Appcelerator requests - gladenko/TideSDK GitHub Wiki

Legal Requests

Kevin/Nina to report on progress of legal changes with impact on titanium_desktop and kroll
Set deadline for resolution

Hard Cost Requests

Jenkins Continuous Integration (CI) system:

Linux CI Server / Monitoring Server (rackspace)
Linux Ubuntu (rackspace)
Linux Fedora (rackspace)
Windows 7/2008 (rackspace)
MacOSX Snow Leopard (http://www.macminivault.com)
MacOSX Lion (http://www.macminivault.com)
DNS Service (dnsmadeeasy)
Domains

Startup costs are $2104.00 with and ongoing monthly requirement of $797.00 Details of this request is available in pdf form:

tidesdk-budget.pdf

Status: On June 11, 2012 Kevin Whinnery advised the financial support for the request would not be granted and that a formal position on support to the project would be communicated in a formal public statement. The public statement was made of June 14, 2012 in this thread on the Titanium Desktop Transition mailing list.

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/titanium-desktop-transition/IUe7S8lYNs0

Further clarification is currently being sought from Jeff Haynie, Appcelerator's CEO concerning their pledges of commitment. Appcelerator currently provides no legal or financial support to the project which was pledged (together with an orderly transition to a non-profit foundation). We are continuing to seek their cooperation and to collaborate with Appcelerator in an effort with mutual benefit to our community and ecosystem.

Technical Requests

Repository Transfer

Coordination Issues

TiStudio / Aptana integration of TideSDK:
- Ensure TideSDK can be recognized within the IDE when installed on the OS
TideSDK distribution:
- Determine a method to distribute TideSDK.
- Ensure TiStudio is aware of updates and download locations
Documentation and videos
- Check if there is documentation/videos pending to be transferred to github from appcelerator.
Network builds:
- Use build servers to also offer a build service for network distributed builds for multiple OSs
Data and Statistics:
- What can Appcelerator tell us about our user base (size, etc)
- Requests, analysis of Titanium Mobile and TideSDK (Titanium Desktop) improvements
Google summer of Code or Sponsorship to

Appcelerator Support Communicated for the Project

kwhinner joined the chat room.

[5:23pm] kwhinner: fairwinds wrt the three things you asked specifically - the legal issue needs to be taken care of asap regardless - have our legal counsel working on that now for desktop specifcally
[5:23pm] fairwinds: and kroll involvement in that code also?
[5:23pm] kwhinner: yes
[5:23pm] fairwinds: great
[5:24pm] kwhinner: wrt to a communications channel, that is bounded by the personal time and availability of one guy - Josh Rosselin. He is the only member of the desktop team still on staff
[5:24pm] fairwinds: what of other two points. on the third the office support time, a more flexible arrangemment woulb be plus
[5:24pm] fairwinds: I see
[5:24pm] kwhinner: he can and has been answering e-mails on a best effort basis
[5:25pm] fairwinds: yes, perhaps if he could drop into this channel also from time to time
[5:25pm] fairwinds: would be great
[5:25pm] fairwinds: perhaps set up a bot so he can see what we are up to
[5:26pm] kwhinner: I'll alert him that it exists. He's been working round the clock on Android, so his time is likely to be limited. That's why I thought it might be better to try and carve out specific office hours so he can time box a certain chunk of time to talk desktop
[5:26pm] fairwinds: but can certainly seek him out as needed.
[5:26pm] fairwinds: kwhinner: this is certainly helpful
[5:27pm] fairwinds: on issue of donation. I am hoping we can get a kickstart. It is really needed. I think can help recruit help and find some folks with interest
[5:27pm] kwhinner: with regard to a donation to fund bug fixes, I'm not in support of that. Not because I don't want to spend $25K on desktop. Because I don't want to throw $25 K at a problem and hope that it helps (like our public education system, but I digress)
[5:27pm] kwhinner: we can talk about specific needs
[5:28pm] kwhinner: for actual hard costs
[5:28pm] fairwinds: hmm. what we need is something that can accelerate the process in short term
[5:28pm] kwhinner: happy to help in many ways on that front
[5:28pm] kwhinner: wrt hard costs
[5:28pm] fairwinds: I think the funds would hellp in this regard
[5:29pm] fairwinds: k, listening
[5:29pm] kwhinner: as I mentioned before, we are willing to help allay costs so that no out of pocket investment is required of contributors, like hosting, tools, etc.
[5:29pm] kwhinner: happy to do that as needed
[5:30pm] kwhinner: but funding development has no guarantee to produce a viable project. It has to be community driven
[5:31pm] fairwinds: kevin, understand this position but is only incentive to get folks to take interest initially, a short term crutch until we develop a more solid core of folks to hack on this stuff
[5:31pm] fairwinds: Please see what you can do
[5:32pm] fairwinds: an could be a good will gesture also
[5:32pm] fairwinds: since many folks realy did not want desktop to disappear so there is continued interest
[5:32pm] kwhinner: I'm not sure it even works as a crutch. If the project had 25K to spend on developers, where would we find them? Who would administer the fund? Appcelerator hasn't the time to do so and perform oversight. TideSDK has no treasury or accountability mechanisms
[5:32pm] fairwinds: but most of these folks are js ony types
[5:33pm] kwhinner: right
[5:33pm] kwhinner: which is the core problem
[5:33pm] kwhinner: a community of developers beyond end users with C programming and Webkit hacking skills needs to emerge to support the codebase
[5:34pm] fairwinds: first, there were a couple of us to help identify priorities for the work. I would be happy if we arrive at priorities and came to you with small funding requests to draw down for concrete bounties
[5:34pm] fairwinds: so I have no problem cash remains with you, just that is set aside
[5:34pm] fairwinds: for such efforts
[5:36pm] kwhinner: I'm not going to be able to set aside budget for $25K for desktop development. I have some flexibility with DR budget that I am happy to apply for small things that can help the project's contributor cost to remain at zero, but I'm not likely to be able to get dedicated funding, nor do I necessarily agree that it's a good idea if I could. Funding specific bounties at a certain level could maybe happen, on a pre-approve
[5:37pm] kwhinner: for maybe something like "get this to compile on Linux"
[5:37pm] fairwinds: I would be happy with pre-approved bounties at certain level
[5:37pm] kwhinner: "and document the process"
[5:37pm] fairwinds: sure
[5:39pm] fairwinds: I want this approach also. I want to see a bit of a code clean up, better build documentation, a build bot, and to see things moving so folks can have some faith that something will come from this
[5:39pm] kwhinner: Then maybe we do this: Identify the top level technical tasks that need to get done. Schedule an office hours session with Josh - maybe he can help get a rolling start on the biggest ones. After the community takes a crack at them, maybe then we consider doing a bounty or two to get past some key early hurdles
[5:40pm] fairwinds: that is a reasonable start. I would also like it we could encourage help through channels you have available to see if we can scare up some more people
[5:41pm] fairwinds: ie the public appcelerator channels
[5:41pm] fairwinds: ie blog, qa and such
[5:41pm] blackorzar: Agree
[5:41pm] fairwinds: beyond our own capability for pr
[5:41pm] fairwinds: that would be meaningful also
[5:41pm] blackorzar: thanks for helping this to get moved
[5:41pm] kwhinner: that can certainly happen - I would like to see a plan put together, and specific tasks that the project needs help on
[5:42pm] fairwinds: kevin, I think best short term plan is we may triage buglist and focus on sandboxing
[5:43pm] fairwinds: or we loose capability with apple appstore soon
[5:43pm] fairwinds: they gave june as deadline and we there now
[5:43pm] fairwinds: so a high priority there
[5:43pm] kwhinner: agreed. I would think that in a bug tracking system somewhere (Sharry and Boydlee have JIRA access) a release should be planned with a "minimum viable product" for Desktop.
[5:43pm] fairwinds: despite any specific issues that existed from before
[5:44pm] fairwinds: could I get that access, sharry pr, boydlee a js developer really
[5:44pm] kwhinner: do you have a JIRA account?
[5:44pm] fairwinds: yes
[5:44pm] fairwinds: fairwinds I think
[5:44pm] kwhinner: kk - what's your username
[5:44pm] kwhinner: kk
[5:44pm] kwhinner: i might have the ability to promote you, one sec
[5:45pm] fairwinds: k super
[5:45pm] blackorzar: good
[5:45pm] fairwinds: I appreciate this so we can put bad feelings to bed and work on somehting more positive
[5:46pm] fairwinds: important thing is moving forward and there is a need to see something anything
[5:46pm] kwhinner: you should have admin now
[5:46pm] fairwinds: happen in the code base
[5:46pm] fairwinds: k, appreciate, thank you
[5:46pm] fairwinds: on legal side soon you think?
[5:47pm] kwhinner: I certainly hope so, though I don't know what else is on Nina's plate
[5:47pm] kwhinner: we actually only had a dedicated counsel for about a month now
[5:47pm] fairwinds: I mean no later than end of month
[5:47pm] kwhinner: which is nice to have one in house
[5:47pm] fairwinds: ah, i see
[5:47pm] blackorzar: kwhinner: In the email list there are some posts about the building system... I'm not sure about appcelerator strategy for that... do you know what it is?
[5:47pm] fairwinds: yeah I bet
[5:48pm] kwhinner: blackorzar the build server is proprietary software which we could potentially get released.
[5:49pm] fairwinds: this would be super actually. thing is that we can improve or modify once we have some experience with what you were doing specifically
[5:49pm] blackorzar: ok that sounds great
[5:49pm] fairwinds: also help us from tripping over feet getting going on this
[5:49pm] blackorzar: seeyou guys gotta go to see a customer
[5:50pm] fairwinds: k, cu
[5:50pm] kwhinner: https://github.com/appcelerator/titanium_build
[5:50pm] kwhinner: this is the configuration for our CI server, which built the desktop packages
[5:50pm] kwhinner: would be a good way to look at distributing builds int he early going
[5:51pm] fairwinds: k, super yes. I know hudson
[5:52pm] kwhinner: i will try and get the build server for the app packager open sourced
[5:52pm] kwhinner: it's PHP which calls these scripts
[5:52pm] kwhinner: so not super complex
[5:53pm] kwhinner: it just requires an AWS setup with the necessary OSes
[5:53pm] fairwinds: sure
[5:53pm] fairwinds: that would be great
[5:55pm] fairwinds: have to get going to eat something, but appreciate this very much. I will write note to indicate the help this is receiving an your pledges which is good will. many thanks
[5:55pm] fairwinds: Will see if I can get sharry to write some news also
[5:56pm] fairwinds: that we not dead
[5:57pm] fairwinds: and going to begin some resuscitation
[5:58pm] fairwinds: kwhinnery: k, got to go. We talk some more
[5:58pm] fairwinds: cu
[5:58pm] kwhinner: sounds good - later

Copyright and Attribution

The following copyright and attribution applies to this document:

CONTRIBUTORS:

David Pratt