The Pacer EditionCMS

[mickpage]

@Potain: Excellent comments. (Love your fantabulous, erudite vernacular. )

[potain]

From the point of view of a user who made the decision to go with WB despite of all the CMS opposition products  at the time and ever increasingly so now, I am deeply disturbed by the turn of events. I've always received admirable support from WB.

It seems to be more a matter of a lot of egos and bruised egos rather than setting about a renewed collaborative effort to move WB forward to the benefit of its community.

If the original difference was one of which framework to use in further development, or to rewrite the whole thing and a compromise could not be reached which satisfied all the participants then why not allow those people to breakaway and develop their own version with the full knowledge of the consequences. That being  that the success / failure of their endeavours will inevitably be decided by the community? Is that not the democratic way? Is that not what Ryan decided to do? Not sure of the circumstances as to why he chose to distance himself from WB but I see no difference between the two. The manner in which the Pacer chose to do it though is debatable and needlessly shrouded in secrecy.

In terms of the Pacer team announcing their product launch on the forum, does it not indicate that they still have an affinity and allegiance to WB, the first place and natural place to announce the result of their hard work ?

Ethically though (and that's what it comes down to)  using code without prior consultation and first asking for permission from its owner (developer) in my opinion does amount to plagiarism and common sense & courtesy would have demanded better behaviour from Pacer.

I think they know that have acted wrongly, having difficulty accepting it and can't justify it which is why they demonstrate such recalcitrance and stubbornness.  When pushed into a corner that's a common defence mechanism where hotheads rule.  You can sense in one of JohnP's replies his disappointment at receiving criticism rather than being judged on his contribution. Surely a simple apology and an equally simple request to the developer would have been sufficient to bring all concerned on board?  The Pacer, you may be completely convinced of  the validity and value of your work but your ultimate success surely depends on acquiring the support of all stakeholders , so a defiant attitude will only work against you.

The basic question to me as an end user is how does The Pacer differ from version 2.8? Is the Pacer team willing to resume genuine discussion with established developers to settle any outstanding issues and differences? Are WB developers willing to objectively investigate the product to see if it has any merits, if indeed their product represents an advance in ease of use, operability, breaking technology that can be included into WB? How can the work that they've done benefit future versions? If not then what is the alternative?

You have all the same objective in mind, just taken different avenues, so how can you converge again into the one road that will take the best of both worlds and combine it into a whole which places WB at the forefront of CMS development? The accolades would then with great pride be equally distributed to all concerned.

The Pacer team could also learn a lesson from their impulsive behaviour. In your haste to release the product there is very little assistance afforded to a non tech minded person like myself. If you expect us to make judgements on your product then some simple installation instructions will be welcome.  None is provided on your site and neither in the file that I downloaded so I can't even begin to make a comment.

In conclusion, I hope that cool heads can prevail so that a collaborative effort is once more restored to allay as Ryan puts it FUD. The community and its users will then I am sure will be even more pleased to lend its full support and thanks to the altruistic sharing of your experience, hard work and dedication.

[WebBird]

But John insisted on the license, too. See his answer here. It was the one and only answer to my request.

https://forum.websitebaker.org/index.php/topic,14309.msg88979.html#msg88979

Edit: Thought I should quote it here, as people sometimes remove parts of their posts.

Take note EasyMenu was Developed for an open source community for the open source community to use as is... Though The Pacer Edition is a forked Edition to WebsiteBaker it still under the WebsiteBaker GNU General Public License.  The Pacer Edition is released by JCWebDen.com and WebsiteBaker core is released under the GNU General Public License.

Website baker is open source community and so is the pacer edition the difference between the to versions is we have moved forward when others would not.

So the easymenu is staying in place.

[mickpage]

Things started to get out of control when insisting on licenses instead of offering some will for cooperation

As it was I who was mentioning the licence issue I had better make something clear. I am not associated with the fork at all - all I was offering was advice on the legality of licence use.

[WebBird]

Ryan, nice to meet you!

I think this thread shows a great discrepancy in the intentions of the Pacer Fork authors. They want the WB community to support their fork, well, they need the community to do so. But they don't seem to be willing to give the same goodwill back to the community.

There was a good reason to request the removal of EasyMenu from Pacer: That time, it seemed that they had stolen the WB Portable Logo for their CMS. (It's a strange behaviour, anyway, to not create a very new logo for something distributed under a very new name, too. It leaves a bad flavour.)
Of course, I was proud to see that EM was chosen to be bundled into another CMS. If the response to my request would have been less unkind, that guys would have proven that the misuse of the logo was a mistake. All they've proven instead is that they don't want to cooperate with the community. (Only as far as it's to their own benefit.) That's very annoying.

I'm sure no one - especially not me - wanted to start a "religious war" here. Things started to get out of control when insisting on licenses instead of offering some will for cooperation. I'm sure the community will support WB Forks the same way it is supporting WB itself - but this is not the right way to introduce a fork. I think the damage that was done to Pacer is serious.

[Argos]

Exactly.
BTW, nice to see you again, Ryan.

[Ryan]

As said above, it appears that the only purpose of this post was to blatantly advertise the pacer edition. Not to provide open discussion about it, not to clarify the reasons for its existence. It seems this post is only adding to the confusion. I might not have read clearly enough, however from what I have gathered I doubt I will support future posting about this fork as all it does is seem to cause FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt).

[mysoft]

Hello,

have downloaded the Pacer Editon and gave it a try on a local webserver (XAMPP 1.7.1). Installation stocked but a colleague changed something in the install script to get it running. However, non of the Pacer Functions worked for me or my colleague. Will try it again once a more stable version gets released  .

Also looking forward to test the announced release candidate of WebsiteBaker 2.8. Good to see that things are progressing.

so long
mysoft

[sharmpro]

Hi everybody,
personally I think the discussion about the fork is a good thing! It didn't really happened when was the time to talk about the future development of WB.

And this wasn't promoted by anyone of the existing community.
May be the 'status quo' is what WB wanted.

BTW feel free to use, modify, repack, bundle and possibly make some $$ out of the modules I released for the community, I did it exactly for these porpoises.

Regards

Stefano

[Argos]

I'm someone who tried to get things moving on WB! Where was the community when the discussion about the fork took place?

Which discussion? You mean that simple post in 2008 in a forum that is not read by regular WB users? No one responded on that post, as obviously no one knew about it. I for sure didn't, and I am a forum regular.

Look, it's perfectly allright to create a fork, why not? But why didn't you try to communicate about it better? Why not introduce your team and project properly? Why not tell us clearly why you decided to create a fork, why you think it is better, why you have lost faith in the WB development and community, and what your goals are. You don't even give that basic info on the project site.

Instead you drop an announcement on the WB forum, ask people to visit the project site, and when people go there, many basic questions are not answered. And when people are a bit agitated in the forum, nothings is done to callm us down, to explain, to try to cooperate, etc. All this together doesn't really create a positive attitude towards your project and team. That's a shame, cause combined efforts to make WB better could be a good thing.

[ruebenwurzel]

@scharmpro

Feel free to express your concerns about the use of your initial idea, but please don't ask the community to stop using it!

With your decision to announce your fork in the WB Forum you accepted the discussion here about your fork. So one thing is clear, you are here in the WebsiteBaker Discussion Forum and it must be allowed a open discussion about your fork, even the opinion to not use your fork must be allowed. If you don't wanna have discussed your fork in this way, you should have not opened this thread in the WebsiteBaker Community.

And as i see on your posts it looks like you definetely not interested in any discussion. This was the same as you decided to built a fork. You didn't accept other opinions then yours, how WB should be developped further.

So WebsiteBaker will be a community Project and your fork is a product of you and JohnP. I really hoped you find back to our community, but the way you do things (not allowing TinyMCE on AMASP, using graphics without asking the developper if you are allowed using it, the handling of EasyMenu ...) shows again that you are not interested on a community. So i think you only wanna use this fantastic and helpfull community to marketing your fork.

By the way, tested your fork and i never saw a beta wich produces more errors then yours. Starting from the install script where you are not able to allow higher php versions then 5.2.6 ending with your advertised sidebar wich didn't work on all tested servers. So your announced "next level" is a deeper (a very deeper) level and definately not a higher level. I Invite alll WB users to test the fork and built their own opinion.

Matthias

[sharmpro]

Hello everybody,

I'm someone who tried to get things moving on WB! Where was the community when the discussion about the fork took place?

Only some of you, now concerned by our move, where then there.

In several month the thinking heads of WB couldn't came out with a realistic plan for a feature that could meet the 'minimum standards' to bring WB to the next level so in only 2 month and only few people involved, the Pacer Edition came to a point.

We feel sorry for the everyone feeling about  the ideas and code we picked up along the way thinking of a better use for our project than the present one on WB.
Feel free to express your concerns about the use of your initial idea, but please don't ask the community to stop using it!

The idea of a new project is (maybe) bringing some new life under the sun. It's not a war and for sure not a personal one.

As many projects start from a previous idea and code, any new developments can profit of  the 'status quo' and then proceed with new implementations. Our idea is as simple as "get the good ideas and bring up a new (possibly) better product".

I personally took some code and add my small or huge modifications to get at the end a complete new product (sometime a better one) to make available for the public and never got jealous of something ment to be public.

Having some of my work taken in consideration and even bundled in any project, actually would make me proud!

The restrictions of use of some modules I see happening now and in the near future is the opposite on what we're doing.

Regards

Stefano

[WebBird]

Maybe I should point out that this was a test.

I wanted to know how the people behind Pacer act. A fork normally has the goal to be "better" than the original, and in most cases the people who make a fork do so 'cause they don't succeed in ensuring that their ideas are really good and important. (For different reasons.) Sometimes the developer(s) of the original are no longer interested in developing, or they don't like the ideas, or they are not able to implement them, or whatever.

WB has a nice, helpful community and a (mostly) co-operative development team. But does Pacer have, too?

Doesn't look like this.

I think requesting the removal of a module (which is in beta state, just to mention it) from the bundle was a very simple test. They failed. They could have asked 'Why?'. They could have said: 'We like your work, we would be happy to bundle it. It's in your interest.' But instead, they just said: 'No, you released under GPL, end of discussion.'

So how will they act on other requests? Maybe more expensive (time consuming) ones? When asking for a backend enhancement, for example?

It's very interesting that this leads to a "political" discussion, insisting on licenses and such things. It's interesting that you're blaming _me_, telling me I shall leave the Open Source Community.

That's what I called "style".

[mickpage]

No, serious. Issuing software under a licence is not to be taken lightly.

[WebBird]

I hope you're just kidding.

[mickpage]

I will be happy sharing my work with the WB community and any other who doesn't make a difference between law and good style.

Not allowed under any Open Source Licence - you will need to move away from Open Source. See point 5 on the OpenSource website: http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd :

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

[WebBird]

I'm just not sharing my module under this name anymore. I will be happy sharing my work with the WB community and any other who doesn't make a difference between law and good style.

BTW, as far as I know, JohnP requested to not link TinyMCE on AMASP. But he's not kind enough to let others request the same from him. THAT'S a shame.

[mickpage]

That's a shame. Let's hope the rest of the WB community / developers are happy to continue sharing their good work with the Open Source community.

[WebBird]

I did not say you can't use it anymore. I'm just not going to provide it for download or to support it any more.

[mickpage]

Whilst I agree about your comment about the "style", I can't see how you can withdraw EasyMenu. You have licensed it to be used by anyone and everyone, providing they follow the licence (GPL) rules. (It's a bit like Microsoft saying everyone who has a licence for MS Office can't use it anymore. The fact that GPL licence is issued free of charge makes no difference.)
You could of course issue your next version / release of EasyMenu under a different licence, thus stopping WB and others from using your updates. This will force WB & others to update your earlier version themselves.

[WebBird]

So the easymenu is staying in place.

So I will withdraw EasyMenu from the WB community, too.

Edit: Thank you for showing your "style" to this community. I think it will not help your project, but it's your turn.

[Argos]

About wanting to know who the pacer team is download the beta version to find out give it a try don't pass judgment on something you haven't even downloaded.

 
What a silly approach.
Well, I'm not going to spend more time on this...

[johnp]

Take note EasyMenu was Developed for an open source community for the open source community to use as is... Though [EDIT by kweitzel] Link removed[/EDIT] is a forked Edition to WebsiteBaker it still under the WebsiteBaker GNU General Public License.  The Pacer Edition is released by JCWebDen.com and WebsiteBaker core is released under the GNU General Public License.

Website baker is open source community and so is the pacer edition the difference between the to versions is we have moved forward when others would not.

So the easymenu is staying in place.


Now for those out their in the Website baker community posting.

I will only say this once the logo thing with martin has been put to rest. So drop it! The team leaders knew the fork edition was coming as per the post Here and they know who they are. About wanting to know who the pacer team is download the beta version to find out give it a try don't pass judgment on something you haven't even downloaded.

JohnP

[Stefek]

Wow, I absolutely agree with you, Matthias.
Every single point.

Regards,
Stefek

[ruebenwurzel]

Hello,

just some background information about the fork. We have and we had permanentely discussions about how to develop WB in the future. Starting from the discussion about WB3 from Ryan wich is currently named EdgeCMS over if and how to use and integrate PEAR, JQuery or rewritng the whole WB core we had different opinions. Unfortunately JohnP and scharmpro only accepted their positions and due to a lack of a really developement team here in WB they decided to make a fork.

For me this fork is also a chance for WB and i hope we got in the near future a really working dev-team wich again discuss all posibilities of the future of WB and also try's to get people like JohnP and scharmpro back to here. To get WB forward we should not battle against us self or people who try to make WB better and better, even if we have personally another opinion. Our target must be to bundle all good devs in dev-team where they can dicuss and decide.

Matthias