Is there in truth no beauty?George Herbert, Jordan (I), c. 1633
As with any community project, you can please some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time. The Joomla! 4 project is a typical example. As with any project that runs overtime—perhaps because there’s a failure to obtain consensus on the design specification or the development methodology (who knows?)—there usually reaches a stage where people—mostly people who reside outside of the project—suggest the way to fix the problem is by throwing money at it.
As anyone with experience in managing software projects would knowThere are three things a project manager needs in order successfully manage a project: (a) control of the people who are involved in the project deliverables, (b) control of the financial budget and (c) control of the information that determines how much time and money will be spent and who does what. If you remove or constrain any of those elements the project is doomed to fail., when people ask the question, “Would more money fix the problem?”, questions like these imply there exists a universal, silver-bullet solution to every project manager’s dilemma: that money can fix everythingAlthough, I should add, there is an adage in project management that says, “As soon as you put a dollar sign in front of the answer, the solution will become immediately obvious.”.
I can’t be exactly sure when Joomla! 4 kicked off but I think it was about 2 years ago. The Joomla! 4 CMS product is still at the early design stage. If I’ve misrepresented these facts then I’m happy to be corrected.
Against this backstory, I’ve read the growing criticism and complaints—some of which are justified—about the failure-to-launch Joomla! 4Much of the material for this article is sourced from my comments on the Joomla! forum posted a few months ago.. It’s depressing reading. But it doesn’t surprise me that people who have no skin in the game use the Joomla! forum to criticise, to complain or to suggest overhauling the project. I don’t have any skin in the game; I haven’t invested a single line of codeI am not a person who gets involved in alpha testing; I’m more of an architect: an “ideas person” rather than a builder., input into Github discussions or a single cent of money into the Joomla! 4 project. However, whether Joomla! 4 sees the light of day or not, nothing will diminish my respect for those who volunteer their time to Joomla and nothing will diminish my feeling that Joomla! (as a CMS product) is the best way for me to practise my webcraft.
We can’t deny the interest in—or maybe it’s criticism aimed at—Joomla! 4 and there’s a horde of armchair experts who have answers for everything from “fixing” the user interface to raising millions of dollars for developers’ salaries. As curious as some of these suggestions are, the idea of levying a “download tax” of, say, $10 for Joomla per person/download (as a means of funding ongoing Joomla! development) rates off the scale on the crazy meter! I don’t know how many times a year other people download Joomla! but I probably do it 20 or 30 times. Implementing a download tax would also have unintended adverse consequences such as birthing third-party or black-market suppliers of Joomla! software. Why pay $10 if you can get something for free off the back of a truck?
The impracticality in implementing the “$10 download tax” aside, there’s virtue in discussing how to remodel one or more services provided by OSM as a way of raising revenue for the Joomla! projectAt least one OSM-sponsored crowdfunding proposal was made for the Joomla! project, and it was an idea that had a lot of support from leadership at the time, but the idea was basically killed by one person because they felt that no external entity should be able to profit from the Joomla branding (even though most of the profit was to be given to OSM, the producer was going to keep enough to either cover their expenses or generate a minimal profit).. Needless to say, the “$10 download tax” idea obtained qualified support from one community member who suggested that the tax should be waived for “us volunteers who don't charge for helping.”q.v. https://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=575&t=973084&p=3574336#p3574336
If the “$10 download tax” idea wasn’t ill-considered enough, the idea of creating a class of exemptions within the community is downright ludicrous. How would such a scheme be administered and decide who should belong to the exemption class? There are many volunteers within the Joomla community who “don't charge for helping.” There a dozens of people who work hard behind the scenes (and who do not use the Joomla! forum) who might be worthy of such consideration and, equally, there are dozens of people who sit behind the scenes and do nothing except occupy positions of prestige. Further, administering the exemption classification would necessarily involve another burden on OSM.
Unfazed by the “$10 download tax” proposal, I proposed an alternative: a levy of, say, $1 to register an account on the Joomla! forum and an ongoing membership subscription fee of $1 per account per yearAssuming that a universal EFT model can be implemented, this would not raise much money: after administrative costs—handling fees, etc., the scheme might raise as much as a couple of thousand dollars in the first year.. Only financially sound, subscribed, members would have posting rights; anyone and everyone can read what is posted on the forum. It’s just an idea.
Imposing charges on the use of the Joomla! forum would achieve three other important and necessary reforms: (a) reduce, if not completely eliminate, forum spam, (b) focus attention on serious and current issues and encourage people to use their time more effectively, and (c) because people are actually putting some skin in the game, forum users feel they do have a stake in the project and will feel more confident that their comments (including criticism and complaints) are taken seriously.
Today there are over six hundred thousand “registered members” at the Joomla! forum.
Less than 15% of these accounts have ever posted anything on the forum; 85% of all accounts are either unused or banned for violation of the forum rules (usually spamming).
Of the 15% of forum accounts that have posted something on the forum, more than half of these have not posted anything for more than five years; the chances that they will continue to use the forum are remote. Of the remainder, we know that some people have created more than one account (even if the forum rules prohibit this). This means that there may as many as, say, ten thousand people who have posted something on the forum within the past five years.
If the “$10 download tax” idea wasn’t ill-considered enough, the idea of creating a class of exemptions within the community is downright ludicrous. How would such a scheme be administered and decide who should belong to the exemption class? There are many volunteers within the Joomla community who “don't charge for helping.” There a dozens of people who work hard behind the scenes (and who do not use the Joomla! forum) who might be worthy of such consideration and, equally, there are dozens of people who sit behind the scenes and do nothing except occupy positions of prestige. Further, administering the exemption classification would necessarily involve another burden on OSM.
This is, of course, only a small part of the story behind creating this website. There’s more to follow.
