11 May 2011, 18:56

Professionally, I have had to use SVN, CVS, git. Mercurial is also used on a few Google code projects.

I had never heard of bazaar. Like git, it allows you to source control locally, which is great for small personal projects. It looks like it is a simpler set of commands than git (but you can really get going with 4 git commands, add, commit, remote add, push). Yes, it looks like a great way to learn how to use a Version Control System. 

User friendless encompasses many factors.

It doesn't matter too much to me if there is a bit of a learning curve with github. I can easily find on the web a resource that will take me over it in a gist. Clear and detailed tutorials are really not difficult to find, on the github site and other places. Like this "Getting the Hang of GitHub" - http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/other/getting-the-hang-of-github/

I have no idea how smooth the learning curve is for launchpad. Of more importance, trying to get an idea gets me hit the first stumbling block. A google search for "Launchpad tutorial" returned me this http://www.launchpadtutorial.com/, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXqBBBjgh_0, http://robotics.hobbizine.com/asmlau.html (hint, nothing related to the Version Control System).  A search for launchpad on Mahara doesn't return anything helpful either. The best fit is this page that targets Ubuntu users - http://wiki.mahara.org/Developer_Area/Release_Instructions.

Constructivism is a theory of education that believes in collaboration. It is recognized that scaffolded guidance is essential for constructivism to work.

A link to a tutorial on how to get started with launchpad may go some way into helping your users over the first roadblocks.

11 May 2011, 3:18

Hello Marielle,

I disagree with you that we (Catalyst) want to centralize and control. Sure, the project's development was started at Catalyst and for a considerable amount of time since then Catalyst has been the leader and the driver in the development of Mahara often not with backing from any client but because we believe in the software. With the growth of the user base of Mahara and developers discovering it, it is placed more and more into the hands of the community.

Sure, we still run all the servers that are available to the community: mahara.org, the demo and master.dev sites, the wiki, and we are still the release managers and maintainers. However, that does not have to be the case in the future. Against centralization and control speak the monthly developer meetings where any developer (also non-developers are welcome to join the discussions but must be aware that the chat can be highly technical) can join and put agenda items up for discussion. All logs and meeting notes are publicly accessible. The code review system which is based on peer review by another developer no matter whether s/he is a sole developer or acts on behalf of a support company is another example of decentralization. Anybody is welcome to develop plugins and also to contribute to core Mahara and every developer is treated equally. Catalyst developers don't get preferential treatment in having their code accepted into core. Anybody can also suggest new features for core Mahara that s/he can put up for discussion in the community to not just base the development on the original thoughts but see what other members of the community would like to see in a new or revised feature.

I don't know your reasons for not wanting to join Launchpad. But it is a place besides the forums where most interaction happens, especially among the developers, and the place where bugs are reported, tracked, commented on and fixes provided. Features are also tracked there and are available for anybody to have a look at.

Catalyst sells services around Mahara, but it is not selling the software itself. There are others who do the same.

Cheers

Kristina

11 May 2011, 14:31

Hi Kristina, 

I never said you wanted. I said that for the moment, it is very much centralized, with more control than on similar open source projects. I also said that it is in Catalyst best commercial interest to centralize and control. Is this incorrect? 

Keep in mind I framed the discussion in the context of plugins.

• "Monthly developer meetings".. I am not aware of any other Open Source project doing that for plugins.
• "Peer review". Unusual requirements for plugins, as discussed earlier.  
• "Catalyst developers don't get preferential treatment in having their code accepted into core" and "Anybody can also suggest new features for core Mahara that s/he can put up for discussion in the community".

    This doesn't match with the log of one of the most recent discussion - http://meetbot.mahara.org/mahara-dev/2010/mahara-dev.2010-11-10-07.34.log.html

07:40:28 <richardm> One thing we should also point out it that we don't really officially get to decide what goes in at all
07:40:29 <fmarier> Mjollnir`: not sure
07:40:43 <Mjollnir`> richardm: que?
07:40:52 <richardm> It's supposed to be decided by the 'steering group'
07:40:56 <lamiette> Mjollnir`: http://wiki.mahara.org/Roadmap/Usability - from the wiki
07:41:04 <richardm> Don reminded fmarier & me of that recently
07:41:23 <dobedobedoh> Who is the steering group composed of?
07:41:32 <dm> does the steering group actually meet regularly though?
07:41:42 <richardm> Nope they never meet
07:41:42 <Mjollnir`> is that different ffrom the governance group?
07:41:51 <anitsirk> the governance group is richard wyles, nolen smith, don christie and mike o'connor
07:41:56 <richardm> er sorry i mean the governance group
07:42:06 <Mjollnir`> i used to be on the governance group, i think my membership silently lapsed
07:42:19 <fmarier> but more importantly, what are people looking at pushing into 1.4?
07:42:39 <anitsirk> http://wiki.mahara.org/Contributors
07:42:40 <fmarier> we were thinking of a release in the first half of next year
07:42:51 <fmarier> (obviously really vague)
07:43:01 <aguri> richardm: that being so, i think the governance group are very reliant on the developers giving them good advice to make decisions
07:43:08 <fmarier> and part of it depends on what goes into the release

• "launchpad ... especially among the developers, and the place where bugs are reported, tracked, commented on and fixes provided" This is not the case for the mahara-contributors project. Not a single bug report - https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara-contrib, https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara-adminlang, https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara-auth-janrain. Launchpad is not a good environment for plugins. If I was to contribute to the core, yes, I would join launchpad. For plugins, this is adding some overhead with no benefit to either the developer or the end user. 

Centralization and control for Mahara = Highly desirable.

Centralization and control for plugins = Not desirable at all. 

Only trusted "contributors" writing tutorials and listing resources = Not desirable at all.

11 May 2011, 5:10

 Hi

You said: "[Mahara] relies on MoE commissioned work to sustain development. This creates a conflict of interest."

We and others have funding from many diverse sources all over the world, including the MoE, for which we are grateful. The largest contributers have been Catalyst and Flexible Learning Network (now Kineo Pacific). We want this to change and have been working hard to remove barriers to contributions. This work continues as should be evidenced by the responses to your comments.

The point is, your statement and your conclusion are both incorrect.

Even if they were not, I don't see how having an education project reflect the interests of a country's education would be a bad thing.

But for now, please don't make false statements, join up and contribute if you can.

Many thanks

Don

11 May 2011, 12:49

Is it that I should assume that the information that is published on your website is misleading?

"Continued development has been made possible by further support from New Zealand’s Ministry of Education and the application of Mellon Foundation funds from the Open Polytechnic’s winning a 2007 Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration." - http://mahara.org/about

More recently, April 2010, a post authored by yourself - "The Ministry is firming up our position around e-portfolios and Mahara/myportfolio in particular. Over the next six months we will: - fund some usability improvements for the next main release;" - http://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=2087

11 May 2011, 14:29

Hello Marielle,

Thanks for pointing out the wording on the About page. It needs to be re-written to make it clear for which timeframe the funding was because clearly there is no funding from the Mellon Foundating anymore. This is the background and where Mahara's funding started. The NZ Ministry of Education is supporting the development of Mahara further because MyPortfolio runs on it and users make improvement suggestions that MOE then decides to pursue further or not besides the features that they want to see. That means that we will also implement plugins not written by Catalyst in the next release which is a benefit to the users.

I think it may be helpful to separate Catalyst as project contributor and Catalyst as hosting company and not mix them up in the argumentation. There are things that Catalyst as project contributor does, including feeding code back to the project itself instead of keeping it for individual clients only thus contributing to new releases of Mahara, and there are things that Catalyst needs to do as hosting company to ensure the running of a service.

Cheers

Kristina

11 May 2011, 17:01

Marielle,
Don's statement is quite correct and there's nothing inconsistent with what's on the website although I will update "has been made possible" to was made possible back in 2007 which is the context of that paragraph.

More recently, particularly in 2011, the NZ Ministry of Education has commissioned enhancements relating to the www.myportfolio.school.nz service. We are very excited and grateful for this support from the NZ Ministry particularly because the vast majority of the work is useful for the Mahara project itself - i.e. it is not customisations specific to NZ schooling.

There has also been commissioned work from a wide variety of sources internationally and also the Mahara Partner programme delivers some financial support.

But none of those facts are misleading. Catalyst and Flexible Learning Network (now Kineo Pacific) has sustained the project through good times and the lean periods. Funded projects and commissioned work is inherently lumpy. Things like bug fixing, maintenance, community support (i.e. forum participation), infrastructure, usability etc.. are areas that are rarely, if ever, funded from external parties. Mahara isn't a profitable exercise for either organisation. It is only because a) we have a community of contributors  and b) the senior management of each company believes in the values of open source and the indirect benefits of contributing back, rather than a purely bottom line focus, that Mahara is what it is today.

I see no reason why Don, myself or anyone else closely involved with Mahara needs to defend the credentials of Mahara's openness. I find it bemusing when a GPL project like Mahara critiqued like this - it is incredibly hard and a mostly thankless task for the team involved to sustain and grow an open source project. There are different roles across the team, often loosely defined, that make something like this successful. The energy and expertise of Kristina, Richard, Francois and many others in more part-time roles often go well beyond the call of duty of their job descriptions. And securing funding, and the vision of those funders, is to be applauded. One only needs to browse Sourceforge to see the weight of numbers of open source projects that "die on the vine".

Richard

11 May 2011, 13:25

When you run a company that needs to make an income to be able to sustain continued development... and you invite persons to contribute... it is tempting to invite contributions that directly benefit your commercial business under the cover of inviting contributions that benefit the community. 

If you don't see contributions to the community has directly benefitting your business then there is a conflict between your interests as a business and the ones of the community that you claim to serve. 

The problem is not that the project is managed by a commercial company. Google is a company that makes huge profits. They provide free apps and with them tools that makes it super easy to contribute to the community. These tools clearly and directly help you contribute to the community. Your contributions almost certainly help their business... but this doesn't matter to the user. Everything is coherent with the idea that the Google sincerely believes that encouraging user contributions are great for its business. 

The problem is Catalyst seems to think that because it's open source, everybody will assume they only want the best for the community and therefore everybody will just propose their help. I, personally, feel that the contribute to Mahara page, as currently written, really is all about "contributing value to our commercial business" more than about "contributing value to the community". And that's seriously putting off. 

The point is I really don't care if Catalyst makes an income from the Mahara project if it is clear that they believe that community participation is great for their business. So far, in all interactions that I had with Flexible Learning or Catalyst, questions about how to help the community of users were answered with encouragements to freely contribute time  to do things that I understood to directly benefit their commercial business and not so clearly the community. And that really annoys me. 

If you want to tell me that I am wrong to feel this way because Flexible Learning and Catalyst only have the very best intention (which I truly believe they have), this is not gonna change the way I feel about it and my hesitations to consider opportunities for collaboration. I really don't care if they directly or indirectly benefit from me doing things that are beneficial to me and the community. But that really annoys me when hey answer questions of how to help the community with invitations to do things that are gonna cost me, benefit them, and are unlikely to benefit the community. 

11 May 2011, 17:11

What is it exactly that you have been asked to do that is of benefit to us but not the community? For goodness sake Marielle, Mahara is very far from being a monetised project and there's absolutely nothing mercenary about any of Catalyst or FLN's actions. You're annoyed. Well I'm annoyed too. The critical thing to understand is that this is GPL - download Mahara and go and do your own thing if you don't like the Mahara community. But please stop your ill-informed diatribe as if Mahara was some greedy money making venture - that's so far from the truth that your posts really annoy me.

Richard

11 May 2011, 11:49

Hi Francois

Launchpad is useful from a developer point of view, though I do think some of the public GIT hosting sites have a nicer interface.

As you suggest though, these sites aren't end-user friendly. Some kind of CMS with uploading, commenting and rating options, and good content tagging and searching, would be better for that. In my experience Drupal could be used to make something like this relatively quickly. You could template the content so that contributors have to fill out relevant information fields about their plugins. I think the Wiki is too freeform and won't scale well for this purpose.

I think though that it would make sense to integrate a plugin catalogue with the rest of the mahara.org site - you should be able to access both with the same username and password. Maybe Merielle or others would disagree with this though? I think a community project should have a central access point to focus activity.