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