andreasma at Free Software and other topics
I worked on a new release of the Plone addon for the current LibreOffice templates website. It will contain a new module for small template projects, which make it fast and easy to create and submit a new templates project and publish a LibreOffice template. I’m going to release this release during the next days.
It will need the support of a member of the Document Foundation admin team to provide the improvements to the user of the website.
I worked on some further improvements of the Plone addon that drives the current LibreOffice extensions website. I could especially improve the search feature and the listing of the extension projects. I published a new release of the addon with the improvements on the ‘Cheeseshop’ today (release 0.29).
I finished my work on the implementation of a new module and new features for the Plone addon that drives the current LibreOffice extensions website. The addon contains the new module for small extension projects which makes it easy and fast to submit a new LibreOffice extension. The release is published in the ‘Cheeseshop’ (https://pypi.org) at: https://pypi.org/project/tdf.extensionuploadcenter/. It is release 0.28 of the Plone addon.
I added further on the Plone addon for the current LibreOffice extensions website and changed the display of the categories to a specific search inside the Plone portal_catalog tool. There is the need for further such changes. Furthermore the new strings need a localization template. I’ll do this during the next days and publish a new release of the addon in the ‘Cheeseshop’.
I worked a bit with one of the Plone addons for the LibreOffice extensions and templates website and added a new module to submit easy and fast a new LibreOffice Extension. The module consists of only one edit dialog. It is structured in register and got already a view. The edit dialog as well as the project view are configurable. It’s not that big deal to make any changes on the view, if you have some knowledge on web technology.
I read in the minutes from a board meeting of The Document Foundation (TDF) the belief ‘plone is a CMS for large scale & for a big company etc.’ and ‘there perhaps suitable’. This seemed to be a lonesome view from the leading body of this entity and not generally shared.
If you take a look at the website https://plone.com you will find there a list of recent Plone launches for organizations and companies. This organizations / companies and the Plone launches are very divers and from small to big sizes, e.g.:
And I found another interesting site for volunteers, that is created with Plone and its new technics: https://vhs-ehrenamtsportal.de/
Thus the view of the TDF board proofs wrong.
The organizations and companies which launched and use Plone site benefit from the excellent stability of this Content Management System (CMS) (information about Plone security could be found at: https://plone.org/security).
It seemed the personal ressources for quality assurance in the LibreOffice project are not enough to even get all UI changes tested. There is an issue with not localized string in a user dialog of the Writer module. If you choose ‘Einfügen – Verzeichnis -Verzeichnis’ you will find in the dialog a drop down box for ‘Typ’, that includes only strings in the English language. And even the entry ‘Typ’ in front of the box is not localized.
I worked a bit more on the Plone addon for the current LibreOffice extensions and templates center and added a first draft for a new module. This new small module would make it possible to create a new extension project and add an extension file within one step using one form. I commited my changes to the TDF Github repository: https://github.com/tdf/tdf.extensionuploadcenter
I’ll work further on this draft during the next days. Possibly a member of the TDF admin team will take care of the update of the LibreOffice extensions and templates site with the improvements.
The source code which drives the current LibreOffice extensions and templates website is available for checkout and development on Github.com in a public repository (https://github.com/tdf/extensions.libreoffice.org). It’s easy to checkout the code from there and run a test site or development site yourself. There is nothing hidden. It’s a Plone site with some add-ons including a policy package and a theming package. You need only to run the usual buildout.
I learned from work inside an open source project during the last years that many people are not willing to really support you, while you are doing the work. They show nearly no interest in your volunteer work up to the point when something didn’t went smoothly. During the periode everything went smoothly you won’t get an acclamation. But in the opposite you will see a lot of people always pointing on you. And maybe they pick on you. I got this experience. And there were nobody inside the project who stopped this.
At some point leading members of the project spoke about my volunteer work in public without discussing requests and issues first with the one who did the work (me). That was the last straw.
I stopped my contribution to the project immediately. I wanted to preserve my nerves and spent my spare time in a different way after 16 years.
There is no need to complain on a bus factor, if you are the source of it.
And I read that the project will spent more donation money on the creation of a new framework and administration. It seemed the current one was to cheap because of my contributions (volunteer time). Lesson learned: only expensive things seemed to be invaluable ;-(