What if Joomla would get forked...

Ruud van Lent
Written by: Published: 31 March 2020
Category: Communities bouwen
Evergreen BlogHits: 5724Reading time: 02:10

Something is keeping me wake at night. It is not the Corona virus and what that means for the world, it’s not that I am worried about my kids. It’s because of the current state of Joomla: a open source project that I hold dearly and that has been with me through ups and downs in my life.

I feel Joomla is going through a difficult time at the moment: the flagship product Joomla 3.9 has gone into retirement.

And that is not a bad thing: just like in nature, the old needs to die to make room for the new.

But what is the issue then?

The issue (at least for me) is that the ‘new’ is not going to automatically be Joomla.

Sure we will someday have Joomla 4, but let’s be honest: what is new about joomla 4? What is it that Joomla 4 can do that Joomla 3 can’t? What is it that makes extension developers, agencies and end users invest their time and money in Joomla 4? What makes Joomla 4 worthwhile the investment?

That is the question that keeps me awake at night.

Because the answer for me and for other extension developers I have talked to is: not enough.

Sure there are some new Joomla 4 features that were cool to have at the time they where first discussed, but lets face it: that was already years ago and these features do not add direct value to the end users in the current moment: the web-world has moved on.

Joomla 4 misses the ‘Wow I want that’ features for end users, and for me as a developer, Joomla 4 misses the ‘Wow I want to be part of that vision and energy’ that it had years ago.

So basically Joomla 4, although it isn’t born yet, is already ready for retirement.

What is keeping me wake at night is that although when I talk to people they agree, but nobody speaks their mind: speaking your mind is like throwing away your old shoes when you are not fully comfortable with your new ones (Dutch saying). And because nobody asks (leadership) questions like ‘What is the reason why Joomla 4 isn’t getting the traction it needs? Why are people standing on the side line asking when it is ready but not doing any actual work to get it ready?’

So let me ask you

Asume that Joomla 3 is still actively developed: it is getting regular updates and new features. Assume that Joomla gets forked and that Joomla 4 is the fork.

What would it take for you to join forces with the new Joomla 4 fork?

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Ruud van Lent

 

Written by:
Pro-BloggerTop BloggerThought Leader

With a solid background in ICT (operational, tactical and strategic) and years of experience in the community life, I see in communities and community thinking the future for companies.

This future requires another way of thinking and doing; both for executives and employees. It's not about me; it's about you. Your well-being and your (personal) growth.

'What comes around - goes around'

In the world of communities, the old 'management laws' no longer work and are even counterproductive.

I coach leaders and organizations in their quest for how new and servant leadership can contribute to communities and community thinking, and as a result to the growth of the organization.

I do this from the following initiatives:

 

Posts in discussion: What if Joomla would get forked...
Ruud van Lent replied the topic:
#1245
4 years 7 months ago
Hi T-J, thanks for your reaction. I think a lot of people that are currently (and for a long time) working with Joomla see it the same way. The 'business' perspective is missing you say, I would say that 'any' joint and agreed perspective is missing. What happens then is that people involved act based on their own perspective.

Last week I opened one of the department reports and was astonished by the number of team leaders that where mentioned in there: for me it feels that we have more 'overhead' in these functions then there are developers who do the actual work.

Due to a missing joint vision it is everybody for their own.

I have tried to get some people into a free leadership webinar addressing leadership in opensource like organizations and the importance of joint accountability: nobody showed up from the Joomla community and when I tried to find the post i made for it, it turned out that it was deleted without notice or explanation.

That is also a way to ensure that things do not change out of your control.

Anyway, I think that Joomla 4 will be a fantastic release for the people involved and currently working on it...

onlinecommunityhub.nl/community-manageme...to-make-it-a-success
T-J replied the topic:
#1244
4 years 7 months ago
I've been around with Joomla since the beginning, deploying Joomla sites and translating to finnish but last few years just looked around with Joomla evolve better on the longer run. I would say I agree with the lack of vision and a mission. It is great that 4.0 embraces Accessibility but other than that, all seems to be just an upgrade to functionalities that Joomla currenly has.

Joomla has been in the middle of Wordpress and Drupal, and I have always preferred Joomla for the better flexibility than Wordpress and much more user friendliness than Drupal, but these changes coming with 4.0 seems to be much more to developers and still not enough. Seem to be that vision has been stuck in the long process, but that's how it goes, when open source development is done voluntarily instead of adding business perspective to the development.

Many developers here in finland have moved to wordpress development for good since there is much easier to make business with cms deliveries. Joomla should have a reason why devs would come back and would deliver Joomla CMS to their customers. At the moment there seems to be very little reason to choose Joomla over Wordpress and 4.0 isn't showing any signs that would change easily.
Ruud van Lent replied the topic:
#1120
4 years 8 months ago

Facebook Comment wrote: When I was in Spain I saw so much chase the tail of making our powerful CMS into something for every no skill person. THAT IS ALREADY OUT THERE and has financial backing. Why not embrace our middle space between the dead easy and Drupal. Work like hell on developing quality training tools and encouraging the move to J for business for the professional sector looking for our baked in extensibility and security.

That sounds like a plan, a plan that I could work with. Somebody once told me to always have plan because if you don't you'll end-up in the plan of somebody else...
And by plan I mean vision and mission: the lack off will not entice developers / testers / document writers (everybody 'building Joomla') to step in. What that will do is that people will look at Joomla and only chip in when it is beneficial for their plans...
As quoted in another blog i wrote on this topic: "The only thing worse then being blind is having sight but no vision".
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