Separation of CMSMS MLE Fork from cmsmadesimple.org

[cyberman]

In my opinion the incitement to Alby to separate MLE with another name is devilish.

It makes a big difference to maintain only a forge project and moderate a single forum board instead to have an own website, own forum, own forge, own wiki, own documentation, own api, own translators and not to the last own developers.

The dev team should know, what this means and that the small MLE project team have not the man power to do this. It would be more honestly to say MLE is dead instead moving responsibility to Alby.

So I can only repeat my arguments some postings ago

http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.ph ... #msg230945

If dev team wount support MLE furthermore (I know, was officially not supported, but an own forum board and project space is support too in my eyes) they should provide support/alternatives for moving MLE to native CMSms with examples, howtos, tutorials ...

Think the decision for non accepting MLE version after it exists near 3 years comes too late. Makes no sense to scare the existing MLE userbase, cause they never come back if 2.0/2.2 multilingual will be released.

[raroman]

Maybe I too will change to some other system. Where it doesn't look that someday some devs decide not to support this or that module and you're left behind just because you used it. I really like CMSMS up to now, but I'm very unsure about it at the moment.

I felt that way too, at first. But hopping off is not a brave thing to do. I think there are three options.

a) Try to give feedback/support/ideas/motivation for the Core Dev team to re-evaluate their stance to MLE in the hope that the two can be fused, rather than separated.
b) Failing that, support Alby in getting up a side project that will continue distributing the multilingual support to CMSms.
c) Wait XY months/years for CMSms 2.2 and stick with CMSms-MLE-1.8.2 until then.

My biggest hope is option a). I don't like either of the other two.

As a first step towards a):
@Dev Team: Why is MLE a FORK anyway?
A fork, in my understanding, is the result of a disagreement within the development team, leading to the project being continued in two separate directions. Each being developed independantly of the other, once they separate.
MLE, on the other hand, seems to be more of a patch. For every core release of CMSms, Alby provided a version which had his multilingual support.

Unauthorised and unsupported, yes. But still; there's a big difference between a patch and a fork, isn't there?

[sleiron]

@raroman, thanks for your thoughts!

There must have been some sort of communication problem and/or bad feelings about this MLE thing because the way some 'communication' is handled here on the forum points in that direction. I'm not a fan of interpretation, I very much like facts and open communication, but....

If you all have a short look at the About -> Dev Team page it 'still' says under Alby's profile entry that:

"....The only missing thing was the multilingual and since 2007 he's the maintainer of Multilingual Edition (MLE) of CMSMS."

This statement and additionally the fact that Alby is as a dev team member makes MLE pretty official (let's count: that's 4 years by now!).

So, on the forum it's called a fork for some time now - and nobody has a clear idea how that's come.

Why can't we have an open discussion with the dev team on the actual situation?

Questions/thoughts:
- Why has the dev team decided not to integrate Alby's code?

I think a very big part of the community (and also very active one here on the forum) is in need of the MLE Edition.

The dev team's position has by now been communicated by/through calguy in a more or less 'this is a FORK and it's UNAUTHORIZED'-manner way.
I would be interested in hearing other developer's opinions and certainly Ted's own on this.

In fact, after all this years MLE has really been tested by many* integrators and I think it IS the PREFERRED solution to use for Multilanguage-Support because it's really easy to handle page content without duplicating the page hierarchy in the backend, we all know it's not perfect but it has more advantages than downsides. (*the download numbers of the MLE package spoke for themselves)

- The roadmap of CMSMS & Multilanguage support:

I *have* read through Ted's posts about how he feels about some code in the 1.x stream and that the preferred solution would be to have the silk based 2.x stream up and running as fast as possible.

As an experienced developer I very much understand that, but I just want to give some thoughts on this:
- as much as I love starting on a green field, build a clean architecture - it's a very time-intensive project because not only you have to rewrite the code of CMSMS but additionally the framework itself is in development and therefore a moving target.

Suggestion: why not make a halt after v1.9 is released, integrate the MLE code, call it v2.0 AND THEN concentrate fully on rewriting the cms code and extending SILK.

I'm sure this will take another 2 years - but I'm not saying that because of any bad feelings or trust in the dev team, but much more out of experience with development issues in this field.

as a known character from 'Wall Street' likes to say:

"Good things, sometimes, take time" - Lou Mannheim

Honestly dev team: the success of CMSMS in the world is partly due to the MLE code. This has created such a momentum right now - this chance shouldn't be bet on.

Why can't we change the roadmap? Why not RE-think the possibilities and needs of the community? Why not let us follow WHAT you think?

thanks
Sandro

PS: I am very willing to help on this, that's why I joined the 1.9 beta testing and I'd also help on a possible MLE integrated CMSMS release.

[Gregware]

I agree at 100% with sleiron and raroman...

I'm working as web integrator in europe since 2001, and since then, only 2% of the website i've worked-on are not multilingual!

Why? because here in Europe, and particularly in my country Belgium, everything is in multilingual from jam package to any official papers...
It is impossible to get in touch with large audience without multilingualism.

Multilingual is not an option! It is an obligation

So! Think about it! CMSMS risk to loose many of fan by this separation.

Well this is my opinion, but many person from small country or multilingual country should think like me...

[moonoo]

Anyone got stats for the MLE donwload against the CORE download over a year period?

Just wanting to know really.

[seensite]

Anyone got stats for the MLE donwload against the CORE download over a year period?

Just wanting to know really.

I'd be interested too. Really.

[Cherry]

In my opinion the incitement to Alby to separate MLE with another name is devilish.


Think the decision for non accepting MLE version after it exists near 3 years comes too late. Makes no sense to scare the existing MLE userbase, cause they never come back if 2.0/2.2 multilingual will be released.

Quite my opinion!

This was something that made CMSms superior to other systems. I chose it because of that. So did many others, too. I feel sorry for Alby about this decision. He agreed to this .... maybe. But I bet there was no choice for him.

How can a dev team jump around with all its users? There were 91 000 plus downloads!

[Gregware]

Well in fact the problem is very simple for me if this is a reality!

Two possibilities:

CMSMS 2.0 is out and ready with multilingual for the first of january 2011 and it is OK
or I stop using CMSMS and I do my best to help for the new MLE project.

I realy don't have a choice... or maybe found an learn to use a new one with all the problems to keep website under MLE up to date...

Because in fact how can we guarantee the update and security issues if MLE do not persist or if thinks go in differents ways?

[alby]

To All

As you know I was approached by the CMSMS Development Team in October of 09 regarding removal of the MLE Project from the CMS Made Simple websites.  At that time I agreed that the project should be removed from there and began to arrange hosting and domain names.

Unfortunately around that time, personal and career matters changed resulting in my not having the free time that I once had to work on this project, and it stagnated.  You may have noticed that my presence has been sporadic at best.

Due to the fact that I no longer have the time or energy to work on the MLE Project, and don't see that changing in the forseeable future, also considering the fact that considerable effort will be needed to get it working properly with CMSMS 1.9, I have decided to discontinue any effort on the MLE Project, and to let it die.  I will be releasing no further versions.

I apologize for all of those that are caught in a dilema by this decision, but as with all of you my personal life takes priority over my volunteer projects like CMSMS-MLE.

To help current MLE users that may be caught in a bind, I have created a support forum for discussion of problems, a toolkit that allows reverting from MLE to the original CMSMS and migration to (future?) new modules for multilingual CMSMS site.

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

Reference site: http://www.xme.it

Alby

[Dr.CSS]

As a follower of the forum for many years the biggest problem I've seen with the MLE is 3rd party modules, a lot of the post in the MLE board are questions about getting other modules to work in a similar way as the MLE...

"I can't get XX module to do XX when using it with MLE" these were being posted in the regular boards and since it's not a CMSMS problem but something that happens when using the MLE they were being moved to that board and the developers of XX modules don't have the time to make them work with it...

I've built multilingual sites with MLE and with out it, the last one I did with out it turned out just fine, in fact I made the template and the client makes the ML pages with no problem and no assistance from me...

[calguy1000]

Would it be possible to get clarity on the whole trademark policy at all?

@moonoo, the Trademark policy is being drafted and will be presented to our partners first for review before publishing  But essentially it's a trimmed down version of the Ubuntu policy.

[moonoo]

Thanks for the update... just curious. thanks again.

[raroman]

Unfortunately around that time, personal and career matters changed resulting in my not having the free time that I once had to work on this project, and it stagnated.  You may have noticed that my presence has been sporadic at best.

Due to the fact that I no longer have the time or energy to work on the MLE Project, and don't see that changing in the forseeable future, also considering the fact that considerable effort will be needed to get it working properly with CMSMS 1.9, I have decided to discontinue any effort on the MLE Project, and to let it die.  I will be releasing no further versions.

Dear Alby
This will come as a shock to many users.
First of all, I sincerely feel sorry that you're facing hardships in your personal life. I know how much effort you have put into MLE and that you would not "throw" it away lightly.

Of course, we will respect your decision and I pray that no one will be reckless enough to voice a grudge against you. Your contribution has been invaluable! Thank you so much!

This message kind of annihilates the hopes for CMSMS+MLE for the foreseeable future. My assumptions in my earlier posts always relied on the fact that we could have you as our lead developer, in- or outside CMSMS. I don't suppose there's someone capable and willing to take over from here...?

I will continue the discussion on xme.it, hopefully with experts such as sleiron. But the link there makes me sad "Uninstalling MLE"   

[tyman00]

There were a lot of assumptions in this topic...

[JeremyBASS]

It may not be much but I have started a basic solution I hope will work for most.. here is the start... it's not pretty at all yet.. but you should get the idea. You will have a page by page choice on what langs you want and you can set blocks up to be by lang or for all..

http://screencast.com/t/C4JHEvqwNb

all that is used in tha template is ..

{content}
{content block='test' assign='testBlock'}
{$testBlock}


that was it.. well and the choices of langs. you make as the base set.

It's a mod based off the AdvancedContent module that I put some work into and NaN has done a great job at bringing up.  You can find it here.. http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/projects/langops

Any one that is interested in helping would be welcomed and will speed it up, just contact me.. But I'll try to get it out as soon as I can (few weeks may-be?) thou not promises that it'll be your perfect replacement.  Hopefully with the right input back we can get you guys something good to use.

Cheers -Jeremy