Organizational questions
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BillWill
Joined: 2008-08-28
Posts: 205 |
Posted: Mon, 2012-09-10 12:18
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Hello - I've been using Gallery 2 then 3 for a few years now, and in-between using it, figuring it out, and troubleshooting it, a number of questions keep popping up. I've hesitated to ask them, as there are a lot of more practical questions to be answered, but my curiosity won't let me let them go, so here they are. Please understand in advance that none of these questions are meant to be critical. I am basing a large portion of my site on this script, and have no interest in pi**ing off anyone who has been helping me in the past, or who may help me in the future. In addition it is in my "enlightened self-interest" to see the project succeed. What is the benefit to the core team of developers? Are their rewards altruistic, masochistic, or is there some home for financial enrichment down the road? Who is actively part of the project, and what are there roles? I keep seeing many of the same names in active participation, but am not clear as to whether they are part of the official team, or if they are enthusiastic supporters with no direct ties to the organization. A few names that easily come to mind are suprsidr, tempg, nivekiam, Serge D, jnash, bharat, and of course the ubiquitous floridave. Is there a core team of voluteers as well? Where does the money come from to pay for security bounties, website hosting, and paid staff time? Is it all strictly from donations? Why is paid support limited to the core team, and limited to just a few issue types? Who makes the decisions about the direction Gallery3 takes, and who decides what becomes part of the core application and what doesn't? Who maintains the website? A lot of the info is all over the place, and sometimes very dated. For example, on http://codex.gallery2.org/Gallery3:About it says "The Gallery Development Team met the last weekend of August, 2009 in Santa Fe, NM for its annual GalleryCon." What happens between releases? Are the developers taking a break, planning the future of Gallery, or heads-down coding? Who is paying or donating the hosting for this site? What areas are most in need of paid or volunteer support? That's about it for now. There are more that I can't recall at the moment. Looking forward to learning more about the nuts and bolts of this project. Thanks, =========================== |
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Posts: 27300
Each developer has his or her reasons (yes there has a be few Her's over the years).
I can tell you that NONE of the developers or contributors do it for the money.
For me it is one hobby that I can spend as much or as little time as I want to. No commitments to time or place. I can spend 5 min or 5 hours.
It is fun to see some of our work on sites that satisfy others.
It varies as time permits in ones life. Some like me have been active continually for years. Others come and go.
http://codex.gallery2.org/Gallery:Team
Just because you don't see posts in the forums does not mean they do nothing.
Mostly donations. Some come from avert revenue on this site. I would say that the vast majority is from donations of under $25.
Content: Nobody and everybody, including you.
Backend: When it is a hardware issue on the servers then that falls to fryfrog. Module developers write there own codex page with some help from me if necessary.
Software: Bharat and others like Chris and Chad.
It has been a annual event but there has not been much interest lately so there has not been one for some time.
The codex if for the community by the community so if you see something that is wrong; fix it, or point it out with suggested wording and we can do it for you.
@paid support: I did it for some time and others have as well. I did not do it for the money as there is not that much activity for it. I found it just OK. Not as rewarding as I felt like that I "had" to do it since they are paying and some people did not appreciate that it it was my free time hobby. Some thought that it was my real job and had very high expectations for the paltry $50.
I con only speak to my self: support in the forums every day.
The website (drupal and media wiki) need updates frequently, so that is done in the background by Bharat and others. It does not just run in the background all day and night. Hardware failures occur, power outages that cause hickups etc etc.
Donations to the project.
Documentation and forums support.
All volunteer, with little appreciation and the occasional thanks in the forums or donation.
Thanks for the interest.
Care to take some the points above to improve the about page?
Dave
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Blog & G2 || floridave - Gallery Team
Posts: 205
Again Dave, thanks for the answers. This project is something of a mystery to me, and this helps me with a better understanding.
I have a perspective of this site and its organization that the developers and "in crowd" may not have, which is that of an end user whose primary coding accomplishment is discovering how to use includes in a php file. Figuring out this website from that perspective is baffling, and even after the few years I've been showing my ignorance in these forums, there are still things that confuse me. Not about the gallery, but where to find things, and what the different locations mean.
I already spend literally hours volunteering for Gallery every week. For every question I post here, there are five I haven't because when I want to use a mod, or troubleshoot something, I track down the many and varied locations of the same file, check each one with "Beyond Compare", and then try the different versions until something works. When I have an issue, I thoroughly scrub the forums for answers before I post, and find stuff scattered all over the place. So far, these hours benefit nobody but me, and it doesn't make sense for me to spend that much time when I'm the only one who benefits. And much of this time I feel is wasted: waiting for slow search responses, finding and testing conflicting answers to see which one is the truth.
What I would prefer to do is to put these volunteer efforts towards helping the project, rather than just my own stuff. I'll still benefit, but I will be helping the project at the same time. What I can bring to the table is some website organizational proposals, which plays more to my strengths. And depending on how much access I am given, I'd be happy to implement them as well.
I'd like to help herd information so it's easier to find for people who want to use Gallery but don't know how to write it. Sometimes it may appear that the end users like me and their stupid questions are just annoying distractions to the real work of the project, but the fact is, people using Gallery are as important as people developing it. I think if it were more apparent to users where to find what they need, and that they were an important part of the project, it would only make things better for everyone.
I know you understand my intentions here, but for others who may not, I'm not complaining to complain. If you don't like my ideas here, that's fine. I'll continue using Gallery and waiting for the slow search engine bring up answers that may or may not te helpful, and go on frequent "Easter Egg Hunts" every time I want to find the correct version of a new file. But I am serious about my willingness to apply solutions to the things I'm complaining about, and am ready to start talking to whomever I need to to discuss my ideas, and if approved, start cleaning things up.
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Great! But we need more than proposals we need some boots on the ground actually doing the work.
Looking forward to what you can do.
Somebody started http://codex.gallery2.org/Gallery3:User_guide but it has not seen much love in some time.
Dave
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Blog & G2 || floridave - Gallery Team
Posts: 205
What I'm saying is, if the PTB here like my proposals, I will start working on them.
I'm not talking working on content. God help us all if I start documenting things. I'm talking about making it easier to access existing information.
For example, I would be happy to implement the suggestion I made here:
http://gallery.menalto.com/node/107247
This one idea of having a list, fed by a database of existing info would not make the developers do anything different that what they are doing now. Where ever they put their files, when they put them up would be tracked automatically. A single developer could even put the newest version of his/her modules in different locations each time. Since the last timestamp was displayed, users could see at a glance which version to download.
Again, with a one-location summary of where it is, does it work, and where are the answers being on one place, nobody would have to be trained, unless they didn't know how to read, or to click a link.
I'm pretty sure the info is all here, just not centralized, and what I want to do is to track down that info and then make it readily available.
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Version: 3.0.4 (Ricochet)
Operating system: Linux 2.6.18-194.11.4.el5
Apache/2.2.21
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MySQL: 5.0.95
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Albums: 235
Photos: 75002
Posts: 27300
Looking forward to what you can come up with. Perhaps Drupal has a plugin/module that gets you half way there or is this some manually coded in the beginning?
Dave
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Blog & G2 || floridave - Gallery Team
Posts: 27300
gallerymodules.com does some of that in the background. Perhaps you and him can work together?
Dave
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Blog & G2 || floridave - Gallery Team
Posts: 205
I'll know more after I talk to him. Thanks for the info.
===========================
Version: 3.0.4 (Ricochet)
Operating system: Linux 2.6.18-194.11.4.el5
Apache/2.2.21
PHP: 5.3.8
MySQL: 5.0.95
Clean Canvas theme
Graphics Toolkit = ImageMagick
Albums: 235
Photos: 75002