Reply: What if Joomla would get forked...

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

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.

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".

Hi,

As a Joomla developer I think it is relatively easy to 'port' your extension to WP: it is not like starting from scratch. So the investment is minimal.

I do not want to fork either, the fork question is in the blog to trigger people. When there is a fork, it forces you to make a decision: do I stay with the old or do I get aboard of the new (fork). Making that decision requires information: what is this fork about, what problem does it solve, why is this better. All leading to the decision: Am I willing to invest (time and money) in this fork.

Currently these questions are not asked but what is not good, is when they were asked, there would be no answers: in my opinion it all starts with a vision and a mission.
What is it that you want to achieve, what is your purpose. That is what mobilizes people.

Joomla currently completely lacks a vision or a mission.

You can compare it best with a elevator pitch: let's say you step into an elevator with a potential client. You want to sell your product to this client and you have 1 minute to do so. The client asks: "what is it you sell and how will I benefit?', and you saying: 'uhmm.... I don't know'

If a vision and mission is missing, it will become part of the vision and mission of somebody else. That will lead to politics, energy loss, inefficient working. Have a look at the discussion about the new proposed admin template, I think that sums it all up.

Hi,
I understand the disappointment of not having his proposal taken into account. Those who do this are not mean. Often a volunteer, they do their best.
That raises a problem of governance and that can be discussed with the members of OSM !?

Many developers will look elsewhere. I understand them, I too have to make wp sites.
For "well known" developers, I think it is a mistake to believe in its developments for wp.
There are now many great wp plugins. New entrants (even great Joomla developer) will waste a lot of time and money (in general).

I do not believe today in a fork of Joomla as in a new miraculous operating system. The best 3 cms (or SE) in the world exist. There are dozens of other cms in the world.
End users will only buy for the top 3!
I continue to believe and want a better future for Joomla.
It is necessary to release Joomla 4 quickly, then take the time to better integrate collectively the challenge of a super Joomla 5.
Unite in this vision there!
Regards

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.