[theforum] A sound of silence

[Simon MacDonald]

As a relative newbie to evolt I don't know the history behind the various
iterations of the site/community. I can understand the attraction of doing
our own thing - but that comes with a cost. OK do a RYO ( roll your own)
build - I guess that's where the joomlas and drupals et al came from - but
that is a real knock on effect for future support if you haven't got a *BIG*
community supporting it. 

I've seen some of the agg(ravation) over just the evolt design and direction
- do we need the agg of arguing over the direction of the supporting CMS as
well? 

Yeah, Drupal ain't a perfect CMS - none of them are (a previous post of mine
says I'd like to RMyO as an interesting exercise) - but given that it's
being used, I think that in terms of long term support issues we should use
something with  a relatively main stream adoption - if only to ensure
consistency of long term support - yeah ok - I know there is anarchic thing
about evolt, but sometimes practicalities are required (painful experience).
(jeese - I used to be called MadMac, but now occasionally I find myself
coming over all sensible).

So, Matt - I would really like to RYO - but I don't think its what we (in my
limited evolt experience) should do. Maybe we should start a
separate/parallel project to build an evolt CMS???

£0.03 worth tonight

cheers
Simon

Simon MacDonald
simonmacdonald at uk2.net
www.lemonslicedesign.com



-----Original Message-----
From: theforum-bounces at lists.evolt.org
[mailto:theforum-bounces at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf Of ekm at seastorm.com
Sent: 20 November 2008 18:53
To: Matt Warden
Cc: theforum at lists.evolt.org
Subject: Re: [theforum] A sound of silence

Matt, Do you mind saying explicitly why you think this would help energize
the community?  And how we might avoid the prior pitfalls we faced as an
organization with a custom CMS?

I was not involved in the prior CMS, but my understanding is that there
were problems with our database structure? problems with documentation? 
that we came to a point where we had serious issues, only one developer
who didn't have the time to maintain the software.... plus people have
concerns about security and such.

on the flipside, it sounds like codefests were a huge bonding experience
for the evolt community, and having our own open-source CMS a lot like
living in a home we built ourselves.

As I think about it, I feel like maybe one of the things that we are
losing are our pioneering roots.  I mean, in the early days, we did what
we could with what we had.  We know more now.   I can see arguments for
both using an established CMS like drupal and working to build a new
evolt-custom open source system.  I'd love to learn ruby on rails, myself.
Especially working with evolt peers.  OTOH, I'm not opposed to drupal
(just to unnecessary complexity).

Yeah, I know it's a can of worms and all that, but I think it's worth
talking about, honestly, in a rational way.  I'm not coming down on one
side or the other.  I'm just saying, let's allow these things to be on the
table, even if at current, we are taking a certain direction.  No reason
we have to stop moving to discuss other things.

I think what it comes down to is evolt.org is not held together by any
*structure* but rather by a certain philosophy "non profit, interent
freedom, open source" and a sense of community, which is built by our
working in common, on common goals, as well as by social activities.
When those things become diluted (especially the philosophical
underpinnings), evolt becomes diluted.

Erika

> On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 12:50 PM,  <ekm at seastorm.com> wrote:
>> Like Matt, would like to hear (again, maybe *from* Matt) ideas about
>> energizing evolt.
>
> Ditch drupal and write a custom CMS using ruby on rails
>
> --
> Matt Warden
> Cincinnati, OH, USA
> http://mattwarden.com
>
>
> This email proudly and graciously contributes to entropy.
>


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