have more eyes on the code to help test and fix bugs. As Linus Law says : “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”.
I have been asked to help guide the Molajo Project as part of the Elders Council which I gladly accepted. The first two days have been a lot of fun. Getting to know everyone and helping to get things started.
Molajo is still looking for new contributors to help out. You don’t need to be able to code, they are also looking for testers, documentors, communicators, … designers, …
If you want to help let me know and I’m sure we can find you a place where you can put your skills to good use.
Last summer I had the pleasure of coaching and facilitating the Beyounic Team at their first workshop. We spend a whole week crafting their many ideas into a vision and strategy. The result : Ohanah, a social event platform.
In the past year I have seen them grow as team and as a company. I was pleasantly surprised when they asked me to become their strategic advisor.
Being able to pass on my open knowledge and experience to such a talented team is a real honor, one I will fulfill with dedication.
Keep a close eye on these guys, you will hear from them for sure in the months to come.
Impressions from the Joomladay Hungary 2010. Already the 4th Joomladay organized in Hungary. I have attended all and am looking forward to celebrating the 5th edition in 2011.
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Johan Janssens is co-founder of Joomla, an open source content management system. Johan also held the role of Lead Developer and Project Manager during the development of Joomla 1.5.
Today, Johan spends most of his time working on Nooku, an innovative open source web platform and application development framework.
Johan is also co-founder and CEO of Timble, a privately held software company that offers products and services for Nooku and Joomla.
