Joomla! is fast becoming a thorn

Honestly, even with the coming of Joomla 1.6 and the enormous effort by the COMMUNITY of developers to make this the best Joomla! yet, my enthusiasm keeps fading on a daily basis, and its quickly being replaced with a feeling of frustration and “what’s the point”. I should have written this post way back in September just before it was time to go back into my studies, just to explain to those who have followed and encourage my work, understand why I almost just want to disappear from the Joomla community, wishing I never ventured. I understand that disappearing will not help me, it will not help those who are greatly interested in Joomunity, now Tuiyo (read on for why the name change, and the only reason why i will keep developing this component) project.

All i wanted to do was write code, when my head gets too bugged down with reading about genes, etc; there is and was no secret agenda, its not about making any particular name for myself, or get an award, or making any financial gain, believe it or not, i write code just as a getaway from the things i do all the time. To me this has been a hobby for the last six years and nothing more. I try to avoid where possible the narcissistic ideology that is deeply buried within the Joomla “leadership”, which, like Arno Ziljstra i will blame, but not condemn (for i am probably not a leadership guru either).

Three years ago,I was looking for a good CMS for this very blog, to write about my scientific career and simply to share stuff with my friends. Ideally it had to be written in PHP, a web technology which by this time I had been working with for nearly 3 years, together with a few others. I did not have to do an extra work on the CMS, because i simply did not have time, as you will imagine Joomla was top on the list. Yes, i should have gone WordPress or Drupal, as most of my friends and colleagues, but Joomla to me was fresh, the buzz was hot in 2005/2006, it seemed like it will be a matter of everything is ready for you, just use it and get on! More still this drstonyhills.com was fast becoming a community of friends, than a personal career blog, so i needed to adapt. There popped community builder on my radar. Everything seemed almost perfect, The enthusiasm was high, I became very involved in the Joomla community, joined Rockettheme, joined JoomlArt. Especially the forums at rockettheme, they just make you love Joomla. I used only about three templates from RT in my ~2.5 year membership, but the COMMUNITY at RT was more than just templates, they gave you a sense of belonging, a sense of participation. I made a few great friends out there. Kuddos to Andy on such a great  community.

Just as a child who sets out on their first few steps, after a year of crawling, the atmosphere at 60cm above the ground is different that that at 30cm, the enthusiasm is great, you soon learn, not just to walk, but to run, to play etc. Ironically though, unlike when you crawled you quickly realize the boundaries, the stumbling blocks, etc. It did not take me long to realize the limitation of community builder, and before i could think, i began modifying it. The result was the start of what Joomunity is all about today.I am not going to repeat that story as those who’ve been here since then understand, but i feel compelled to reconsider my mission, in a desperate bit do rekindle my enthusiasm (now almost killed) in Joomla. Remember this set out, to provide a “free solution for,  building communities” with Joomla, represented in the slogan “…building communities”. I am quickly realizing that CMS that a bundled in a cog of leadership jujistu, is not the best choice for people who just want to have fun. Yes leadership is important, I know i fail bad when it comes to that, but seriously Joomla!’s leadership is another level.

Forgive me if i am ignorant, but i must admit, even as i say Joomla leadership, i almost don’t know what it is, or who it is, or what they do. All i know is the odd person, showing up here and there, or the odd email shooting you down for using ‘Joo’ in your component or domain name. Is this the only matter on the openSourceMatters agenda? Maybe, the whole problem is, i am expecting something from a leadership that , either does not exists, or has a different agenda and interest? Who leads Joomla? If there is any solace to find from a potential answer to this question, i had to go find out exactly. My entrance into the Joomla scène shortly after the Mambo, Joomla, Miro saga, does me a disservice, but if OpenSourceMatters are the new ‘leaders’ of Joomla then surely i don’t know what their mission is. I can almost feel the effect of expressed genes in my cells when i read “….to serve the financial and legal interests of the Joomla project….”. Reading this makes me think that the Joomla project is not a community run project, but these people are using the community of developer to serve their own financial and legal interest. If openSourceMatters really cared about its community, then the communities interest will be openSourceMatters interest. Yes they argue that if you fail to protect your trademark you’ll soon realize you don’t own it, but the question is who owns it in the first place?

Worryingly, the people at the fore front on Joomla community, Are not listed on the OSM board, I am talking about people like Andrew Eddie (didn’t he resign in 2006?), Johan Janssens, who are at the fore front, pushing a Joomla 1.6 iteration, Amy Stephen whom to the best of my knowledge is holding what is left of the community together (sadly not even on a Joomla hosted site), and many others who are doing their own bit to make joomla the best CMS out there.. is this some kind of hierarchy? If there is anybody to serve the interest of Joomla community it should be these developers and community cordinators. Like i said maybe there is some other leadership i don’t know off. But my head hurts thinking of the whole soup.

Joomunity to Tuiyo is another story i owe an explanation for. First off i know i have made serious mistakes with Joomunity. With Tuiyo, the plan is to take the project in a different direction, 100% opensource with a Swiss style government. Its not my intention to be president of a Tuiyo ‘matters’ board or anything like that. I am nearly already exhausted with the cost, frustration and criticism on this project. People to assume such roles and binding policies with the community it serves will be drafted when the time comes. Once its complete, this project will be hosted on Google code,

So then why a name change? Back in early-mid 2008 i received an email from some one, can’t remember who, but it was signed ‘president of OSM’. How i wish i hadn’t deleted that particular email the day i got it. Basically it asked me to remove the trademark symbol(tm) on the Joomunity logo because it was in violation of the Joomla rules, terms or whatever unknown, unreferenced Joomla policy, drafted behind close doors by people claiming to have the interest of the ‘community project’ at heart. All this because i used ‘Joo’ in Joomunity?. No big deal, I just had to find out the legal implications of the trade mark symbol, because i honestly did not want any legal jujitsu either. After discussing the issue with many others, and despite being advised, the contrary, i.e i am not obliged by any law to take it off (Maybe OSM should consider suing FusionGarage for using JooJoo as the name of their unfortunate tablet device). Because this component was being written for the Joomla community i complied. The next morning ™ disappeared from the logo and all referenced Joomunity docs. As though that were not enough, i received another email telling me i needed permission to use MY domain name JOOMUNITY.ORG and that i had to fill a form on OSM website to obtain permission, to comply with yet unreferenced Joomla policy. By this point i almost feel like maybe i am not a member of this community or something as i don’t know of such rules. By this time you get a very alienating type feeling; but then if you have complied with the first, why not comply with the second? There went my request, form completed and sent. If you want to believe the true meaning of a joke, then if you have not done this compliance request form thing, go try it out now. Sadly though, even as i speak, its been nearly a year, and i have not received any reply nor the required permission to use the Joomunity name or logo. So what was this all about?

The sense of non belonging, meant i just dumped Joomunity all together. It was so annoying, i contemplated going solo, writing a standalone CMS with plugs to Joomla! This was a serious alternative, work had already began and we decided to rename to YOO- rather than JOO-, I spoke to a lot of people (including several Joomla developers who were going through the same thorny issues) about this and i think it was the best chance yet to salvage what was becoming a lost opportunity, and frustration. But legal quagmires again meant, YOO- died even before it was born, but the code base was available. Now what? All this code on my computer. A friend of mine, was working on a PHP project which he had to submit for an assignment, and basically he had a serious community building initiative going his way and needed help. By this time i needed something to keep me excited and i jumped on the bandwagon. It was proving to be the start of yet another amazing time. The only problem was i had emails banging in my head, “where is joomunity ?”. Honestly speaking there is another beta (beta 4) which still sits on my computer as i speak, but the project i was working on now, with my friend was so much better so the plan was, okay, although it is standalone now, i could force this into Joomla component somehow. And that has successfully been achieved in what is now Tuiyo! I must say Tuiyo is not a bridge, it a fully functional Native joomla component, which started as a standalone component.

Now what? Joomunity, Yoonity, Tuiyo all sitting on my computer, its like a real serious thorn in my flesh. One part of me feels i have let the people who so encouraged this effort down, and makes me want to get it out there like now, The other part of me is extremely frustrated with Joomla! i even considered Drupal (not like it will be any better there). The only reason why i will release this product is because I am almost paralysed by that responsibility. It will be impossible for me to continue with Joomla. Once this is released, It will be handed over to people who care much about this. Although i will be at hand in the first few months (max a year) to support the product. I sincerely apologise to all those who have been waiting for so long, yet are being very loyal. I also applaud your understanding that with the time i have to my studies (research), there is virtually no time to be arguing with the Joomla leadership (if at all any at all). Some people argue that there is a change in the way things are going for Joomla. i.e, decision making is becoming more open, and participation in the project is becoming more open, yes it is, but OSM should not think it can use its community to satisfy its own interest. As far as i am away, the majority of people who care a lot about Joomla, have little or no financial interest or personal gain in this project. Maybe their mission is a little misguided. And unless they reconsider the position of the COMMUNITY in the whole project, a repeat of the Mambo, Miro, Joomla saga, could be reality (Or maybe their whole aim is to prevent such a thing from happening again? ). Stealing something and preventing others form stealing from you is NOT open source. That defines the capital joke that is OSM.

Like i said on altogetherasawhole.com, maybe i should have stuck to what i do best, and not let my hobby become a thorny worry. I wish the Joomla group? team? foundation? corporation? all the best!