Re: Open Discussion: The Future of Xaraya

On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 4:38 PM, Robert Town <[email protected]> wrote:

> Before I get to the meat of this message lets state the rules:
>
> 1. No Flaming


Screw You.  I'll flame if I want to.


>
> 2. No Finger Pointing


It's Marc's fault.


>
> 3. No games


Night to King's three.


>
>
> I call all past PMC members, founders, lead developers to talk openly about
> what you want to see happen with our beloved Xaraya Project. Please keep
> things pleasant, all are welcome to their opinions, but no flaming or
> finger
> pointing.



I know most don't like me, or respect what I have to say, but enough time
has past for me to chime in.  There are several things wrong with Xaraya, as
well as several things right.  It's easier to focus on the bad, because that
spawns the most discussion, and thus I will go down that path.

1st) Development usability is not only bad but really f'ing bad for anyone
not immersed in Xaraya.  While there is a great deal that Xaraya can do from
the core, finding the right function, method, etc is not generally that easy
to do.  I understand the choices that have been made in the past, but that
doesn't make them right.  If I was thinking of using a framework to create
an application, why would I spend the time to learn Xaraya is the question
that you need to ask yourselves.  Does it give a novice a speedier
development time?  I don't really think it does.  Are you able to identify
the advantages within 30 minutes of development?  I would probably say no on
that one as well.  In addition the documentation is spread very thin as to
what it takes to really take advantage of the system.  I've actually been
trying to work on some concepts in the past months only to be zapped with
WTF is this moments.  I won't even get into the complexity of the
development process that has been set up at this point, but I will say
instead of me working within the group for my changes I have just been
throwing them on a SVN tree because it's much easier to deal with...

2nd) As bad as the development usability is, the overall usability is almost
comical.  Has anyone taken the time to count the number of options there are
in the system?  For Christ's sake, just make the majority of those
development choices in the templates and be done with it.  It adds to the
weight of the system and adds to the confusion of the system in general.  If
you are looking for a blog, why go through this level of complexity when
there are much easier things to learn on the market.  If you are an
enterprise user looking to actually use the power of Xaraya would you even
consider it with the amount of sloppiness in the interface?  Hi Rock, meet
Hard Place.  I could go on with some of the concepts that are great but
really hard to understand (ACL, Roles, Articles, Categories, etc) for the
average person trying to administer a site.

3rd) The concept of a CMS is very 2002.  The concept of a framework is very
2007.  What needs to be thought out is what is actually innovating for 2011
and bring that to fruition in a usable form.  Focus on innovation, and
development help will come.  Focus on a concept via a now niche market, and
you will be spinning your wheels (IE: the last few years here).

4th) The perceived performance is not very good.  We could go on and on with
how great the cache is, etc, but its not a very light thing to load on a
site.  How big are the tarballs at this point?  That would probably turn me
off if I was just taking a look for something to use.  Like it or not, but
the number of queries in the code is astounding.  Web 2.0 has come and gone
at this point, and there was a giant missed opportunity.

5th) Politics are funny and quality entertainment, but I would
be embarrassed at the past few weeks as to the tones to a silly election
which in the end probably won't change the fate of the project in the least
(although, I hope I am wrong on this point).  How about someone step up and
lead, or fork the codebase and do something different but don't belittle one
another.

6th) Chat is no way to make communicate.  You guys could chat all day long,
but for the casual observer to this project it doesn't show any life.
 Perhaps that is what you are shooting for, but a mailing list is much more
effective to embrace the developers in the community and the users.

7th) Stop with the "marketing concepts" and instead invest the time to just
getting the word out.  I used to spend two hours a day hitting other mailing
list, other forums, etc just to say how great Xaraya is, and to bring folks
in.  It just takes time and personality.  It takes a little drive.

8th) Stop talking and start working.  1079 bugs found shows that you are
doing to much in the code base or you aren't doing enough coding.  Of course
a quick look at mt.xaraya.com doesn't really show me much because of how
complex that has gotten.  The closest I could find to a last commit was 15
days ago, but who knows.

Anyway, my 2c's.  Enjoy, and best wishes.