Zikula Community

• drak
  
  

  • Rank: Software Foundation
  • Registered: Jul 21, 2001
  • Last visit: May 31, 2010
  • Posts: 624

  Posted: May 21, 2004 - 09:41 PM

  BACKGROUND: There seems to be a need be able to present commercial news postings to PostNuke Community but there are mixed feelings about this. A large number of users feel the such posts should not appear on postnuke.com sites at all, while others feel they should, with all mods/blocks/themes news should be presented in a standardard fashion.
  
  PostNuke is a web applications server and pnAPI is it's own native programming language. The purpose of PostNuke is to enhance web development allowing users to create very felixible applications. PostNuke software is opensource freeware but we do encourage 3rd party development: We strongly encourage GPL release of 3rd party addons, but equally support commercial development of modules, themes and blocks for the best of the project. Freedom of choice is a key factor.
  
  The issue now is not whether we allow commercial postings/announcements/perss releases, but simply how we do it. In short, we must not exclude or penalize commercial developers, but we need to find the best way to integrate their contribution into the PostNuke Community. There are two methods it would seem:
  
  1. Standardize all mods/themes/block submissions so their presentation contains information about the module and it's free non-free status.
  2. Link *.postnuke.com to a sub/site geared for commercial news announcements.
  
  Factor to consider - many people have strong feelings that commercial news posts/press releases should not ever appear on postnuke.com sites.
  
  I would like to open the debate on this specific issue.
  
  --
  Zikula Lead Developer
  Board Member of the Zikula Foundation
  Follow me on twitter.com/zikuladrak

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• manarak
  
  

  • Rank: Helper
  • Registered: Dec 31, 1969
  • Last visit: May 20, 2010
  • Posts: 524

  Posted: May 21, 2004 - 09:48 PM

  I voted 1
  
  My reasons are explained in the previous thread:
  http://forums.postnuke.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=27590

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• HalbrookTech
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
  • Registered: Dec 31, 1969
  • Last visit: Jun 01, 2010
  • Posts: 6859

  Posted: May 22, 2004 - 04:55 AM

  As I mentioned in the other thread, I still feel that releases belong on the existing subsites, people already have to go to 3 different subsites to get info on blocks, modules, & themes, they don't need a 4th for comercial products. Also some people already complain that there's too much spread of information. Since the types are broken down between Modules, Blocks & Themes now, why should the comercial developments of themes & modules have to share the same site? Right now, if a free theme is released, it doesn't boot a free module off the main page, why should someone, like AutoThemes or Lobos, who produce themes on a fairly regular basis be able to push a module off the list if they were to release 3 new themes at one time? So then we'd need comercial themes & comercial mods, so that's 2 new sub sites.
  
  I mean, look at it this way, some of the modules that are listed, GPL ones, I don't care about, and I don't want to see. A custom module, designed to handle the function of the 3 sub sites would do several things:
  
  1. Enforce structure with out the submitter having to format the text them selves.
  2. Allow loged in users to filter the list by what they are interested in, because we could allow releases to be classified in categories.
  3. Allow developers to more easily submit releases by storing vital details for reuse.
  
  Again, a module release should be posted because it's news, not as an advertisment. What this boils down to is some people being too lazy to filter out what they are looking at. As it is now, there are tons of modules announced that I don't want to look at, so I don't. IF they are clearly marked as Comercial, then you know to ignore it, just like I know to ignore the modules I have no interest in.
  
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• r3ap3r
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
  • Registered: Jan 14, 2004
  • Last visit: Oct 21, 2009
  • Posts: 348

  Posted: May 22, 2004 - 05:49 AM

  I agree with Michael.
  
  I also agree with his previous statement in the other thread that news is news. I don't care if it's commercial or not, I want to know. It's the moderators job to determine if something is blatant advertising or not. A defined structure is necessary so that when the moderator chooses not to post an article that they have something to stand on for a reason.
  
  I think the custom module idea is also a good one, but I question how it would work spread across the various existing sub-sites. You would need one for news.postnuke.com and another for modules.postnuke.com, etc. Unless you are talking about a single module that replaced the existing sub-site structure, and then I wonder if there is anyone with the time necessary to write the module. I don't want Mark writing it, I want him working on . 8 . If I had the time to work on it I would still rather spend my time writing for . 8 than I would making a module to deal with peoples dislike of commercial posts. I say let them use their brains and filter it themselves.
  
  My $0.02
  Create a guideline for posting commercial news.
  Mark all news as commercial or other so that it's easy for the user to filter out mentally.
  Sell advertising space for those who want to blatantly advertise, but real news should be free.
  
  As an alternative to the custom module I would create a dynamic user data field that was a boolean check that said 'Filter Commercial' and if the user checked the box then I'd have the news module not include the commercial category when it queried the database for current news articles. Hacking the article code to do it would only take an hour or so and the user could then block anything that was listed in the commercial category if they didn't want it.
  
  -Chris

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• HalbrookTech
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
  • Registered: Dec 31, 1969
  • Last visit: Jun 01, 2010
  • Posts: 6859

  Posted: May 22, 2004 - 06:21 AM

  Well, the custom module wouldn't be needed on news.postnuke.com, only on the other three. As I see it, people want, and these 3 subsites (mods, blocks, themes) are the perfect place for a repository of avaliable components.
  
  The same requirements are basically needed for each of the 3 sites it would be used on, so it's not that big a deal. I'm not sure if it would have to be specially developed to work in the enviroment we use here or not, but the pnCorps were planing on a similar module, but we never got around to doing much more than starting it.
  
  As to time. I can write it, I'm pretty sure, and I've got the time. Or I can help coordinate it.
  
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• **unknown user**
  
  

  • Rank: Senior
  • Registered: Mar 16, 2002
  • Last visit: Oct 21, 2009
  • Posts: 2204

  Posted: May 22, 2004 - 09:16 AM

  ..I'm sticking with my original thoughts..
  
  I think another row of blocks could be added.. the commercial items would still be posted on mods.postnuke.com/themes.postnuke.com/etc.. they would just be placed into another block..
  
  ..this way there's no alienation, no complexity (besides a few minor hacks) and would actually be beneficial to commercial devs (..as their releases are less frequent = more "face" time)..
  
  ..just a thought.
  
  -IR

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• **unknown user**
  
  

  • Rank: Registered User
  • Registered: Mar 16, 2002
  • Last visit: Oct 21, 2009
  • Posts: 49

  Posted: May 22, 2004 - 09:22 AM

  I voted for the first selection.
  
  a. It's hard enough to find what I need for my site. I don’t need to be wasting time jumping around.
  b. I am an adult and can make a decision as to what to read and what not to read.
  c. There aren't enough module, block, or theme releases where anyone should care. It's not like the news will get swamped with commercial posts.
  d. Commercial news does not cause blindness or otherwise affect a user’s health.
  e. This whole topic takes away from the real work at hand. I have already lost a commercial supplier to some immature script kiddies pushing the ‘everything should be free’ rant. Get a life. Everything aint free.
  
  I have been reading commercial oriented material for almost my entire 43 years. I don't believe it has adversely affected me. For those of you that aren’t mentally capable of filtering your reading; maybe you should spend less time on this site and more time in some sort of remedial learning environment.

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• joerecruiter
  
  

  • Rank: Freshman
  • Registered: Dec 30, 2003
  • Last visit: Oct 21, 2009
  • Posts: 71

  Posted: May 22, 2004 - 10:11 AM

  Voted for number one, but the idea of adding additional blocks on each of the mods/themes/blocks subdomains sounded good for the reasons articulated by InvalidResponse.

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• EMZ
  
  

  • Rank: Freshman
  • Registered: Dec 12, 2002
  • Last visit: Apr 07, 2010
  • Posts: 55

  Posted: May 22, 2004 - 05:47 PM

  The benefits of creating a separate module for commercial releases are outweighed by the costs. Users will need to search twice to find what they need, Postnuke teams would need to create and police yet another area, and to what end? Is it really worth all the effort?
  
  I fail to see the logic here, but will continue to read with an open mind.
  
  Simple guidelines and a header tag should suffice. For goodness sake, all news is monitored anyway! How about requiring a "$" in the header of any commercial release?. This will let users know from the headline that this contribuition costs "$"! 8)
  
  --
  EMZ

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• **unknown user**
  
  

  • Rank: Softmore
  • Registered: Mar 16, 2002
  • Last visit: Oct 21, 2009
  • Posts: 286

  Posted: May 22, 2004 - 06:28 PM

  I agree that including the commercial announcements is logical and easy. Just do it.
  
  Off-topic:: However I also think, there is a possibility we need to consider revamping the front page. Maybe use the Start Page module, to make the first page more user friendly, there has been quite a few noobs mention the complexity of the front page. Worth considering?
  
  Cheers

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• HalbrookTech
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
  • Registered: Dec 31, 1969
  • Last visit: Jun 01, 2010
  • Posts: 6859

  Posted: May 22, 2004 - 06:49 PM

  EMZ, when you say spearate module, I assume you mean separate subsite? The module idea I presented wouldn't be a seperate module for comercial listings, but rather a new tool to use in place of the news module.
  
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• **unknown user**
  
  

  • Rank: Softmore
  • Registered: Mar 16, 2002
  • Last visit: Oct 21, 2009
  • Posts: 148

  Posted: May 22, 2004 - 10:15 PM

  I have always thought that all we neded was an extra category determining the license type of each release. So I also vote for no.1.
  
  However I think we need more than just that.
  
  I have released both blocks, modules and themes. When I go into the referer module of my site, I can see how people find my site.
  
  Most people actually find the site through the downloads section of each of the subdomains. Ofcourse when a new story is being submitted to one of the subdomain frontpages I always get a lot of hits. But that is only for a few days. For long term hits I get them from the downloads section. And I get about 200 every day from those pages alone.
  
  Knowing this I wouldl like to suggest using a better trackingsystem for handeling modules, blocks and themes for each of the subdomains. Some of you already use a list I have of the modules, we also discussed this in the pnCorps. This was under the discussion of a modulesdirectory.
  
  The directories should have the same info, commercial/free. But also version numbering and so on.
  
  I saw that the developer of Pagesetter joined the core developers team, this module would already be great to handle this kind of thing. Since the owner (developer of the module) can edit the "item" when a new version is released, and hopefully also in time share "owner-status" with others so we have a dynamic directory under maintenance of the community it self.

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• **unknown user**
  
  

  • Rank: Freshman
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  Posted: May 22, 2004 - 11:18 PM

  Just establishing a Commercial Topic is not an option?

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• **unknown user**
  
  

  • Rank: Softmore
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  Posted: May 22, 2004 - 11:20 PM

  That or a category is all I think.

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• **unknown user**
  
  

  • Rank: Registered User
  • Registered: Mar 16, 2002
  • Last visit: Oct 18, 2006
  • Posts: 4

  Posted: May 23, 2004 - 12:42 AM

  i beleive that money should be made with open source by offering services.
  i beleive if you stick commercial projects in there own area,
  you will see how little interest there is the capitalist conspiracy to destroy opensource.
  
  i've become weary of being directed to sites that have something free as a hook.
  then you have to dig through commercial code to find the open item.
  
  If someone wants to post commercial code on postnuke.
  they should financially contribute to the project.
  
  or if they are using lost leaders.
  to pull people into their site that should be mentioned.
  i dont know how.
  maybe classiffy the site as "commercial using opensource as a magnet."
  
  what should be the discussion is what does commercial code offer that postnuke and open modules dont already.
  and what can be done to make postnuke fill its function in a totally open way.
  
  commercial code also opens the door for evil coders.(AKA evil doers)
  since the code is closed.
  
  i also think there needs to be weblinks to all open add-ons. in one location.
  son we dont have to bounce all over the place finding stuff.
  
  off topic:
  also on the new release of PN 750 where are the forums for fixes?
  that seems to be over looked as i encountered alot off problems i fixed by searching other sites. post calendar, pnphpbb2. the ones.
  
  there should be something here for assistance.
  but i dont see it.

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