Forking GetSimple

[Knitter]

Hi,

I've decided to fork GetSimple and create a new project based on what is my understanding of GetSimple's philosophy.

I know I could have posted my changes as patches for GS project instead of forking and dividing efforts, and I have done so in the past, but I found that the process was not to my liking, and it would just be easier to create a new project.

The main reason for forking was that I had a lot of changes to place in GS, and found several aspects of it's development that were not inline with the uses I wanted for GS. As an example, not in any particular order, the plugin architecture seems hasted and not really thought of as to what is the basic GS functionality and what is a plugin feature, there are several mistakes in the admin HTML files, some tags that appear from nowhere, like </td> in files where no table has ever been opened, the interface is not that easy to use as there are small but important features missing (page drag and drop?), no multi-user support, all data and important files as stored in a web accessible folder, several "features" collide with every-day usage (what's with the all nonce thing? and why does it kill the script instead of properly directing the user?) no proper handling of error situations and so on.

Point is, thought GS is a very nice and well thought product, I realized that I needed to change a lot of code to make it suite my needs, therefor I ended up applying my own patches to SVN versions, and it was getting a bit cumbersome to manage.

I could just use the GS code and not release my modifications, given that the license allows it, but I felt it may be useful for any other user out there.

I'll try to maintain as much compatibility as possible, but there will not be much of a way to do so as I've dropped any MySQL code, moved/removed/changed folders and files and even the XML files are a bit different.

The project's page in Google code is https://code.google.com/p/stay-simple-cms/, I've only started to change the code yesterday, there were some problems with moving files under my SVN client, and the latest changes break the system. Still, I'm hopping to have a usable version at the end of the next week.

[getsimplethemes]

Hi Knitter,

What steps did you take to inform the developers on these issues? Of course you're free to start a fork, but it would be too bad if (some of) the changes you're suggestion do end up in a future release of GetSimple.

When most of the changes you have in mind concern new features; then it's probably best to move on to your own fork as we want to keep GetSimple simple But when those changes relate to improving existing features, I'd urge you to share those changes and see what the options of getting them into a next release are.

- Matt

[Knitter]

There are some topics on the forum that were never answered or not unsewered by GS developers, and who are the developers actually, they don't seem to mark much of a presence around here. There are issues on the issue tracker that have gotten no attention or reply.

Most of the changes don't relate to new features, only a different way of getting things done, currently my needs/goals are:
- content and scripts out of web accessible folder.
- more unity in code, there is some use of Camel Case and the classic underscores in function names, all mixed up.
- Clean errors before moving to another version.
- No MySQL support, keep it simple. There are a lot of MySQL based alternatives out there, the strength of GS as always been it's XML approach
- Prepare the move to an object orientated structure.
- Better UI an general usability.

I could try to contribute to GS, as I have done before, but I've had no answers to some of my questions, there as been no SVN activity for some time and no feedback on how the project is going, and most of my changes go against the way GS is developed. Creating a patch that would diverge the code from it's current path is not something I thought would be accepted.

If GS implements some of the features/improvements I'm thinking about then that would be great for GS, but I need a base to work on now, not in two months. Nevertheless, the code I'm developing is open source, if any of my code is useful to GS you can pick it up.

[JWH_Matthew]

I am surprised to here you don't know who our developers are!! You must be rather new as 2 of our developers including the founder have been rather busy here lately with having a child and I am not sure about the other. You can see the official Get-Simple team here: http://get-simple.info/start/team.

You may want to look at the SVN as it had several status updates / comments in the past 24 hours.

[Knitter]

"Rather new"? Maybe...

I've been using SVN trunk since I first start using GS. It got an update today yes, but it hadn't had one since December 9th, revision 275. I'm only looking at trunk.

Point is, I find GS a very useful in interesting CMS but I need to make some changes to it that may go against GS current development path, given that and the fact that I needed to change a lot of GS' code I decided to fork.

Of course, if any of my changes is useful you can always bring them back into the project, I'll do my best, as I have before, to provide any patch, comment or help in getting the code back to GS or in helping GS, but I there is no reason for me to use GS and manually apply patches to every update or even keeping my changes to myself. This way, the changes I make are available to anyone who needs them, and if no one needs the changes no harm comes to the world.

As for knowing who is who, I know that page and the list in it but given the activity on the forums I think my statement is correct. I don't need to know any info on personal life, I would just like to have more feedback about the project's development without having to go though issue comments and such.

[marrco]

Good points. Hope some devs here will answer you.

(by the way, the MySql support doesn't seem a good choice to me too. But i think it's never been discussed here. I did a few tests with GS and it performs really well even under heavy load. Lots better than famous cms that use MySql. So if it's not performance or load resilience, why use MySql on semi-static brochure site ?)

[ccagle8]

Knitter,

Sorry you feel the GetSimple developers are in someway ignoring you and/or the many issue and feature requests others have made. The truth is, which should be obvious here, GetSimple is not a for-profit product or service.

We are not paid or sponsored by anyone nor do the donations that trickle in (is here a word that is slower than trickle?) nearly enough to allow us to dedicate our lives to this. I love GetSimple, and spend some of my spare time (along with Zegnat, Matt and Mike) coding and on these forums trying to answer questions - without any $$ compensation I might add.

Because we are not paid to do this, being on these forums every day cannot be our priority. I am sorry you see me sparingly, but if you look at the post counts, I am almost certain that the 4 official team members have some of the highest post counts here. What else do you expect from us?

Some of you that might read this might be concerned about the future of GS if the developers "don't have time." I promise you all this: GS will continue to grow and continue to become more of a mature product as the months and years roll on. Just because you see me take a month or two, or three off of these forums does not mean anything about the future of this project. I think it is unrealistic for anyone to expect the GS team to be on here every day or week answering questions.

I am wholly dedicated to this project. The other team members can speak for themselves, but I think it's obvious since Mike, Matt and Zegnat have been on these forums since Day 1 and are still around.

So good luck with the fork - I'm sure you will create a great project from GS's base code. This is what open source is all about.

Knitter (or anyone else) - if you would like to take this offline and maybe talk about some of the more specific concerns you have with our code - and/or it's direction, please email me at admin@cagintranet.com

Thanks!

[Knitter]

I clearly understand that you don't get paid for creating this, that is not the problem. My mainly motive to create a fork is that I needed to change a lot of things about GS and that would not be inline with GS current development path, so just changing and giving patches would be insane.

As I said before, I could just change what I need and use it without ever releasing the code since that is allowed by the current license, but I'm a firm supporter of open source software, and therefor see no reason not to release the code. Though it is, technically a fork, one could just call it a new product based on GS code and philosophy.

I don't expect you to be here everyday, but would suggest that one of you would make a stop by often, and reply to any development specific question, if time allows, to usage questions also. It will help maintain a more close connection with the user base. If the team is small, ask for contributors.

As for any talk offline, I believe in complete openness, so any comment I make is always public and available for anyone to read and reply , that's why I created this topic.

[ccagle8]

Knitter - Good luck on your new product.