Forums / Discussions / community work versus enterprise edition

community work versus enterprise edition

Author Message

Georg Franz

Monday 11 April 2011 10:25:54 am

Hi folks,
the enterprise edition of ez 4.5 has been released. But I am still waiting for the official release of the community edition.

(Yeah, I know how to use github... But I mean the "official release"...)
It's very annoying that I am not able to get 4.5 "enterprise" edition for free anymore for my projects by the way. I've spent a lot of time to help developing the enterprise version. I've written nearly 600 bug reports in the last years and attached a lot of bugfixes and I've reworked the german translation.
So, if eZ Systems divides in "community editions" and "enterprise editions" - why should I work for the enterprise versions for free in future? It would be more fair if my work goes into the community edition first and lands afterwards in the commercial edition.
In theory, there must be an own bug tracker for the community edition and own translations. etc.

What are your thoughts about this?

Best wishes,
Georg.

--
http://www.schicksal.com Horoskop website which uses eZ Publish since 2004

Gaetano Giunta

Monday 11 April 2011 10:40:53 am

Hi Georg.

The community edition is in the works, not forgotten at all. It's gonna be most likely delivered at the 15th of the month, on a different schedule than the enterprise version.

As for the bug tracker, there's nothing cast in stone yet, but everybody feels that the community should get more involved in it - be it a single tracker for both versions or not.

As for working "for free" for the enterprise edition, I'm sure you appreciate the fact that eZ Engineers still work on the community edition and not on a private branch...

Principal Consultant International Business
Member of the Community Project Board

Nicolas Pastorino

Monday 11 April 2011 10:56:42 am

Hi Georg, and thanks for bringing this up.

The short answer to your interrogations is : we are late. "We" is the Community Project Board.

As you will notice in the soon-to-be published minutes of the latest eZ Publish Community Board meeting ( http://share.ez.no/blogs/community-project-board/ ), the first Community build is being prepared, and more important, the build frequence is being thought through.

The slight delay we are having for this first build will be overweighted by the fact that all subsequent ones will benefit from this clear routine the Board is setting-up. Other outstanding questions like the content of such builds are on the plate too.

As soon as we can commit on a date for this build, we will share this with you instantly. This is a call on your patience, please continue channeling your feedback through comments under our posts, on our blog, the Board is powered by openness and transparency !

By no means eZ Systems wants the Community Project and the Enterprise Edition to be segmented away from each other, nor does the Community Project Board. As you have noticed in the RFC about the Release Policy of Community Project (which will be revised according to the Community feedback, and re-published), eZ Publish's kernel will be developed in a central place (github) where both eZ Engineers and the eZ Community will work together, on the master branch. Nothing hidden, full availability of code at any point in time, total openness. No private development branch. A standard open-source development model.

The underlying idea is to get innovation to flow and go through the roof as soon as possible. The revamped "Get Involved" section, subject to an RFC today, is also meant to energize participation and innovation.

To what end ? Make eZ Publish better. Faster. Faster innovation than at any other competitor, through a true commitment to open-source, with no compromise. This is meant to continue providing the broad Community with a cutting-edge CMS/CMF, called eZ Publish Community Project, very frequently (builds should be made available every month, at least in the beginning, more often later one once the build system is greased and turbo-charged). This innovation will also benefit Enterprise Edition, at the kernel level. In fact, both kernel will be next to identical, and Enterprise Edition will bring value at other levels : extensions (amongst others through eZ Market), service (subscription), mainly.

So again, this is a call for your patience, and i take, as chairman of the Community Project Board, full responsibility for this delay. This delay does not question the open-source way, do not be misled.

Finally, i would like to personally thank you for your intense participation over the past years. I know you followed the rules, have been active at the product level through reports, but also intensively in the forums. We are in the middle of a large, key transition period, meant to make high-grade contributors' life easier (like you) when it comes to sharing one's efforts and ideas.

--
Nicolas Pastorino
Director Community - eZ
Member of the Community Project Board

eZ Publish Community on twitter: http://twitter.com/ezcommunity

t : http://twitter.com/jeanvoye
G+ : http://plus.tl/jeanvoye

Jerome Despatis

Tuesday 12 April 2011 12:10:23 am

Thanks Nicolas for your clarification,

I've still worries about eZpublish community..

=> so the eZpublish is on the innovation edge, well ok, but let's talk about stability

=> will eZ propose download of stable eZcommunity from time to time ? I guess around eZ entreprise release ? or the only stable versions will be eZ entreprise ?

This point is of course very important for choosing a cms to base developments on

Nicolas Pastorino

Tuesday 12 April 2011 1:37:20 am

Hello Jérôme,

eZ Publish Community Project is meant to be the cradle for innovation. A lot of such. This does not mean that anyone will be able to commit anything into the master branch, at any point in time. Some level of innovation management will be put in place, with a certain set of quality requirements for pull-requests (inline doc, functional doc for new, small features, unit tests, upgrade instructions) enforcing a ground for quality. Innovation will not mean "necessarily unstable". This would be equivalent to shooting ourselves in the foot, given the high level of intrisinc quality in eZ Publish's kernel today.

Also, as you have noticed in the Release Policy RFC, larger features, which are likely to bring unstability due to the larger change sets, will be developed in separate branches : "feature-branches". The creation of such branches are subject to approval by the Community Project Board, placing highly innovative initiatives in an incubator, before an eventual merge-back to the master branch.

We can safely assume then, that the monthly (or more frequent later on) builds of Community Project will provide an ok platform for anybody who is building web applications above eZ Publish in non extremely critical environments. But for sure, for highly critical websites and applications, going for Enterprise Edition (particularly for benefitting from the support & maintenance offer) should be the safe option, externalizing any risk towards the vendor.

Should we aim for nightly builds, which is a common practice in open-source projects, we could think of marking certain of these builds, every month for instance, or less often, as "more stable". This could help, i suppose, adopting eZ Publish for projects.

Thoughts ?

Cheers !

--
Nicolas Pastorino
Director Community - eZ
Member of the Community Project Board

eZ Publish Community on twitter: http://twitter.com/ezcommunity

t : http://twitter.com/jeanvoye
G+ : http://plus.tl/jeanvoye

Jerome Despatis

Tuesday 12 April 2011 2:58:41 am

Thanks Nicolas,

Yes indeed, several open source projects have a nightly builds, and a stable release from times to times. The fantastic dojo framework uses this logic.

And of course, new developers would certainly not choose eZPublish if only nightly builds are provided.

A clear announcement of a new release with release notes (think of it, at every eZentreprise release, then official stable eZcommunity project also released) for eZcommunity project is needed, I think

Carlos Revillo

Wednesday 08 June 2011 7:13:51 am

"

We can safely assume then, that the monthly (or more frequent later on) builds of Community Project will provide an ok platform for anybody who is building web applications above eZ Publish in non extremely critical environments. But for sure, for highly critical websites and applications, going for Enterprise Edition (particularly for benefitting from the support & maintenance offer) should be the safe option, externalizing any risk towards the vendor.

"

Hi there. Sorry for reopen this thread, but i would like to ask again about community project an enterprise edition difference.

Nicolas, you say for highly critical websites going for Enterprise Edition should be the safe option, and i'm agree... but it's mandatory? i mean, can we still use community project at our own (we, developers) risk no matter what (that's it how big, how many visitors expected and so on) is the project we'll be working on? 

thank you!

Nicolas Pastorino

Wednesday 08 June 2011 8:46:38 am

Hi Carlos, 

This is correct, indeed. And switching to Enterprise Edition in the course of the development phase, or the website's lifecycle, is an option too. You are basically free, and have a net of routes to go from eZ Publish Community Project to eZ Publish Enterprise Edition, back & forth.

Cheers !

--
Nicolas Pastorino
Director Community - eZ
Member of the Community Project Board

eZ Publish Community on twitter: http://twitter.com/ezcommunity

t : http://twitter.com/jeanvoye
G+ : http://plus.tl/jeanvoye