Midgard releases, marketing and documentation
-
Henri Bergius
Midgard releases, marketing and documentation
Tue July 01 2008 10:32:21 UTCHi, all
I wrote a long post about the challenges we currently have in
Midgard's marketing and development process, and included some
suggestions on how to fix the situation:
http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/midgard_releases_and_marketing.html
Some discussion would be appreciated :-)
I'd especially like to hear from Andreas Flack about the Midgard wiki stuff...
--
Henri Bergius
Motorcycle Adventures and Free Software
http://bergie.iki.fi/
Skype: henribergius
Jabber: henri.bergius@gmail.com
Jaiku: http://bergie.jaiku.com/
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Re: [midgard-dev] Midgard releases, marketing and documentation
Tue July 01 2008 11:29:41 UTCHenri Bergius writes:
> Hi, all
Hi!
> I wrote a long post about the challenges we currently have in
> Midgard's marketing and development process, and included some
> suggestions on how to fix the situation:
>
> http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/midgard_releases_and_marketing.html
Shouldn't we make clear distinction for midgard/midcom/othertools ?
There's one for Zope and Plone, or Horde and IMP.
Basically we could name it 'Midgard Platform'. Midcom releases could be
independent
from Midgard ones, once we can work with Midgard2 branches only.
Piotras
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Re: [midgard-dev] Midgard releases, marketing and documentation
Tue July 01 2008 12:06:11 UTCHi,
On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 2:29 PM, Piotr Pokora <piotrek.pokora@gmail.com> wrote:
> Shouldn't we make clear distinction for midgard/midcom/othertools ?
> There's one for Zope and Plone, or Horde and IMP.
>
> Basically we could name it 'Midgard Platform'. Midcom releases could be
> independent from Midgard ones, once we can work with Midgard2 branches only.
Yes, that is one idea:
* MidCOM MVC framework 2.9 for Midgard Platform 1.9
* MidCOM MVC framework 3.0 for Midgard Platform 2.0
But if we separate MidCOM, components, and Midgard itself, then where
does the CMS step into the picture? CMS needs several things:
* Midgard Platform
* MidCOM MVC framework
* a set of components and templates
* tool for creating hosts
I guess that could just mean renaming "midgard-data" to "Midgard CMS"
or maybe "Aegir CMS", and making it depend on Midgard Platform, MidCOM
MVC Framework, some components and provide a data installer would be
possible.
This would also be good in the sense that users could pick only the
levels of the Midgard ecosystem they need. Something like:
* Desktop app developers (like Piotras or Everaldo): Midgard Platform,
and possibly a language binding
* Web app developers (like Tero): MidCOM MVC framework and Midgard
Platform for PHP
* Web site developers and end-users (like us): CMS
In any case, at most the name "Midgard" should IMO be used only with
the community and the Platform. MidCOM has its own name, and CMS could
reuse the old Aegir name ("Aegir CMS for Midgard Platform").
> Piotras
/Bergie
--
Henri Bergius
Motorcycle Adventures and Free Software
http://bergie.iki.fi/
Skype: henribergius
Jabber: henri.bergius@gmail.com
Jaiku: http://bergie.jaiku.com/
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Re: [midgard-dev] Midgard releases, marketing and documentation
Tue July 01 2008 12:53:20 UTCHenri Bergius writes:
> Hi,
Hi!
> I guess that could just mean renaming "midgard-data" to "Midgard CMS"
> or maybe "Aegir CMS", and making it depend on Midgard Platform, MidCOM
> MVC Framework, some components and provide a data installer would be
> possible.
> In any case, at most the name "Midgard" should IMO be used only with
> the community and the Platform. MidCOM has its own name, and CMS could
> reuse the old Aegir name ("Aegir CMS for Midgard Platform").
Sounds like a revolution but I think I like the idea :)
The "commercial" part would really focus on Aegir and MidCOM and maybe
other tools.
Piotras
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Re: [midgard-dev] Midgard releases, marketing and documentation
Tue July 01 2008 16:57:47 UTC> Hi, all
Hi,
> I wrote a long post about the challenges we currently have in
> Midgard's marketing and development process, and included some
> suggestions on how to fix the situation:
I fully support your point. Obvoiusly there is an urge to split bricks and separate products because of few objectives. First, the complex architechture is a no-way barrier for new users. They got confused about what they really shoould fetch and install to get their ideas realized.
Midgard-lib, Midgard CMS, MidCOM MVC and finally MidCOM components. Hey, how about non MidCOM appliance? We quitly pass this by and there is a great field to encourage users to write their own Midgard driven apps.
Formerly we supported different projects based on midgard-lib. All op them were web-based as that was the nature of Midgaird itself. But now, with Midgard 2 we reach desktop field so the possibilitied for Midgard to grow are dbled.
Taking that, the docs subsystem should also be divesified to cover bricks aspects and area of implementation together with appropriate linkage between them. Each developer should be *obligued* to provide an user and developer guide to his code. I believe in your skills and by default I know that your invetions are good, but it takes sometimes months for me to read the code and *understand* what it does, how it works and how I can use it for my needs.
Summarizing, Midgard community should fully support Midgard library, MidCOM MVC, core MidCOM compoenents and Midgard CMS. This means parallelized releases and all you said. Other fileds, I'd say utilitary, shoudl be covered by developers themselves and I like the idea of Maemo repository for that.
As for marketing in its pure manner, since we aim to compete Drupals and Plone we needa PR stuff, so the library of Midgard driven software would be a nice asset to prove that ppl can built as reliable apps on Midgard as they can on other platforms. Or even better.
BR
Solt
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Re: [midgard-dev] Midgard releases, marketing and documentation
Tue July 01 2008 17:08:14 UTCHi,
>> I guess that could just mean renaming "midgard-data" to "Midgard CMS"
>> or maybe "Aegir CMS", and making it depend on Midgard Platform, MidCOM
>> MVC Framework, some components and provide a data installer would be
>> possible.
>
>> In any case, at most the name "Midgard" should IMO be used only with
>> the community and the Platform. MidCOM has its own name, and CMS could
>> reuse the old Aegir name ("Aegir CMS for Midgard Platform").
>
> Sounds like a revolution but I think I like the idea :)
> The "commercial" part would really focus on Aegir and MidCOM and maybe
> other tools.
Even if you write a free sofware you need a buisiness approach to make it popular. And remeber that software is not for developers and techie guys. It is for end users to letthem realize dreams. So everytime it is high level apps and UIs that are published with a lot of noise because these are thigns that we 'sell'. Libraries underneath are highly more important but awfully boooring to end users, so ppl rhather do not put a stress on releasing a lib-something.
They rather say " Hey ppl!!! We just relesaed new version of All-having Masta Great Tool that will make your life easier, wife prettier, account balance bigger fon no effort. [bla bla bla]. Along with this release we improve also undelying library lib-something".
And that's marketing. You sell the pretty box howver the real pearl in hidden deep inside :)
Solt
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Re: [midgard-dev] Midgard releases, marketing and documentation
Tue July 01 2008 18:59:18 UTCHi!
About the midgardwiki: Please feel free to copy anything you find
interesting to the main documentation. As far as merging the two into
one site is concerned, I'm a bit skeptical: The reason I started this
wiki was that at the time, m-p.org had really long downtimes, so
effectively, there was no way to get any info on midgard except for
Google cache, and that didn't work all the time, either. If you would
merge the two sites into one, there'd be a single point of failure again.
Also, the reason why I kept maintaining the page (at least to a certain
degree...) was that I find the mediawiki software more convenient than
n.n.wiki (all main functions are accessible without navigating expanding
toolbars, RCS diffs are more meaningful, load times are way shorter,
stuff like rollbacks require less clicks, templates can be edited
without special privileges, it has a search function, mediawiki syntax
is more powerful and more intuitive than markdown (IMHO) and so on). For
PR reasons, I guess it would be bad not to use n.n.wiki on m-p.org (and
also quite complicated to migrate the content...), so for now, I think
I'll keep my wiki online.
Bye,
Andreas
Henri Bergius schrieb:
> Hi, all
>
> I wrote a long post about the challenges we currently have in
> Midgard's marketing and development process, and included some
> suggestions on how to fix the situation:
>
> http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/midgard_releases_and_marketing.html
>
> Some discussion would be appreciated :-)
>
> I'd especially like to hear from Andreas Flack about the Midgard wiki stuff...
>
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Re: [midgard-dev] Midgard releases, marketing and documentation
Tue July 01 2008 19:13:55 UTCHenri Bergius schrieb:
> Hi,
>
> On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 2:29 PM, Piotr Pokora <piotrek.pokora@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Shouldn't we make clear distinction for midgard/midcom/othertools ?
>> There's one for Zope and Plone, or Horde and IMP.
>>
>> Basically we could name it 'Midgard Platform'. Midcom releases could be
>> independent from Midgard ones, once we can work with Midgard2 branches only.
>
> Yes, that is one idea:
>
> * MidCOM MVC framework 2.9 for Midgard Platform 1.9
> * MidCOM MVC framework 3.0 for Midgard Platform 2.0
>
> But if we separate MidCOM, components, and Midgard itself, then where
> does the CMS step into the picture? CMS needs several things:
>
> * Midgard Platform
> * MidCOM MVC framework
> * a set of components and templates
> * tool for creating hosts
>
> I guess that could just mean renaming "midgard-data" to "Midgard CMS"
> or maybe "Aegir CMS", and making it depend on Midgard Platform, MidCOM
> MVC Framework, some components and provide a data installer would be
> possible.
>
> This would also be good in the sense that users could pick only the
> levels of the Midgard ecosystem they need. Something like:
>
> * Desktop app developers (like Piotras or Everaldo): Midgard Platform,
> and possibly a language binding
> * Web app developers (like Tero): MidCOM MVC framework and Midgard
> Platform for PHP
> * Web site developers and end-users (like us): CMS
>
> In any case, at most the name "Midgard" should IMO be used only with
> the community and the Platform. MidCOM has its own name, and CMS could
> reuse the old Aegir name ("Aegir CMS for Midgard Platform").
But isn't re-using an old name confusing as well? I mean, from what I
can tell, Aegir 1.x is an administration frontend for the Midgard (1.x)
CMS (to my knowledge, there was nothing like mgdschema back then and all
the object types dealt with typical CMS needs). So saying Aegir 2 (or
however it might then be called) is a CMS on top of Midgard Platform is
confusing as well, since it somehow moves the CMS from Midgard to Aegir.
Also (sorry if I'm a bit slow today), what exactly would "CMS" contain?
The management interface is called Asgard 2, the infrastructure is
Midgard/MidCOM and the components are separate entities as well. Am I to
understand that it's just the name of the package, like "Eclipse for
Java"/"Eclipse Classic"?
But speaking of Aegir: I still think there should be a real Aegir
successor, i.e. a CMS administration interface. I was told here that
Asgard is only meant to be a low-level admin interface, but a high-level
interface for site managers and content authors is still painfully
missing. I know you guys like your floating toolbar, but it is similar
to the floating menu of a media player, where what editors/site managers
really need is something like Final Cut Pro (in this metaphor, Asgard
would be the hex editor, I guess :-).
Bye,
Andreas
>
>> Piotras
>
> /Bergie
>
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Re: [midgard-dev] Midgard releases, marketing and documentation
Tue July 01 2008 19:29:03 UTColga@olga.pl schrieb:
>> Hi, all
>
> Hi,
>
>> I wrote a long post about the challenges we currently have in
>> Midgard's marketing and development process, and included some
>> suggestions on how to fix the situation:
>
> I fully support your point. Obvoiusly there is an urge to split bricks and separate products because of few objectives. First, the complex architechture is a no-way barrier for new users. They got confused about what they really shoould fetch and install to get their ideas realized.
>
> Midgard-lib, Midgard CMS, MidCOM MVC and finally MidCOM components. Hey, how about non MidCOM appliance? We quitly pass this by and there is a great field to encourage users to write their own Midgard driven apps.
>
> Formerly we supported different projects based on midgard-lib. All op them were web-based as that was the nature of Midgaird itself. But now, with Midgard 2 we reach desktop field so the possibilitied for Midgard to grow are dbled.
>
> Taking that, the docs subsystem should also be divesified to cover bricks aspects and area of implementation together with appropriate linkage between them. Each developer should be *obligued* to provide an user and developer guide to his code. I believe in your skills and by default I know that your invetions are good, but it takes sometimes months for me to read the code and *understand* what it does, how it works and how I can use it for my needs.
Some projects include the website contents into their revision control
system. Maybe this could work for Midgard as well. The advantage would
be that you could write the documentation without leaving your coding
environment. Maybe this also could be used to separate docs for
different software versions, aussiming there's a branch or tag created
for each of them.
>
> Summarizing, Midgard community should fully support Midgard library, MidCOM MVC, core MidCOM compoenents and Midgard CMS. This means parallelized releases and all you said. Other fileds, I'd say utilitary, shoudl be covered by developers themselves and I like the idea of Maemo repository for that.
>
the question is if the Midgard community has enough resources to pull
this off. If you look at the current state of affairs, where the task
was just to spread/document/support Midgard/MidCOM usage in web sites, I
think the results are suboptimal at best. I don't know about others, but
I myself don't know the first thing about desktop application
development and sure as hell don't hae any time to learn about it. In an
ideal world, there should be a desktop application team and a web
application team, and both of them should complain to the Midgard core
team all the time :-)
> As for marketing in its pure manner, since we aim to compete Drupals and Plone we needa PR stuff, so the library of Midgard driven software would be a nice asset to prove that ppl can built as reliable apps on Midgard as they can on other platforms. Or even better.
>
Maybe a demo site could be a first step here (I know, this idea cropped
up before, but I thought I'd mention it anyways). Also, some current
tutorials or case studies would be nice
> BR
> Solt
>
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Re: [midgard-dev] Midgard releases, marketing and documentation
Tue July 01 2008 20:11:38 UTColga@olga.pl writes:
> Hi,
Hi!
>>> In any case, at most the name "Midgard" should IMO be used only with
>>> the community and the Platform. MidCOM has its own name, and CMS could
>>> reuse the old Aegir name ("Aegir CMS for Midgard Platform").
>> Sounds like a revolution but I think I like the idea :)
>> The "commercial" part would really focus on Aegir and MidCOM and maybe
>> other tools.
> They rather say " Hey ppl!!! We just relesaed new version of All-having Masta Great Tool that will make your life easier, wife prettier, account balance bigger fon no effort. [bla bla bla]. Along with this release we improve also undelying library lib-something".
Yes. That's why I suggested to publish midcom's ( or event its
components' ) release notes on sites like cmsmatrix. Current Midgard
release notes published here and there won't benefit as much as CMS'es
parts would. Sad to say but I as person involved in midgard/midcom
development do not notice Midcom releases.
Piotras
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