Dec 1

Posted by: Alec Whittington
12/1/2006 

Well 2006 is almost over and I thought I would share what I have learned this year as a project lead as well as give you a sneak peak at the future.

        First off - this project is not dead, not at all. We have not moved as quickly as I had hoped. I feel that this is my fault and one that can and does plague the Open Source community in general. One of the reasons this happens is because we are volunteers. It is very easy to say "I will do it tomorrow" after a long day at work. Why is this you ask? Because there is no accountability or deadlines. Often times the community does not hold us accountable for our actions (or lack thereof). While it is not the job of the community to motivate the Project Lead and Members, they should hold them accountable. This recently happened to me on the links forums and it was a real eye opener. While I knew I had not made the progress I wanted, here I was being called out in front of everybody on it. Let me tell you how this can such a great motivator, but too much of it can have the opposite effect.

        So how do we solve this going forward? Well first off we do not live in the past, what's done is done, let's move on. Second, we come up with not only clear goals (features, roadmaps, etc) that we have for this project, we come up with a true release schedule. It is no secret that I am a huge fan of Ubuntu Linix and there philosophy. One thing that has lead to their fast growth and success is the fact that they publish release dates and stick to them (well they slipped one time so far). This gives the community a clear cut time frame on when they can expect something. Like most OS's other Linux distros are upgraded on the "WHENEVER" time scale. This just does not cut it for the end user, and is that not whom matters most? So with all that said, we are going to shoot for a 4 time a year release schedule. So every 3 months the users of this module will get a new version with bug fixes and new features. This means that we will have about 2 months to program the fixes and new features with one month left for the release cycle.

       The project roadmap for the current release cycle will be posted in the forums as well as the project page for all to see. As the upcoming releases project roadmap takes shape, it will be posted in the same places as well. As bugs are reported and severity weighed, they will be placed in either the current release or the upcoming one. This will allow anyone who is interested in links to see where we are, what we are currently working on, and where we are going. Now please keep in mind that while your feature request may be very important to you, we do have to weigh the value of it to all users and see when it is appropriate to fit it in the release schedule.

       Now lets move on to feature requests and bug reporting. If you have a feature request or a bug to report, please go to http://support.dotnetnuke.com and use Gemini to record it. Once you have recorded it, post in the forums the Gemini issue number and I will make sure to get it moved to the links module. Once it is moved, I will respond to the thread accordingly. If anyone ever has a question about when a feature the requested will be done or when a bug will be fixed, I will try to the best of my ability to give you a time frame (which release it will occur in) if at all possible.

       I am meeting with my Core Team Liason this weekend and we are going to cover goals for next year. Once we get this worked out, the project page and forum will be updated to reflect this. So look for an update on Monday or Tuesday. Also, the current release is still in the release process. We are still working out the kinks, but have high hopes it will make it thru soon.

So in conclusion, I have learned the following:

• Best intentions are great, but often don't cut it.
• Being a Project Lead is much more demanding that it seems.
• Open Source is great, but without accountability and deadlines it is very easy to slip.
• and finally - The DNN community is very supportive overall, but they demand results as well.

If you have any comments please feel free to post them.