Roadmap

Now that we seem to have a new leadership, I think a summary of what needs to be done has to be made and organized into a roadmap.

That to avoid the new directors hanging out aimlessly closing petitions and waiting for someone to start something.

As far as I know the following NEED action:

  • PHP 8 compatibility (this is a very complex thing that people are working on on GitHub, what is ready need to be scheduled for release and then released)
  • update to the TinyMCE editor (@anon71687268 and @joyously were working on that and I have seen a post on the forum where improvements on accessibility for the editor where proposed)
  • fix for PHPMailer (this is what broke the CP 1.4, and we need to finalize it)
  • setting a roadmap to land on a potential V2
  • we have a plugin to integrate the directory in core, BEFORE ADVERTISING WE HAVE IT we need to discuss the theme directory and prepare it, that way the plugin will work at its full potential and we will be able to reach more devs and show them they have a place for their plugins and themes.
  • we need to demonstrate to people who went away that we are serious about DOING THINGS and we need to regain those people’s trust and cooperation - THIS IS PARAMOUNT - we lost so many valuable talents because of the tendency sto stall.
  • We also need a sort of shared decentralized responsibility of the assets where the assets are paid for and managed by various people and where access keys are shared, so that if someone needs to step back there will be someone to take on.
  • we also need to plan a real marketing strategy that helps us to make CP more known.

I am pinging the directors so that they can chime in if I forgot something. @timkaye @viktor @williampatton @james

I think writing a post with a “possible roadmap” on the blog can help make CP known to the public, but we then need to deliver on it. This means we have to selct what to include and deliver in the times we set for each task.

Directors should be there to coordinate the effort and push to get things done, so I think their opinion is important on priorities.

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Adding this because I totally forgot it and was reminded it needs action too:

It’s about the swag shop that I think is a valuable asset to fund CP.

The sense of the above post is NOT to push, is to reach a complete list within July 1st, that can then be discussed. Since there are things i clearly can forget of not know about I need all the community to add things to the list.

Directors opinion is needed on priorities, since what might seem important to me at first sight might not be a priority, while other things are.

I think we need to have a complete list to be ready to decide on a roadmap, so please do add what I forgot.

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The main purpose of the ClassicPress Initiative is to fund ClassicPress project. Nobody should be paying for anything individually. They should donate to the non-profit so we can pay all the bills.

This is why one thing we’ll focus on is fundraising. ClassicPress should be able to fund itself. Wade, Michelle, and James spent thousands of dollars of their own money making sure ClassicPress is alive. It’s time for ClassicPress to fund itself. More on that in our plan next week.

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You make many good points, @ElisabettaCarrara, but there’s also a fundamental misconception at the heart of your post. I suspect some other people share it, so I’d like to tackle it head-on:

The ClassicPress Initiative is not responsible for the development of the ClassicPress software.

That is for the community. Of course, individual directors of the CPI are part of that community, but their contributions will be in that capacity. CP is, and always has been, a community-driven project.

If you want to know what the roadmap is for software development, then the best course of action is to join the #core thread on Slack and to watch issues and pull requests on Github (https://github.com/ClassicPress/ClassicPress), where all development happens in the open. On #core, for example, it was recently agreed that PHP 8 compatibility is top priority, while @MattyRob has just submitted PRs to update PHPMailer to the latest version.

I (again as an individual community member, not as a Director of the CPI), think it would be a good idea if someone would take on the task of writing such priorities/tasks/completed work as regular blog posts. If anyone would like to volunteer, then the Directors of the CPI will ensure that they have the necessary access to do just that.

That’s an example of what the CPI is responsible for, and what it isn’t responsible for. The CPI’s job is to own and manage assets and infrastructure. So when you talk of “sort of shared decentralized responsibility of the assets”, my response is “Yes and No”. The ownership cannot be shared. That’s a basic legal point. The ownership lies with the CPI, and the Directors are, in law, trustees of that legal responsibility. Management of the infrastructure is a shared responsibility between the CPI and others who have the “keys” to things so that they can do their job. Proposing, writing, and testing code is for everybody, and nothing to do with the CPI unless it has implications for the insfrastructure.

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Let me point out the obvious:

Yes, technically and legally speaking you are right.

This however mens that the previous directors, and sorry to state that honestly and very clearly, did not do their jobs as technically and legally intended. this because they kept the access keys for themselves and subsequently things stalled for two years or so, while they were busy with something else.

This to me means that there need to be a shared ownership of such keys, they should be in the hands of directors, but directors need either to share them making things happen, OR share them with someone who can act as a backup. That is why I am also suggesting that it be clear who pays for what, that way directors CAN’T say “we pay for everything so it’s basically ours” - that is a translation of what was happening with the non willingness to share keys.

Yes, we can go the donation way, i myself am NOT WILLING to donate if what happens is that directors keep everything in their own hands stalling the project, and surelly… there are new directors… do I need to trust blindly given what happened in the past?

When the discussions about monetization for the project arose in the past it was made VERY clear from directors that the only thing accepted was basically donations, no to companies willing to donate… no to a swg store that we only recently opened, no to a platform meant to offer professional services by community members to fund the no profit. And donations are NEVER enough to fund a project of the dimension of WP basically, because CP might not have many users but it’s complexity is the same as WP.

So directors failed to engage the community in a monetization activity, they used their own money to fund the project and felt in a way that the project was theirs to manage, and de facto excluded the possibility of contributions by community members not sharing access.

Now what you are basically saying is: community is in charge (in the past two years it NEVER WAS) and directors are the owners of accesses.

oh, why on earth should people contribute AND maybe donate if all goes in the hands of directors and we risk repeating history?

I will wait for your plan, things need to change. I am not trusting that they will change. That is why i involve you in the roadmap discussion, because to me IF you want a little piece of trust… you have to earn it by interacting with the whole community on important topics, then facilitating the process of doing by either acting OR sharing the keys with people who do act.

I think this is NOT too much to ask. That people SHOW UP if they want to be called directors.

Talking in legalese won’t change the fact that many people do not trust things are going to change, and that this is really what harms the project.

And, where do you think I could take all that list? I am constantly reading and staying updated on what happens, i listen in in every core meeting. I am not skilled enough to talk at a core meeting, but by listening I know what is that people are trying to accomplish. And I am sick of listening in to things that are ready to be scheduled for released or worked on and stall because of no accesses. I am just one, but I think I am not alone in feeling that level of distrust. Yet I am here, even with that feeling TAKING THE TIME TO ROLL UP MY SLEEVES TO PUT A LIST TOGETHER so that community feels that someone at least paid attention, so that everyone understands that now to change things we really need to put the work in even if we are short on trust. So do not talk legalese, read the list… add to it if there is something I forgot. and start talking to people about how they want to make things happen. Since you point out your job is being a facilitator.
I don’t need to see the july 1st plan, I need to see directors are engaged to trust them. You know, the previous ones were not and decided to remain on even if they could not manage any more.

Please point me to any alleged “legalese” I wrote. You seem to have understood it perfectly well.

But I want to get one thing very clear because this isn’t a merely technical point. Ownership of the infrastructure lies with the CPI.

Why? Because, at the most fundamental level, if there’s no CPI, where does any donation go? Into the bank account of a private individual! I’m sure no-one thinks that’s a good idea. So the principle of having a foundation backing the project is a sound one. Of course, as you point out, this wasn’t implemented as well as we would have liked. But any sound idea can be implemented badly; it doesn’t undermine the soundness of the principle.

So the ownership of the keys cannot be shared. But possession of them certainly can – and will – be, as indeed I outlined above.

We will be publishing a plan of how the CPI will operate, so you will have regular updates on the financials. But when you say “we can go the donation way”, I don’t understand. The donation way is the ONLY way! That’s how the project has been financed so far. But the financials weren’t publicized frequently to make that clear. That’s going to change.

As for requiring directors to show up and saying “that’s not too much to ask”, of course it isn’t. I entirely agree that the Directors of the CPI need to have the trust of the community. Trust has to be earned. But surely you are not suggesting that @viktor and I haven’t been around much? We have our own track records, so judge us on those, not on what other people might or might not have done. @williampatton has also been around throughout the project’s lifetime: though less visibly, that’s sometimes a good thing.

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If anyone would like to volunteer, then the Directors of the CPI will ensure that they have the necessary access to do just that.

I think it’s all about this.
And my hope is this is going to happen soon.
I feel that @ElisabettaCarrara is referring to this when speaking about trust.

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When the “keys” are all handed over to the new Directors, this will be our top priority.

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Just saying hi. I’m around and reading the discussions here.

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I think people forget that there aren’t very many here, to contribute. And that they are often pulled into areas that are not their expertise, so that they can get that thing they need, fixed.

Giving access to the GitHub repo is of questionable value if the person doesn’t really know how to test, how to find all the possible scenarios, what the history is, how Git works, how the infrastructure is set up, what gets triggered on an update, etc. etc.

There are very few people knowledgeable enough to fill all the vacancies, so I am opposed to handing out access willy-nilly since the software does auto-update on people’s sites and that could be their livelihood.

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I certainly agree this is a common misunderstanding. Until all the fuss of the last couple of weeks started, I had never known it even had a name.

I always thought Wade (and James in particular) were responsible for any changes to CP. With James having gone silent, I assumed that’s why nothing was happening.

To me, all I saw was projects like the eCommerce and SEO ones being abandoned and developers constantly leaving.

I’m sure the majority of CP users don’t follow what’s going on in Slack and don’t understand it if they do. I certainly don’t.

I think it would be fairly safe to say most CP users simply need and want a block-free alternative to WP. How that is achieved behind the scenes is not of interest to them. We are either not technically savvy or only just enough to tweak things here and there.

Consequently, we merely go by what we see posted in the forum, and are afraid to post anything without the fear of being made to feel stupid.

I guess I’m saying directors need to cater to the lowest denominator and state things clearly, respectfully and in a way members can understand.

There’s a reason why people use things like wp.com, Wix, Blogger, etc. Venturing into running your own self-hosted installation is a major leap for the average person. They can’t be expected to contribute something as well.

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Agreed. It’s about giving appropriate access to appropriate people. Not a free-for-all, but also not so locked down that no-one can do what they’re good at.

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Yes, agreed. That’s why it would be great if someone (ideally, a team of people) would take on the task of posting regular updates of what is going on. Again, when we get the “keys”, we can provide appropriate access to those willing to do this.

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We’ll tighten forum moderation to prevent this. This shouldn’t happen and should be reported, including bullying. This should be a safe space to get help regardless of experience.

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I know CP is targeted towards businesses and that’s fair enough. But it will be the average person that will boost installations and therefore awareness of CP.

Word of mouth is the best advertising you can get and the more people who use CP, the faster news will spread. People like myself become the bread and butter users. Businesses and developers will then follow.

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The focus did change from “businesses” to just “creators” - the CMS for creators. Something we can revisit and better articulate probably.

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So I read through all of this and have been thinking about it more deeply through the last week. I do believe we need to have a high-level roadmap. I don’t feel that the initial roadmap outline should be prescriptive at all. It will also have to be realistic with expectations since the number of contributors is small and any work that gets done is on a best-effort basis only.

In the opening post here I see 3 overarching themes.

  • Base software refinement and bug fixing (PHP and package updates).
  • External systems upgrades (directories).
  • The people/process management.

Keeping up with PHP and package updates is something that relies entirely on person power. We currently can’t keep up. How do we solve that?

  1. What if we don’t update to PHP 8 and don’t update TinyMCE?
  2. What gets better if we do update?
  3. How much time will the updates take if it’s done by one single person and is the amount of time reduced linearly if more people are involved?

As far as the theme and plugin directories go. I have felt for a long time that we have run before we can walk where this is concerned. We don’t have a non-manual directory yet. Everything hinges on having a working directory that requires minimal manual intervention to function before anything else happens.

The end goal should be a system that is on par with what is currently available in the WordPress space. The only difference would be an additional data source. I think we should line up to handle this in the following order:

  1. Build a functional directory within the ClassicPress site. The same code can handle both plugins and themes. One set of work, double the value.
  2. Connect the directory to an API that is a 1:1 drop-in replacement to the existing WordPress API.
  3. Consider how to integrate that into the ClassicPress admin in the same way the current system works.

As far as the people and process management goes that is a whole can of worms that I think is above and beyond what is suitable for a roadmap. I don’t believe a roadmap should detail processes or people management. We should talk about this kind of thing on its own - so it doesn’t get swamped out by technical requirements outlined in a roadmap.

I have more thoughts about all of these but forums is a concept I don’t feel comfortable working in. It requires me to write long-winded messages where the far more suitable way to do it is conversational with back and forth.

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PHP8 should be at the top of the list to focus efforts on because PHP7 is getting to the EOL. As a community member, not a future director, I would want to see this prioritised.

@joyously did most of the work on TinyMCE v5. I would value her recommendation on what we should do with it.

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We do have the directory integration plugin by Beda that brings the directory in the CP dashboard.
We however need to build theme dir and include that in the plugin.
I hope if trust is rebuilt we can ask Beda to join the effort again.

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Something I’m going to say here, may belong or may not. But there should be a more clear communication and leadership about ongoing things that are happening regarding core dev.

That means, keep this updated: Currently Active Projects - Projects - ClassicPress Forums (and if something is not really active, it should not be there, maybe have a second place for stale stuff that can be awaken… but, keep the active stuff in focus, crystal clear: “This is our focus now”).

If someone with dev skills sees that, he/she is gonna be lost and say: “uff… don’t know where to start, this seems dead”.

It needs to be: “We need to do this and this and this now for this task”. Like, divide the bigger task into smaller and realistic achievable milestones that any dev can see and say: “hmm… doesn’t look that crazy to me, let’s do it”.

Easier tasks → more people helping.

And big complex tasks are almost always a combination of many easy tasks. Someone needs to understand them and chunk them down and serve small taskiess for devieess to get 'em done.

Divide and conquer.

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