Plone And Single Sign On / LDAP

It’s always a shame if people present at a tech conference without the necessary knowledge on the background. The LibreOffice extensions and templates website had never a single sign on solution, because there were no such solution within the LibreOffice available. This situation persists when the LibreOffice extensions and templates website was migrated to the current infrastructure with a rework. Thus the migration of the user of the site was also done without e.g. a migration to a LDAP solution.

The Document Foundation staff member, which presented about the future of the LibreOffice extensions site at the FOSDEM in Brussels, seemed to have no knowledge about this situation and also not about available solutions for LDAP integration for Plone (the Content Management System the current website run on). This illuminated the carefullness, the presenter dedicated to evaluate the current situation and the future of the LibreOffice extensions repository.

Maybe the time has been much better spent to improve the communication style inside The Document Foundation and for the review of already for publication submitted LibreOffice extension projects?

And about the LDAP integration of Plone: a bit of Googleing would have been of great help 😉

Wasting Donation Ressources Because Of Inability To Communicate Appropriate?

The LibreOffice project created a website for extensions and templates more than seven years ago. The site was created and driven by volunteers. There are currently a lot of LibreOffice extensions and templates published on this site and maybe there are some of them waiting in review pipeline for a go.

But about half a year ago the deputy chairman of The Documentation Foundation (TDF), Björn, described this volunteer work on a public mailing list of the The Document Foundation as poor work. He never got in contact with the voluteers that drove the site before. Thus the voluteers were not amused and in consequence stopped their work on the site and their contribution to TDF immediately.

The deputy chairman may not have forseen this volunteer reaction, but he was not able to real appologize for his offense. He thought that he has done everything right in the end.

The current LibreOffice extensions and templates website is unmaintained for this reason for about half a year. Because the deputy chairman (and maybe other members of the board of directors of The Document Foundation) are not able to realize the bad communication style and real appologize for it in public, TDF lost long time contributors. And to coat that, they came up with the concept to create a complete new framework for the LibreOffice extensions and templates website. The reason behind this was not that the current site could not been improved, but only the inability to communicate appropriate with volunteers.

Because of this reason TDF will spend a lot of ressources funded by donation money from people aroud the world. It seemed that not everyone involved or responsible for this task have an oversee of the complete expenses (maybe here the membership committee etc. has a duty to jump in). And there are some other issues with the designated new platform, that are beyond the technical issues especially of the migration.

And it’s nice to get messages in private that people share my view about bad communication style etc., but didn’t speak up in public. This is very disappointing. Such a behavior will not help The Document Foundation to improve the project. It needs more self-confident people in the project which have no issue to discuss issues transparent (not only in the back room). If a project is not able to develop in such direction it will lose its attractivity (or never get such attractivity) and will languish.

Published A New Addon Release For LibreOffice Extensions Site

I added some further improvements of the Plone addon which drives the current LibreOffice templates website. I improved the edit dialog of the templates release and linked release module. I added some more explanation and splitted the dialog into more register. I think the dialog is a bit more clearly arranged now. I published the new release of the addon as usual in the ‘cheesehop‘: https://pypi.org/project/tdf.templateuploadcenter/

I tagged the release with the number 0.24. The release is published under the General Public License. The users of the LibreOffice templates website will benefit from the features of the new release as soon as a member of The Document Foundation infrastructure team take the time to run buildout and update the website.

The Next Plone Addon Release For The LibreOffice Extensions Site

I finished further improvements of the Plone addon which drives the current LibreOffice extensions website. I improved the edit dialog of the extensions release and linked release module with some explanation and splitted the dialog into register, thus it is more clearly arranged yet. I published the new release in the ‘cheesehop‘: https://pypi.org/project/tdf.extensionuploadcenter/

The release has the number 0.30. Let’s see, if a member of the infrastructure team of The Document Foundation takes the opportunity to update the current LibreOffice extensions website with the new Plone addon release.

Further Improvements On The Plone Addons

I made some more improvements especially on the dialogs of the Plone addons that drives the current LibreOffice extensions and templates website. There are some steps to go to finish my work. My goal is to improve especially the edit dialogs thus it is more easy an fast for contributors to submit there projects and releases / files.

But I had to ensure too, that all necessary information / data will be submitted. It’s something of a balance act.

Further Work On Addons For The LibreOffice Extensions And Templates Website

I worked a bit further on some smaller improvements of the Plone addons that drives the current LibreOffice extensions and templates website during my spare time in the evening of the last days. Once I finished some more of this tweaks I’ll publish new releases of this Plone addons.

Let’s see, if someone would be willing to update the website with this new releases.