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HomeHomeOur CommunityOur CommunityGeneral Discuss...General Discuss...Why is DotNetNuke giving itself a black eyeWhy is DotNetNuke giving itself a black eye
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8/19/2008 2:44 AM
 

Joe Brinkman wrote
 

I would like to respond to a few items in this thread:

"Comms has been the biggest failing of the core project management."
I think everyone, including the core team would agree that communications has been, and continues to be a challenge.  This is not unique to DotNetNuke and is one of the issues faced by many Open Source projects.  We constantly work on this, but in the absence of a way to bring in dedicated resources to handle this aspect of the project it will remain an area of challenge for us in the near future.  I would hope that people have seen some improvement over the last 2 years, but it is certainly no where near where it needs to be.  We working to change this but know that we still have a ways to go.

There are lots of areas where DotNetNuke can be improved.  The same is true of any project and company.  We work hard every day and hope that at the end of the week we have made progress in the right direction.  While not always at the pace everyone would like, including ourselves, we hope that people are seeing progress being made.  We appreciate comments and suggestions made in the spirit of trying to help the project, however, working to actually fix problem areas is more appreciated.  There are thousands of people who are willing to tell you how you are screwing up.  Unfortunately there have only been a few dozen who have truly been willing to step up and do anything substantive to help improve things.  Will you be one of the thousands, or will you be one of the few who truly make DNN run?

All due respect, but the above is the same old answer that got these aspects of the project to where they are now and isn't going to lead it anywhere else. It works for code, but not for comms.

There are plenty of people out here with project management, people management, marketing and communications experience who have offered to help over the years, but there is no doorway and no slot for them in the entirely developer-oriented and developer-managed project framework.

Comms is not a development project, and it is most certainly not another module. Someone in the team will eventually have to realise this and create new doorways, new slots, for these skills... and then let those people carry out their work as specialists in their fields, not as people answerable to yet more developers. (People might be able to tell that developers are my pet peeve. I have always worked on the business side of IT and there is simply no case for coders or IT staff to manage, let alone own, the comms, the marketing, the strategic purpose and direction of any IT project.)

What I've been watching here over the years is Shawn and a couple of others slowly learning to appreciate the need for these outside skills, but failing to bring them in. Whatever the reasons, simply sitting tight with the existing crew and framework isn't going to make it happen... and telling people to step up and contribute is a dead-end request when there is nowhere to contribute the skills, nor anyone with the proper skills to manage them.

I'll leave my rant at that.

Rob

 
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8/19/2008 6:00 AM
 

As the one who started this thread I don't want to see these discussions end. They have gotten less constructive at times, but overall I think there is a clear constructive message that for the good of DNN change is need soon.

Even if this thread dies, Iknow another will soon come to take it's place unless things change.

 

Leazon wrote

With regards to the skins - why not have a skin contest - with the top five being included in the release??  Why should the core team spend time on this when there are huge numbers of skin developers, both commercial and individual, who could do this and would love to contribute?? (either for monetary gain - commercial developers or bragging rights - individual developers)

On a specific note I was going to post about the skins for 5.0, but Leazon beat me to it. I was thinking the same thing. Set the standards high-XHTML and 508 and all that. I am sure skin developers would love advertisment or braggin rights.

 
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8/19/2008 7:23 AM
 

Good luck:)

 
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8/19/2008 8:29 AM
 

Well, I guess I lied.  I just couldn't pull myself away.  :D

I think that the skinning contest would be a great idea as well.  What I do find odd though is that one of the much earlier versions of DotNetNuke actually had a skin or two bundled in with it that was not made by the Corp.  I'm not sure, but I think T-WORX made them (although I'm not 100% positive).

I think the problem that the Corp will face if it has a problem is the "contribution" side of things.  When I was on the team, if you had any code that you wanted to contribute, you had to sign a document granting the Corp "co-ownership" to the code.  (note: "Co-ownership" might be the wrong term, but essentially the documents give the Corp just as much "ownership" to the code as the code-author themself).  The problem with that is that, while the DotNetNuke community could really benefit from some great free skins, any good skin designer is going to want mucho denero for giving away a skin for free, or at least advertising info in the skin.  I doubt that the Corp is going to let themselves rely on the community for that.  It would definately help the product and it would definately benefit the community, but from a business valuation perspective, it would hurt the corp because a potential investor would say "You have to rely on volunteers to maintain your product.  That isn't a very sustainable business model."

DNNBlue used to cause such a ruckus with new customers that we went out and struck a deal with a skin design company.  Now, every PowerDNN customer is pre-installed with one of their skins.  Instead of having the default template, we use a custom-built template for this skin.  One of the big header items in our teamplate is a big "Thank You" to the design company that contributed the skin.  For us, we don't even care because it is helping sooo many of our customers out, but I think that's a difference between the Corp and us.  All of our money comes from providing support.  I don't know for sure, but I'd guess that the Corp makes most of their money from advertising given the number of ads on DotNetNuke and the fact that each banner costs $1000/mo and those little button ads in the default install cost $15,000/year.

By the way, I'm not meaning to rag on the corp about business valuations.  We've had to deal with that at PowerDNN as well.  In one conversation, we were told "You're telling me that the entire PowerDNN brand is focused on providing support for a product that is run by a "co-op" of volunteers and has a management team I've never heard of before?  That sounds extremely risky."

 

 
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8/19/2008 8:45 AM
 

Just in case you were interested... here's what our default install looks like...

 
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