Enhance and move the Virtuemart brand and websites forward

[luislpv22]

I agree with you guys, I'm currently developing for myself an improved version of VirtueMart with the whole admin interface redesigned and optimized. I hope Milbo considers moving to GitHub the core and websites so all the community could collaborate to improve it.

This is a great project thanks to its community, so please, go ahead with your community.

We all need this, this forum is a chaos, we need GitHub's issues and pull requests.

Milbo you can continue working with SVN but being the project hosted on GitHub.
99% of open-sourced projects are hosted in GitHub, I don't see any positive reasons to keep using things from 2002.

[StefanSTS]

Why don't you host a copy of VirtueMart and your improvements on GitHub? Good idea. Looking forward to it.

Merging code from GitHub, making patches for SVN is easy. Go ahead and let's get it rolling.

GitHub itself on the other hand is getting quite old, don't throw it away soon, just because it is old.

[luislpv22]

Why don't you host a copy of VirtueMart and your improvements on GitHub? Good idea. Looking forward to it.

Merging code from GitHub, making patches for SVN is easy. Go ahead and let's get it rolling.

GitHub itself on the other hand is getting quite old, don't throw it away soon, just because it is old.

I'm waiting for an answer from Max.

If they don't plan to move to GitHub I will do it.

[jjk]

Moving VM to Github is a request which does come up frequently. However, Max preferes Redmine/SVN for various reasons. Several people had installed mirrors of the VM repository on Github in the past and you can still find one or the other of those on Github, but all of these VM projects were abandoned after a while.

I suppose one of the reasons why a move to Github is unlikely, is to avoid the chaos the Joomla developers are continuously creating on Github. VM is a serious business application, not a developer's playground. So the the project leader can't allow everybody's 'personal ideas' and code preferences into the core.

[balai]

VM is a serious business application, not a developer's playground. So the the project leader can't allow everybody's 'personal ideas' and code preferences into the core.

That implies that every project which is hosted on github is a playground where everybody can apply their code?
That means that projects like jQuery, Ruby on Rails or Magento are playgrounds? I suppose no
Nobody can apply his code without this being accepted.

It just requires a shift in organizational structure where project leaders guide other developers and accept or reject their work.
From my point of view attracting volunteers is the only way to go for an open source project. Having no serious funding, your resources are quite limited otherwise.

Virtuemart has some advantages over other joomla based ecommerce solutions on that.
1. It's the most popular ecommerce solution for joomla
2. Possibly has the biggest user base
3. It's free which makes it open to everyone

Those advantages can be used towards involving more people in the project.
The process should be simple, clear and familiar to the candidate contributors.

[luislpv22]

Moving VM to Github is a request which does come up frequently. However, Max preferes Redmine/SVN for various reasons. Several people had installed mirrors of the VM repository on Github in the past and you can still find one or the other of those on Github, but all of these VM projects were abandoned after a while.

I suppose one of the reasons why a move to Github is unlikely, is to avoid the chaos the Joomla developers are continuously creating on Github. VM is a serious business application, not a developer's playground. So the the project leader can't allow everybody's 'personal ideas' and code preferences into the core.

I agree with you in some aspects, there are more than a thousand PRs on Joomla's repo, but Joomla's community is much bigger than VirtueMart's one. If you know how to work with it, there's no problem with GitHub, developers are able to comment if a PR is a good idea or should be closed directly, they could even disallow PRs, so they won't have a trouble with these 'personal ideas'.

They could keep working the same way on GitHub than in Redmine, because both have the same workflow, but on GitHub you can track easily the changes they're doing daily, and that is so useful for 3rd party developers, and of course don't forget about issues...

I know that it's not an easy task, but hey, improve has never been easy, it requires a lot of effort and we can do it together.

[jjk]

I know that it's not an easy task...

It just comes into my mind that even the 'large' Magento community miserably failed to establish a working developer community on Github. Looking at the Magento Community edtion project on Github I see the last commit was more than half a year ago.

[StefanSTS]

All the arguments I heard for GitHub are already there in SVN.

Max is guiding other developers and accepts or rejects patches.

Having 10 or 100 changes on GitHub every day, who will follow up on that? So a personal chat with a few developers is much more effective in the case of a smaller team. If you are serious about helping with the developement, contact Max, chat with him and show some good and steady work.

<Citation>
Virtuemart has some advantages over other joomla based ecommerce solutions on that.
1. It's the most popular ecommerce solution for joomla
2. Possibly has the biggest user base
3. It's free which makes it open to everyone
</Citation>
And why is that? Because the project is lead by one person who doesn't accept all small things that destroy some other functionality, but also listens to good reason from many other developers around him.
Max keeps a good balance between accepting everything and allowing nothing.

If there is good code that is relevant for a wide range of users, it will be adapted and tested properly by the devs and testers. As said, small team with less than a dozent regular team members, but a good and stable outcome.

I don't want to compare that with Joomla developement, because I don't have a proper inside to that. But check their issues on GitHub and decide for yourself if that is better or worse.
Stefan

[Studio 42]

JJK and Stephan.
What are the bug in Joomla ?

I think you don't understand github.
YOu have exactly the same control in the main release, but it's really simple to fork it in Github.
YOu create an account in github and you can do your own changes.

How can you do this with svn ?
I used svn and i use now github, so i can see the diference.

And sorry, since Joomla is in github, now Joomla team have accepted some of my codes. This was not the case before, because they used SVN, and it was time expensive to control each code.
When you do a fork, no one have to follow it, but any can. SO if you have a solution(good or bad) you can test it. You can do a pull request, but some pull request get never in the main code.
Check for eg. font awesome.
You can propose your own icon. If your icon as many votes, this get added in the pack. I think it's really the best way to drive a project.
You know what is democracy ?
You can not have an anarchic behavior, but on github, this is more the way to do open and public develop, because any can propose and give opinions without having to travel on a forum to check current issues.
And about Joomla, but sorry, since the code is in Github, the progress is impressive compared to svn and it's not because some patch break Virtuemart that this are bugs(eg the emails problems).
If you think so, then VM have same problem, i use sometime direct call to some function or get datas from the product and a day, this not work anymore.
You consider this as a bug ? Then VM have many new bugs on each release.
SO if all 2 are developers try SVN and GitHub for a big project for some month and check what is the best. You cannot get opinion from someone that only tried 1 day a system. Of course you have to learn github so changing from svn to github need some time.

And i know that SVN is better for some use(in private little team) but not for a big public open source project.
SO if the team will leave the project private and have minimum help from other then SVN is the best, else if you want that the project growing(or not loose developper and users) then github is better.
I do not want that VM use github for nothing, only to push the project forward to another level, but this is my opinion.

[StefanSTS]

That is exactly what you can do, make your VM repo on GitHub and test your changes. You can keep everything updated throught the SVN. If you have good solutions, instead of sending your pull request, create a patch for the SVN.
Same thing, just another language.

I use GitHub for other projects too. Many projects are on GitHub, so I use GitHub. If a project is on a self hosted SVN, I use SVN. I am comfortable with both.

And you are right, in a little team, SVN has advantages, but it doesn't matter if it is public or private. The VirtueMart SVN is public, everyone can see the progress on dev.virtuemart.net. You can take part in discussions in the forum. And if you show real interest you can get in contact and chat with the other devs and testers, these chats are kind of private, but everyone can ask to join or some are just invited.

The project is having regular devs and testers for years, since Max took over. There are people that don't like the way, how restrictive Max handles things, but there are also some who like the restrictive way for a good reason. "Adding a feature should not break another." Not everything gets into the core, but if you see the huge step, VirtueMart did from the first VM 2 versions to the latest VM 3.x, there is no doubt that the way is right to keep a stable core. And that is the most important for shop owners. They need to rely on a stable shop. That was not perfect in the past, but is becoming better and better, so less adjustments have to be made from update to update.
If you have a good template, there is mostly no work involved to keep the shop running like before.

What you said about democracy, VirtueMart is not a democracy, it is a community project, but the last word is with Max, he is the lead developer and responsible. That might be a problem for some people. I know at least two from reading the forum.

Take Joomla, hosted on GitHub, as an example, Joomla is not a democracy. There is a company that holds the trademark. The community is not deciding on the features. Open Source is not equal to democracy. Open source means open source, nothing more, nothing less.
From that point VirtueMart is maybe even more a democracy than Joomla, because Max gives great value to what others suggest if it is prepared properly. If you throw something in front of him, that you worked on for two hours, and Max has to invest another five hours to make it work, don't even bother. I made that experience myself in the beginning. I offered some code, and most was rejected, rightfully as I understood later.

But learning from experience I prepare my mostly simple stuff properly now and things work out, because the work load on the lead dev is minimal and he can concentrate on more complex things.

Well, enough said for today, some will understand, few will not, and very few just don't want to.

[luislpv22]

That is exactly what you can do, make your VM repo on GitHub and test your changes. You can keep everything updated throught the SVN. If you have good solutions, instead of sending your pull request, create a patch for the SVN.
Same thing, just another language.

I use GitHub for other projects too. Many projects are on GitHub, so I use GitHub. If a project is on a self hosted SVN, I use SVN. I am comfortable with both.

And you are right, in a little team, SVN has advantages, but it doesn't matter if it is public or private. The VirtueMart SVN is public, everyone can see the progress on dev.virtuemart.net. You can take part in discussions in the forum. And if you show real interest you can get in contact and chat with the other devs and testers, these chats are kind of private, but everyone can ask to join or some are just invited.

The project is having regular devs and testers for years, since Max took over. There are people that don't like the way, how restrictive Max handles things, but there are also some who like the restrictive way for a good reason. "Adding a feature should not break another." Not everything gets into the core, but if you see the huge step, VirtueMart did from the first VM 2 versions to the latest VM 3.x, there is no doubt that the way is right to keep a stable core. And that is the most important for shop owners. They need to rely on a stable shop. That was not perfect in the past, but is becoming better and better, so less adjustments have to be made from update to update.
If you have a good template, there is mostly no work involved to keep the shop running like before.

What you said about democracy, VirtueMart is not a democracy, it is a community project, but the last word is with Max, he is the lead developer and responsible. That might be a problem for some people. I know at least two from reading the forum.

Take Joomla, hosted on GitHub, as an example, Joomla is not a democracy. There is a company that holds the trademark. The community is not deciding on the features. Open Source is not equal to democracy. Open source means open source, nothing more, nothing less.
From that point VirtueMart is maybe even more a democracy than Joomla, because Max gives great value to what others suggest if it is prepared properly. If you throw something in front of him, that you worked on for two hours, and Max has to invest another five hours to make it work, don't even bother. I made that experience myself in the beginning. I offered some code, and most was rejected, rightfully as I understood later.

But learning from experience I prepare my mostly simple stuff properly now and things work out, because the work load on the lead dev is minimal and he can concentrate on more complex things.

Well, enough said for today, some will understand, few will not, and very few just don't want to.

I understand better that situation now, should have been Max who gave us these reasons, but thank you anyways. Despite that, they could try if it works...

I guess these are good reasons for them to stay with this system, but coming back to the topic, everything could be updated and modernized to enhance the brand. They could use GitHub just for issues or similar systems, install a new redmine template and redesign every website. Probably they don't have enough time for that, but I'm pretty sure there are lots of people from this community willing to help them with that.

[Studio 42]

I understand better that situation now, should have been Max who gave us these reasons, but thank you anyways. Despite that, they could try if it works...

I guess these are good reasons for them to stay with this system, but coming back to the topic, everything could be updated and modernized to enhance the brand. They could use GitHub just for issues or similar systems, install a new redmine template and redesign every website. Probably they don't have enough time for that, but I'm pretty sure there are lots of people from this community willing to help them with that.

Some user had already proposed to update github, but this is stupid.
If you have main code on SVN copy it to github, do not change anything.
Adding patch for SVN from github is stupid too. because you have to update each time from SVN. So it's not a solution too.
It's why certainly noone use github to add patch to vm.
But let's stay so, if you mean SVN is better, but i don't think it's better for the community.

[jjk]

I think the current VM organization has more similarities with the WordPress project organization than with the Joomla organization, on a smaller scale of course.  BTW - WP is using SVN too. And for Github lovers their SVN is mirrored on Github. 

Just for fun (slightly off-topic): After reading this old article https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/08/how-to-become-a-top-wordpress-developer/, I definitely don't want to become one of those!

[lindapowers]

What you said about democracy, VirtueMart is not a democracy, it is a community project, but the last word is with Max, he is the lead developer and responsible. That might be a problem for some people. I know at least two from reading the forum.

VM is not a community but a company owned by Milbers which happens to have a community from the days when this was a free e-commerce solution.

A guy here asks about  a "feature requests" section. It simply doesn't exist cause Milbo does not even consider suggestions unless they are highly payed or done by someone he trusts (probably 1 or 2 individuals in the world).

I see here moderators and helpers talking about the "team" and "organisation", about "inner talks". I'm conviced they do believe in the "team" and that those conversations will help however the reality is that there is no team in VM, everyone knows that. There are translators, 3rd party developers which do an ocassional fix and testers. Those are guys helping one man which decides EVERYTHING and NOTHING is done without his approval.

Those "inner talks" in case they existed are as useful as this topic, they know that perfectly but I respect them for helping out users and keeping "harmony".

Each time more people come here or in other posts and you simply have no points to reply to their logic doubts Stefan.

If I asked you why VM demo is still in joomla 2.5 you will answer me something which only a crazy man could defend like Max which justifies it till this day... so why even try to find logic in his movements like developing a bridge for wordpress, the memebership crap and other genuine ideas.

This topic is an interesing thing to read that will end up in nothing cause we all know how things work here and others seem to be discovering it in recent times.

[AH]

Lindapowers

You seem annoyed.

What are you trying to achieve with your statement?

VM needs investment to continue its existence.  Under what business model do you expect it to run in order to stay alive?