PMC 2009: Platform for Ticket

It is a bit early but as questions relating to it was asked on the forum I 
will sent it here too.

"Radu Herineann here is our platform, I hope it answers some of your 
questions, each of us has our own specialties but we have this set of common 
goals to tie us together.

Roadmaps for code and project

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Xaraya has been lacking coherent and decisive direction for some time. As 
mambers of the PMC, we will engage the community in determining what goals, 
milestones, and processes should be implemented for our codebases and the 
project as a whole.

Review and streamline services

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We will be reviewing the services maintained by the project in order to 
refect the current status of the project. Goals will be to consolidate 
communication channels, eliminate unnecessary services, create new services 
we lack, and use our server resources more efficiently. Since Xaraya is a 
content managment system/application framework, there are few web based 
tools our project could need that can't be implemented using Xaraya.

Relaunch xaraya.com

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The current design of our website is old. As a web-based project, we have a 
certain responsibility to keep our site fresh and modern.

A new theme and content reorganization has been in the works for over a 
year. Certain aspects of completing this are made more difficult while the 
current theme is the default. We will activate the new theme and finish the 
content changes afterward. This includes new publication types, new 
categories structure, updates to existing content, and an ongoing effort to 
create new content, sourced from all members of the community.

Project branding

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With a new look for the project comes an opportunity to reach out and 
attract new developers, users, and sponsors. We will be assembling a 
marketing plan to increase our visibility on the Internet, and make Xaraya a 
competitive option among similar projects.

Encourage contribution and openness*

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A project such as Xaraya is too big for only a select few to do everything. 
Without a broad base of contributors, a lot of work rests on too few 
shoulders. When more people contribute, everyone benefits from the project's 
ability to achieve more and better things. When we foster and genuinely 
consider new ideas, our community becomes stronger.

Encourage collaboration

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It has come to our attention that several members of the community refrain 
from committing changes to modules or themes in the project repository 
because the owner/maintainer are unclear. In other cases the 
owner/maintainer is known, but their position on accepting changes is 
unknown.

We will call for maintainers to claim their extensions and state their 
stance on accepting changes. Unclaimed extensions will be maintained by the 
community at large. Extensions whose authors are not willing to allow 
changes will be locked in the repository and the author asked to maintain it 
privately.

The project position on extension contributions will be that the maintainers 
should, as a courtesy (not a requirement), be contacted before any changes 
are committed.

Jumpstart 2x efforts with a release

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The new codebase is not complete, but it is functional enough that it can be 
used. In order to attract users and developers, 2x needs to be accessible. 
Development releases are a critical part of the development process. Xaraya 
put out 15 betas and four release candidates before our 1.0 release, there 
is no reason not to arrive at a 2.0 release the same way. We must "release 
early, release often".

New naming scheme for core branches and releases

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The name Xaraya led to our logo, a manta ray, as raya is spanish for this 
animal. In order to eliminate possible negative perception about the code 
that could come from using terms such as unstable, we propose a naming 
scheme for monotone branches and core releases based on the taxonomy of 
rays. Details will be forthcoming.

Thank you,

PMC Nominees

Chad Kraeft aka "St.Ego," Chris Powis, Robert Town aka "Godboko," and Marty 
Vance aka "Dracos"

*I just wanted to add a personal note here, that transparency is very 
important to me and being open and keeping lines of communication open 
between everyone involved is something I will strive for. *

Please feel free to ask any followup questions that you may have and thank 
you for your participation so far. "