Date: 16 Mar 2009
Subject: GeorgetownMeetingLog2009x03x16.txt

[10:03am]  peterthoeny rejoined the room.
[10:13am] peterthoeny:hi nicolas, steffen, markus
[10:13am] peterthoeny:we will start in about 20 min
[10:33am]  SopanShewale joined the chat room.
[10:34am] SopanShewale:Hi Peter
[10:34am] SopanShewale:Hi Everyone
[10:34am] peterthoeny:hi nicolas, sopan, steffen, markus!
[10:34am] peterthoeny:who is actually at the keyboard?
[10:34am] peterthoeny:gruezi nicolas, and welcome to twiki!
[10:35am] peterthoeny:what part of switzerland are you from?
[10:35am] SopanShewale:Something wrong with my wireless modem/broadband connection - so on GPRS modem.
Speed is very bad
[10:35am] peterthoeny:oh
[10:37am]  PeterJones joined the chat room.
[10:38am] peterthoeny:hi peter jones!
[10:38am] PeterJones:Hello LL
[10:38am] NicolasWrobel:hi. I live in Schwyz
[10:38am] peterthoeny:sopan has a bad connection, he is dropping off and on on instant messaging
[10:39am] NicolasWrobel:near Zurich
[10:39am] peterthoeny:not sure how much he can see here on #twiki_release
[10:39am] peterthoeny:ah, i studied at eth in zurich
[10:39am] peterthoeny:please meet peter jones, also in ch
[10:40am] PeterJones:Hi Nicolas, I am in Geneva
[10:40am] NicolasWrobel:didn't realize that TWiki is swissmade till yesterday
[10:40am] peterthoeny:
[10:40am] peterthoeny:i started it in cupertino 10 years ago
[10:41am] NicolasWrobel:how did you get the job there?
[10:42am] peterthoeny:well, before that i was working in japan for many years
[10:42am] peterthoeny:with my family we decided to move out of japan
[10:42am] peterthoeny:so i was looking for a job in the usa and other places
[10:42am] peterthoeny:found a job at a small austrian company in cupertino
[10:43am] peterthoeny:(let's chat a bit until sopan (our release manager) is online again)
[10:44am] NicolasWrobel:that sounds good. I just got a new job today
[10:44am] SopanShewale:Hello Peter/Everyone
[10:44am] peterthoeny:got hired to start an r&d group in the usa for takefive, the company from salzburg
[10:44am] peterthoeny:hi sopan, glad to see you back
[10:44am] NicolasWrobel:in schlieren near Zurich as Softwareengineer and more
[10:44am] SopanShewale:not sure if i am able to see all your messages - my internet is very bad today
[10:45am] peterthoeny:nicolas, could you quickly introduce yourself?
[10:45am] NicolasWrobel:well. I live in Switzerland word as Softwareengineer
[10:45am] NicolasWrobel:*work
[10:46am] NicolasWrobel:used to work for CreditSuisse until end of Feb. Will start in a much smaller
company next month
[10:46am] NicolasWrobel:I use TWiki for quite a while now. but only private
[10:47am] peterthoeny:cool
[10:47am] NicolasWrobel:there was also an instance installed in Credit Suisse thou
[10:47am] NicolasWrobel:the unix guys use it
[10:47am] peterthoeny:many large companies use twiki
[10:47am] peterthoeny:nice you found a job in these economic times!
[10:47am] NicolasWrobel:yes. am happy too
[10:48am] peterthoeny:what are your interests in twiki?
[10:48am] NicolasWrobel:just learning more perl. and I'm interested how you are setup as a team
[10:49am] NicolasWrobel:I heard and read a lot about open source communities
[10:49am] peterthoeny:we are currently very small
[10:49am] NicolasWrobel:but never really got involved
[10:50am] NicolasWrobel:I like the trac feature you merged into the twiki
[10:50am] NicolasWrobel:not feature but product
[10:50am] NicolasWrobel:looks really organzised
[10:51am] NicolasWrobel:In CS there were so many tools installed every team used something different
[10:52am] NicolasWrobel:I knew about 3 sharepoints at lease 4 other wikis
[10:52am] peterthoeny:we are organized, but there is lot's of room for improvement
[10:52am] peterthoeny:btw, just off the phone with sopan in india: his connection is not usable
[10:52am] NicolasWrobel:I see
[10:53am] peterthoeny:let's postpone the formal release meeting by one week, same time
[10:53am] peterthoeny:and let's continue the informal chat here
[10:53am] peterthoeny:nicolas, we had a fork in the community last october
[10:54am] NicolasWrobel:I read this the blog from Daum
[10:54am] peterthoeny:we are now smaller than before, but we are not in a much better position to
continue in an organized way
[10:54am] NicolasWrobel:it sounded like you wanted to commercialize TWiki
[10:54am] peterthoeny:http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiGovernance describes our governance
[10:55am] peterthoeny:well, michae daum belongs to a ring of consultants
[10:55am] peterthoeny:they had a grip on the community and pushed heavily their own commercial agenda
[10:55am] peterthoeny:unfortunately they never accepted twiki.net as a supporting company
[10:56am] NicolasWrobel:who is they?
[10:56am] peterthoeny:the ring of consultants daum belongs to
[10:56am] NicolasWrobel:is it a competing company to twiki.net?
[10:56am] peterthoeny:i made a promise to the community when i co-founded the company,
http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiDotNet#PeterStatement22Jul2007
[10:57am] peterthoeny:we executed well along that path
[10:58am] peterthoeny:no, twiki.net was never competing with the consultants
[10:58am] peterthoeny:because twiki. net is a subscription for support and hosting company, not a
consulting company
[10:58am]  PaulReiber joined the chat room.
[10:58am] peterthoeny:in fact we gave lots of work to consultants
[10:59am] PaulReiber:huh... found you!
[10:59am] PaulReiber:greetings.
[10:59am] peterthoeny:but for some reason i do not understand they saw us as competition
[10:59am] peterthoeny:even though we gave them consulting work and payed air+hotel to dev summit
[11:00am] peterthoeny:all the support twiki.net did and does is not reporte in their blogs because it
does not fit into their agenda
[11:00am] PaulReiber:= Paul Reiber, long-time TWiki guy who found all the security holes in %INCLUDE
[11:00am] peterthoeny:hi paul, welcome here!
[11:01am] PaulReiber:so what's in store for the next release?
[11:01am] peterthoeny:we are chatting informally
[11:01am] PaulReiber:awesome
[11:01am] peterthoeny:sopan, our release manager can't join due to bad connection, so we postpone the
formal release meeting by one week, same time
[11:02am] PaulReiber:well that'll let me be (a) prepared and (b) on time so that's good
[11:03am] PaulReiber:I've got an odd problem... maybe I can get some insights here?  When I create new
topics without specifying a parent, there getting parented under WebPreferences
[11:03am] PaulReiber:it'd be way better if they were parented under WebHome in the current web
[11:03am] PaulReiber:is it easy enough to change that, or buried in the code?
[11:04am] peterthoeny:to close the previous discussion: i find it very unfortunate how much fud was
spread on the cause of the fork, and i continue to do the best to bring the communities together
[11:04am] NicolasWrobel:thanks for this info peter
[11:05am] NicolasWrobel:I think I have to catch up in the blogs to understand the problem
[11:05am] peterthoeny:may be i should post a blog describing the facts
[11:05am] NicolasWrobel:to me it sounds more like a personal thing
[11:05am] peterthoeny:well, the blogs have only one sided info
[11:05am] PaulReiber:ah... yes, politics - the bane of progress.  For what it's worth, I find your
current strategy spot-on, Peter... quite smiles beat pointed fingers.
[11:06am] peterthoeny:i personally and twiki,net did not a good job on telling the facts
[11:06am] PaulReiber:er, quiet
[11:06am] NicolasWrobel:well. technically I really like twiki
[11:07am] peterthoeny:yes, as i mentioned earlier, the twiki community is now in a much better position
because we are now operating in a well defined structure
[11:07am] peterthoeny:our governance is heavily modeled after the successful ubuntu community
[11:07am] PaulReiber:On another front - I have friends saying I did something "significant" with http://reiber.org/nxt/bin/view/Main/PaulReiber - something or other about how it'll let them manage
their social networks better - to me it's just a stack of iframes!
[11:08am] peterthoeny:i expect it to reduce substantially politics and flame wars going forward
[11:08am] PaulReiber:Good point - you don't hear people griping about canonical
[11:09am] PeterJones:Peter, with so many developers having left hasnt this put a great strain on the
project
[11:09am] PaulReiber:Hrm...
[11:09am] PeterJones:I mean, how can Twiki evolve at the same pace as n the past?
[11:11am] PaulReiber:...I once managed a team of 5 developers that took over for a department of like
30+ who were all let go.  We each too 6 people's worth of the "project" and soon were making more
progress per day than the larger team had been.
[11:12am] peterthoeny:yes, we are currently low in resources
[11:12am] peterthoeny:we are slowly but surely getting more support
[11:13am] peterthoeny:the 4.3 release will be out soon (now in rc1)
[11:14am] peterthoeny:after that we can focus on 5,0 features and better website content
[11:14am] NicolasWrobel:is twiki.net participating in the new "branch" where the community went?
[11:14am] PeterJones:How were he tests with rc1?
[11:14am] peterthoeny:twiki.org is currently too much developer focused
[11:15am] peterthoeny:i'd like to see it much more accessible for evaluators
[11:15am] peterthoeny:rc1 is quite stable
[11:15am] peterthoeny:4.3 is based on the stable 4.2.4 branch
[11:16am] peterthoeny:adds security enhancements, additional plugins and skin, usability enhancements
[11:17am] peterthoeny:and some "eye candy": red links instead of questionmark links
[11:17am] PaulReiber:I've been _way_ out of the TWiki development loop - are the feature changes
listed somewhere easy-to-find?
[11:17am] peterthoeny:this makes text more smooth an makes twiki more accessible for folks who know
wikipedia
[11:18am] PaulReiber:Also time lets good ideas persist; years ago I considered investing some time in
"role based skins" - still think it would help make Twiki more useful.
[11:18am] peterthoeny:we are still working on the release notes, not ready yet
[11:19am] PeterJones:I would like to upgrade but am stuck on Bug6151. Has Sopan any news of this?
[11:20am] peterthoeny:let me see...
[11:20am] PaulReiber:i.e. if your "role" is content-producer, view/edit pretty much as is today.  If
your role is web manager, make topic reparenting and inter-topic activities more easily available.  etc.
[11:20am] peterthoeny:ah, http://develop.twiki.org/~twiki4/cgi-bin/view/Bugs/Item6151 - Mapping of
wikiname to RCS fails when email address used as login (cUID to wikiname error?)
[11:21am] peterthoeny:we have not done anything in 4.3 to address this
[11:21am] peterthoeny:the whole user management was one and redone several times without an advanced spec
[11:21am] PaulReiber:
[11:22am] peterthoeny:i consider this a sore spot of twiki that needs tender loving care
[11:22am] PaulReiber:...yes and hooking to existing external user-authentication can be really painful
[11:23am] PaulReiber:everyone wants "single sign on" but no-one wants to integrate other servers _with_
twiki, they want twiki to adapt to those servers.  Yuck.
[11:23am] peterthoeny:i think the reason to introduce cuid's was external auth, so there was good intent
but not so good execution
[11:25am] peterthoeny:ok, i have to go
[11:25am] PaulReiber:Well, the model's fundamentally flawed, in that at least one or 2 TWiki "users"
like admin will need to exist independent of any external auth.  To hook up the admin account itself
to remote auth would be fatal...
[11:25am] PaulReiber:It was good chatting with you again!
[11:25am] peterthoeny:please feel free to continue the conversation here or in #twiki
[11:25am] PaulReiber:Looking forward to next week!
[11:26am]  PaulReiber left the chat room.
[11:26am] peterthoeny:i'll send out the invite for next week's meeting
[11:26am] PeterJones:I will be away next week. See you in 2 weeks time
[11:26am] peterthoeny:thanks peter j and nicolas for participating!
[11:26am] peterthoeny:hope to see you more on twiki.org
[11:26am] NicolasWrobel:thank you too