Forge, only one person to manage new project applications?

[ibnhafsun]

Sorry if this have been asked before but,

Is reasonable to have only one person to manage the new project applications? The past weeks (months?) it seems like the new project requests were delayed "a bit". The only reason I was able to find is that the person doing the job was in a vacation (which is fine, no, no it´s great). Have you asked for help? Is this the way it is intended to be (one person managing thousands of projects)? Are you working on it If you are working on it, where is the information (to take a look)?

[brad]

It is not reasonable at all.

Tonie and I are going to make major changes soon to how forge resources are managed.

Are you interested in helping or getting involved with the S&I WG? We're always on the lookout for active reliable people, as the number of sites we manage has grown substantially.

I apologize for the inconvenience, and agree it is not acceptable for an important open source project of ours to have only one person coordinating a WG or resources.

[ibnhafsun]

Thanks for your reply.

But I guess I am not he best one to help you on this:

a) I am not familiar with source forge and, in my opinion, those who manage a project right now would be more useful to the forge, not only approving but giving some kind of support too (like a main wiki, a FAQ and a blog with incidences and service problems to keep us informed... is a hosting service, let´s do like hosting services).

b) My english isn´t as fluent as I would wish.

c) I would approve a translation project even if there is another one active as I would approve a component or a extension even if there is another one with simmilar functionality.

d) And this is a very personal opinion: I don´t believe in working groups as they are intended to be nor I do believe in colour badges. The main working groups should be, IMO again, helping people, support people, with working teams, individuals and third party resources. If the colour badge means something different than "dedication", I can´t see the need of joining a working group as I will be able to help in the same way with or without a color badge (if you have the proper tools). If it means only dedication, you will get the same of me, with or without a colour badge. If it is just a colour indicative to allow us to find help easily, then start to read in "The main working groups.."

Anyway, if you still need me just send me a pm and I will try to help you.

[brad]

Badge or no badge, we are always looking for people who want to help within the structure that is already setup. Forge admin/management will soon be able to be handled by anyone, as the rules for project approvals are already clearly defined.

All we need it reliable, trustworthy people willing to help within the structure that is already being worked on.

[ibnhafsun]

I guess I am not he best one to help you on this

And I´ve tried to give you my own reasons to think so.

Anyway, if you still need me just send me a pm and I will try to help you.

I have offered my help just in case. No PM yet. May be I am not reliable or trustworthy to you (I don´t want to think you were kidding). I can understand it. But whenever you need a hand just let me know with a pm. Without badges, of course, lol.

About the translations and the forge, may be I was wrong and the reply said something like:

"We already have a translation project. Could you please contact them and offer you help?"

which would be right according to the submission rules if you consider any translation an extension of your Official Partner Websites Projects (a monopoly? lol) but a big mistake anyway (and an ot discussion).

Nothing about translations here:

If a project is an extension of another project, a module for example, collaboration with the original project is strongly advised. Please contact the developer(s) beforehand to see if your project can be included with the original one. If the original developer is not interested, a new project can be started.

Just this:

Regarding translations, only translations of Joomla frontend or backend are allowed. Translations of 3rd party developers software should be made available through the mother project.

[ibnhafsun]

Note: please edit the "How to register a project ?":

Template projects are allowed providing there is a clear benefit to the Joomla! community.

Regarding translations, only translations of Joomla! frontend or backend are allowed.

[brad]

Tonie or myself will get in touch with you when we have some time to focus and implement some of these changes and suggestions.

Thanks

[Tonie]

The one person normally taking care of Forge approvals/denials would be me, and indeed I've been on a holiday. Normally, new project requests are taken care of at least four times a week. Anyway, I'm back now.

One of the goals for this year, is to set up a Forge team much like other teams that are already around. Some of the rules will change as well, though none of this is set in stone with.

[ibnhafsun]

BTW, you have some non F/OSSLed projects hosted, like the Creative Commons -nc ones (in a strict sense all projects licensed under a CC license should be suspended and that´s not my intention, but the -nc ones are totally against not only the forge rules but  OSM´s mission too as they are against the main F/OS freedom).

All projects on Joomla! Forge must be distributed under a F/OSS license, such as GPL, LGPL, BSD, Apache, etc.

[Tonie]

Could you provide me with a list of those projects, please? I will then take a look at them later this week.

[ibnhafsun]

No

Not a full list. I just did a search on "creative". 4 projects and 4 news. I guess there are some more and the best thing to do is to send an email to all the project owners about the licensing policy.

[ibnhafsun]

More on the forge rules:

Regarding translations, only translations of Joomla frontend or backend are allowed. Translations of 3rd party developers software should be made available through the mother project.

I can´t see the reason to keep the translation teams outside the forge (well, we don´t have translation teams "de facto", just websites that have a partnership with Joomla!, but websites don´t translate or just do a machine translation, like babelfish and google; persons, volunteers,... the community does).

Even more: some extensions have the language strings hardcoded; translating an extension requieres something more than a language.php file (menu entries, parameters, administration) and the result is a derivative work than the main coder may or may not support, a different extension to be responsible for (as the Joomla! administration language hacks, should those hacks be sent to Joomla! too?). Not a good idea, IMO, at least until Joomla! changes the forge rules and, as a project core value, would require full translatable extensions, like Joomla! 1.5.

[Tonie]

If a component or joomla has hardcoded language strings, and somebody changes all the hardcoded settings. It is indeed a derivative of the original. This is not a translation any more, so the rule doesn't apply. The rule is there for the following situation. If a component is hosted on Forge, and it is translatable, we're not going to open new project for just one extra language file for that specific component. It's better and more clear for an end user to have translations available through the component project. Forge has lots of possibilities to help people work together, one of the goals for this year is to make people work with each other more on Forge if they basically work on the same. An exception to this is projects that have loads of translations of components, mambots and the like. There are a few around there that do this, and they have an approved project.

[ibnhafsun]

Yes, I agree with most of your statements. We, in the spanish community, were talking about full translated extensions some weeks ago. We planned to publish an available administration hack and hacked extensions (1.0.12 only, derivative works). I asked for a forge account and the reply was:

"We already have a translation project. Could you please contact them and offer you help?"

No, I am in touch with them and I don´t want our work, our time and our efforts being redirected to a website (users, traffic, ads, money).

Do you have translation teams to join? I guess you don´t and you don´t care. You have a website project and you are redirecting me to the website owner to work for him, on his team and under his rules and demands. The part of "...providing support for the international community is a core value of Joomla!..." meaning "...providing support for our websites partners is a core value of Joomla!..." would be ot but not how this is managed at the forge.