eZ Publish: to fork or not to fork
January 31st, 2009
The next weeks will be my last ones as employee of eZ Systems Belgium. About 3 months ago I finally came to this decision, considering it for a few months already. Turning around such pages in one’s life comes with many mixed thoughts and feelings.
As initiator of the eZ Publish PHP 5-compatible community fork, and later on – as employee of eZ Systems – one of the driving forces behind eZ Publish 4 , I still feel closely connected to the eZ Publish codebase though. Unfortunately during the last one and a half year, very less happened to this code base. eZ Systems’ focus changed a lot, maybe will change again in the future, but that’s unpredictable, it remains a company wich has as goals – like about each company – to be profitable.
I feel it’s time to wonder, if it isn’t time for a community-driven fork of eZ Publish, which can evolve much faster than the current product, as there are too many commercial factors having to be taken into account for it.
Some of the most important challenges I see:
technical:
- a healthy set of core features: don’t provide masses of features in the core that are seldom used, instead provide enough hooks for extensions to cooperate with the core
- easier installation/update of the CMS
- overhaul of package/extension management: easier installation/update
social:
- open communication (remember “share your information”?)
- allow everybody to collaborate
- democratic decision making
Maybe, most of these considerations are also made for Project V, which would be the next generation of eZ Publish, rewritten from scratch. Honestly, I don’t believe in it. So far, not much details nor an estimated time of arrival have been made publicly available. The eZ Systems roadmap is painfully silent about it, as well are the forums.
Please, share your information! Put your thoughts as a comment here 
Entry Filed under: eZ Publish
18 Comments Add your own
1. Damien | February 1st, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Hi Kristof
It’s a sad news
For me, the most important (and the most frustrating) issue is probably to not be able to contribute more to eZ Publish even for the smallest changes… Nevertheless, I don’t think that a fork is a real solution, I hope project V would allow more community implication.
2. Stéphane B | February 1st, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Hello Kristof,
Good luck for the future. Thank you for you help in the eZ forum. For me, the big problem with eZ System it’s there is not enough good technical about core’s eZ publish.
Cheers.
Stéphane.
3. Mohamed Karnichi | February 1st, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Hello Kristof,
I am both surprised and sad at the announcement of your departure from ezsystems.
ezpublish undergoes significant improvements since the first version I used 3.6. Indeed, like all people using this CMS daily in their work, I am heartened by the announcement of the next major evolution of ezpublish : the project V, that will provide lot of both functional and technical improvements.
I agree with you that the core code has not changed much. And that there still some lacks from the start as the workflow engine or the privation of triggers for some content actions (like delete) is just painful.
Anyway, If the fork is designed to accelerate the development of the project to ezpublish V I would totally agree, and participate. But if it is just to rebuild the kernel by adding hooks: there is already a CMS that does very well: drupal.
If there really projects that require a fork at this time I will vote mostly for forking ezfind and ezflow.
thanks
4. Yannick Komotir | February 2nd, 2009 at 9:58 am
Hi Kristoof , this makes me very sad given all your contribution on this community. Good luck to you!
5. Bertrand | February 2nd, 2009 at 11:16 am
A well expected post Kristof… I honestly hope we’ll all find out a fork is not necessary here.
A small question to Mohamed: why do you think a fork of ezfind is required ? I’d really be interested in answers to this question…
6. Hans Melis | February 2nd, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Hi Kristof
I’m not too surprised by this news. What you mention in your post is a feeling I’m familiar with. I also voiced my concerns in the forums a few months ago [1]. But as we’ve come to expect lately, no follow-up communication by eZ Systems has been issued.
I don’t know if a fork is needed, but a big change in the development and release cycle is absolutely needed. At this rate, eZ Publish isn’t moving anywhere and you’re pretty much damned if you’re hit by a bug and you can’t fix it yourself.
Anyways, I wish you all the best with your future undertakings whatever they may be.
[1]: http://ez.no/developer/forum/general/ez_sytems_is_hiding_information_from_its_community#msg177517
–
Hans
7. Mohamed Karnichi | February 2nd, 2009 at 8:33 pm
@Bertrand
Forget my comment about ezfind …
when I say “fork”: I am just referring to the fork of kristof that led to port ezpublish to php5 : a way to accelerate the releases cycle. So only if they are incorporated by ezsystems.
Otherwise, I see no utility to fork :
ezpublish strength lies in its power , ezsystems vision and their active communication around it.
Med
8. Piotrek Karaś | February 3rd, 2009 at 10:33 pm
So you are doing as you have expected in one of ez.no forum posts…
I find your leaving eZ Systems very worrying as it is the departure of one of the people who seemed to have a substantial influence on both eZ Publish moving ahead and the community having fun supporting it. I do realize, that eZ Systems consists of many people who have various responsibilities (inc. making the company profitable), but I can’t avoid the feeling that in my 2,5-year-long eZ experience I wouldn’t have seen much if it had not been for the community fork and your work.
I really hope that – when it finally reaches the surface – project V will bring eZ Systems back to the peleton, which unfortunately seems to be gradually escaping now. Like Hans said: “at this rate, eZ Publish isn’t moving anywhere and you’re pretty much damned if you’re hit by a bug and you can’t fix it yourself”. Well, I’d say it’s even worse when you realize all the limitations of the current version of eZ Publish and SOooo much community potential to fix, test, suggest, analyze that is little bored/disappointed with nothing going on.
And the challenge is getting bigger. Seems like more and more frameworks deal with all the eZ Publish headaches perfectly, and all is lacking is the “CMS” word… eZ Components seem to be a very solid foundation, let’s just hope they get put together before competition does that better or before eZ Systems fail to prove profitable… It’s all business using the genius, but I wouldn’t like the business prevent the genius from happening…
Thanks for all your support, contributions, eZPedia etc. It was great to meet you in the real and wish you all the best in the future.
9. Andrew Duck | February 5th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
It is sad to see Kristof leaving eZ Systems and even worse to see the current state of the eZ Publish release cycle.
“The eZ philosophy of openness and information sharing is still the basics guideline for the company, employees and Ecosystem” is a quote from the ez.no/company page. It is concerning to see the number of communication issues highlighted in the comments here and the lack of eZ Systems to recognise they no longer meet their own vision “Help Businesses Manage, Publish and Share information”.
With a hazy roadmap, very little public disclosure or community input being valued, a broken release cycle (especially evident in 2008) and an ever shrinking development team we have to wonder as partners, community members and clients of eZ Systems what their intent really is at this point in time. For a company who I expect to produce software it is disheartening to see development teams shrinking and the focus continually being shifted to other projects (ez flow, ez find, ez now, ez components).
I agree with Piotrek in hoping that eZ Systems recognise and deal with the underlying issues in eZ Publish before we are all forced to move on to other options that better meet the increasing needs of our clients.
10. Denis Igin | February 9th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Just to disperse all the sad comments above
The solution could be in deriving a procedure for partners to submit code to the main product, all within commercial, technical or whatever goals of eZ Systems … Bertrand?
11. Genri | February 9th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Hello, Kristoph!
Sad to hear that you are leaving.. First they sold Odessa office, now you are leaving.. Hope eZ can handle it.
Good luck in your future work!
12. Andreas Kaiser | February 10th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Hello Kristoph! Sad to hear you go…
I also think a fork is not necessary, because a lot of corporate client need a opensource product with a strong company behind.
There are very experience partners that could handle improvement in ez publish core.
I like the way typo3 seems to work together with developers. Perhaps ez system should move to a similar concept…
13. Tony Wood | February 12th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
You will be missed Kristof. You brought you own passion and energy to the eZ ecosystem.
I wish you luck and enjoyment in whatever you choose to do next.
Have fun
Tony
14. Xavier | February 16th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Hi,
What you experienced a few month ago is something I feel familiar, albeit experienced before you.
As an open source tool, I find frustrating the speed of evolutions, and yes, ez is becoming a bloatware, and less and less agile.
Might be also a lack of resources as put from ez.
Anyway, that’s been a pleasure to meet you and your work has been greatly appreciated. Keep in touch.
X+
15. Nicolas | February 24th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Hi,
As Tony said, you will be missed, both as an eZ Systems employee, and as an hyperactive community member. I second you on the fact that the community aspects of eZ’s underlying model were not dealt with diligently enough in the past months. I suspect this is due to the fact that eZ Systems, as a company, must be healthy. This in order to keep innovating, creating valuable software, and backing up its products with professional services. This makes the eZ ecosystem way more solid and sustainable, including the community, than it was in the past, and we will all benefit from this, from the eZ-beginner hacking its first extension, to the long-run senior architects, basing their business on eZ products. eZ products can *not* be without the community, eZ is aware of this, more than ever. The focus is slowly but surely coming back 100% to the product, meaning that the community shall be back in the limelight and involved in a deeper fashion…it has always been the case in eZ’s heart…but not systematically put in practice lately.
Keep all up your excellent work !
16. eZ Publish Fork? | Tech N&hellip | February 26th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
[...] Groganz just tweeted a link to Kristof Coomans’s proposal of a community fork of eZ Publish. Kristof is about to be a former employee of eZ Systems Belgium and seems to be quite frustrated [...]
17. Jérôme | March 2nd, 2009 at 9:26 am
Now you are gone, and I already miss you…
All the best for your new life.
18. Jeroen v D | May 16th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Damn, I didn’t know things we’re going as bad as I’m reading here! About a half a year ago I decided to develop all my new projects on the eZ products. I’ve got the first project online and have learned alot along they way and now I’m reading this! Doesnt sound to promissing if things arent going to change!
So sign me up for the community edition. I would really like to put some time and effort in this project! And let’s get a move on! Because we can we complain but that’s not going to change anything. Let’s create a vision where the community version should go, setup a roadmap and get people involved…
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