Two weeks ago, when I advertised Freewriters.ca here, I had no idea of the internal power struggle that was taking place. I hadn't talked to John in a long while, and the excitement of installing and running the first PN site on my own was incredible. The article that I
posted simply thanked eddie for all the work he had done on improving the system.
Two days later, as the visits were rolling in and I was delighting in sweet hyatus, I visited this site and received the shock. I think we would all agree that seeing one of the lead developers leave is not a sign of stability for any community. I immediately began to worry about the future of PN. After reading the articles posted here, and the somewhat lean transmission of duties to the new crowd, I relaxed a bit. The problem that persisted however, mostly magnified by my own lack of information was what exact route was Postnuke going to take? I realized the struggle was drawn over the future of PN, but I missed the part where these changes and the debate itself were clearly laid out for the community.
For instance, after surfing the wealth of information that exists on PostNuke, I couldn't find anything developed that eased the creation of themes for PN. I saw encompass as user-unfriendly, and most importantly as an appendage of PN, rather than an integral part of it. That is why I never installed it on my own site, relying instead on the free themes spewed out by Themecentral by the dozen. That, in my opinion, is unnacceptable for a comunity of developers the size of PN. Imagine my greater surprise when I saw the download link on this site's main page.
Another thing that touched me as unfortunate was the debate itself, and the mudslinging that I felt was going on behind the scenes. My question is whether the community had any say in this transfer of authority, and more importantly if it has anything to say in regards to the future of Postnuke. The new beta site is interesting, but it doesn't offer much change in my opinion. Rather it stands as a valid but unnecessary alternative to what already exists. The .4 seems to be on the hold, and that I view as a mistake, seeing how that would have been the only uniting call for the entire community.
I guess the jist of all that I've said above simply revolves around my own lack of knowledge and security in terms of what PN has to offer. From a simply 'graphical' perspective, without any knowledge of PHP, the changes that are taking place are largely cosmetic, with little or no interest to me. My only worry is of the .4 and where that will lead, but since it is largely on hold -to my knowledge, after having read Harry's first posts, I am not sure exactly where this entire community is going to. Certainly not continuing its natural course of in-depth change and stability. My ultimate question swirves around the future, therefore, and I would like to pose it to harry as much an anyone else who is interested in answering me: What was the actual debate, and how much say does the community have executive wise?
Thank you,
Mihnea Dumitru
mihnea@freewriters.ca
http://www.freewriters.ca