Unfortunately, for reasons known only to themselves,
@henk,
@achartier and
@troester have today decided to remove the source code for the Joomla4 version of Fabrik from
@henk 's github repo.
In the interests of openness and transparency, I am going to repost the key messages posted on our Discord server relating to this (times are my local time - GMT). The Discord server is open to all, so anyone is welcome to come and view this conversation there in
#fabrik4-devs-only:
18:39 troester:
To end further speculations: We (=
@henk @Skurvish
@troester , not some Discord group) decided to put the recent Fabrik4 branch to private until the situation (handover of Fabrik3, copyrights, future organisation and funding of Fabrik4 etc.) clarifies. Issues can still be reported on GitHub.
18:44 wezetel:
Thanks for the clarification. As Beta 1 is still available from the wikis tester instructions and any improvements (= issue fixes) can be applied from the pull requests, we still have the up to date code available (if we apply all issue fixes
). But it would have been nice to tell us a bit earlier, so speculations wouldn't have been necessary (edited)
19:45 Sophist:
@henk, @Skurvish,
@troester I am completely confused as to why there is a need to move it to private. I thought that the whole point was to make it available to Fabrik users. And it seems to me that this is an entirely separate issue to what happens to the community. It seems to me that the best option is for everyone to work together to create a new home for the community built around the J4 version, with everyone working together to revitalise both the community and the code, but in the end as long as there is a community that provides support and documentation etc. and a source for a working version of code, they don't need to be together, though I think it is better if they are.
As you know, we are applying to SPI for membership, and part of that will be that they hold the copyright etc on behalf of the community (of whatever copyright you and Robbie are willing to pass over that is).
I have seen no evidence that anyone in this community has anything but the best interests of the community as a whole at heart. There may be differences of opinion over e.g. whether we should hard fork now or continue to try to negotiate with Robbie, or about what we need (and when) to be a full service community, but in my opinion we are all defined much more by our shared purpose then we are by minor differences of opinion on how to achieve it.
So, perhaps you could explain further the reasons that you feel this is necessary because I find this action very confusing to say the least.
21:33 p38: Troester, As
@wezetel mentioned, it would have been nice to mention what you folks were doing instead of simply rolling back without informing anyone. My company has spent days working and testing on the Fabrik4 beta as part of our contribution as per your request to get users to test via the Fabrikar site and Github, and now all that has been a complete waste. A real pity you saw the need to do this, as I personally feel much progress has been done in the past few months to determine a way forward out of this Fabrik3 situation that we all find ourselves in. I really hope you would reconsider your decision, but considering it is Henk's repo, I guess he well within his right with what he does with it. Its a real pity that it looks like politics has got in the way of a good thing.
22:29 troester:
"and now all that has been a complete waste" Why? Beta1 is still out, issues can still be posted and we are still working on it.
22:41 Sophist: Beate, you do understand how Open Source is intended to work, and how the GPL operates? Because this literally makes no logical sense if you understand those.
(Happy to provide more detail if anyone needs an explanation of this.)
I am also unclear why you would want to deter anyone else who might like to contribute to the code from doing so?
Perhaps you could explain what issues you think exist that caused you to do this, and explain how you think this action will resolve them.
Additionally, you say that you are going to keep it private until such time as "the situation (handover of Fabrik3, copyrights, future organisation and funding of Fabrik4 etc.) clarifies." I think it would help everyone in the community to understand your intent here if you could please explain what your concerns about these factors are, and what you will do in the following circumstances:
A) The community executes an agreement with Robbie in which we join a mutually agreeable non-profit and copyrights transfer;
OR alternatively
B) The community unilaterally becomes a member of SPI and we do a hard fork and create a separate version?
To avoid any doubt here, by "the community" I mean that the Discord membership as a whole, because as I have made clear elsewhere, this will go to a vote of the entire community and the final decision will not be made by the subset that is the Steering Group.
Edit 1: I should add, again to avoid any doubt, that no one is disputing
@henk's right to do what he wishes with his own repo containing the Fabrik4 code. However we do not understand why this group felt it necessary to hide this code, and what they feel they can achieve by doing so.
Edit 2: It would be most unfair for me to finish this with my questions unanswered, so I will commit to copying any answers provided on Discord (assuming that they are not posted here as well by the original author).