[pmwiki-users] Pre-announcing 2.2.0 non-beta release, new release manager

[Petko Yotov]

On Friday 16 January 2009 06:12:23 Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> Petko Yotov has graciously agreed to serve as PmWiki's "release
> manager" and site maintainer. 

Hello to all! :-)

You can imagine how thrilled and honored I am to help out with the PmWiki 
development. I'll probably need some time to learn how everything works, but 
here  are a couple of things that I consider important, and that I will 
respect.

Development Checklist :

1. Follow the PmWiki Philosophy. These are the founding principles of the 
software, the development and the community, and new versions will follow 
them too.

2. Serve the community. My work should be seen like a "tool" that does what is 
required and obvious. Do technical work, do not decide about major directions 
to be taken. I may have my opinions but I feel best decisions are taken in 
discussions, when possible by consensus.

3. Be Transparent. This is Free software, transparent by definition, but if 
you have any questions about my actions, ask me.

4. Delegate. It will be great if more people could help out, especially for:
   * testing recent releases,
   * catching and reporting bugs,
   * improving the documentation,
   * helping new users on the mailing lists and on the wiki,
   * reviewing/testing recipes, skins and bundles,
   * hopefully soon, enabling recipes and skins on pmwiki.org. 

5. My personal style or philosophy, is probably summed as "Simplicity". I'll 
try not to complicate things more than it is absolutely required.

6. My own cookbook recipes are switched to stand-by mode. Eventual bugs will 
be fixed, but expect few new features. 


Priority Checklist :

1. Security bugfixes
2. Bugfixes
3. Documentation updates, translations
4. New features -- I have a conservative approach:
   * Unless a major benefit is demonstrated, don't add to core. (Cookbook 
recipe.)
   * OK for small and simple changes, in the spirit of the PmWiki design, 
history and philosophy.
   * If in doubt, don't add to core. (Cookbook recipe.)
   * Ask Pm for review. 


About the different "roles" :

1. Release manager : the most important role in my opinion is the ability to 
prepare and cut releases which is more technical and somewhat time-consuming, 
and Pm should not waste his time when people from the community could do it. 

2. Developer : if I make changes to the Core, I'll follow the Development 
Checklist and the Priorities I mentioned above. I believe Pm himself will 
continue to make most of the changes. But I'll have the possibility to 
quickly fix bugs if needed, or other small changes, hopefully with common 
sense.

You know that the code is in an SVN repository, so, like in a wiki page, any 
changes or errors can be quickly reverted to previous, safer versions.

3. Webmaster : this is about the PmWiki installations at the pmwiki.org web 
server. Well, it is what we all do with our own wikis, keeping it live, 
reviewing and enabling recipes and skins (not about the content: anyone -- 
you -- can improve the content). Technical, obvious work. I don't think there 
is too much to do there, any PmWiki admin with some experience could do it, 
and probably others will join me later.

About the documentation at pmwiki.org, please look at it and improve it where 
you can.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask me. I am sure that 
everything will go fine. :-)

Thanks,
Petko