Spending available 2018 budget

The Neos Project Finances & Fundraising
10

My favorite topics to spend money on are without special order:

  • Marketing
  • Release and Release-Tooling
  • Travel Expenses for Sprints (helps cr, ui and also onboarding new contributors)
1 Like
11

I will propose a more overall project and support the implementation of PSR-7. This is to benefit all kind of projects based on the Neos Flow Framework and strengthen the product in terms of decisions makers

2 Likes
12

Do you guys think that 40k would be enough to rewrite the Media Library?
That’s a really old dusty corner we have there :slight_smile:

2 Likes
13

Hi Sebastian, thx for your reply. I really do like the topic and would like to help out. Beside the fact that I’m quite new to all this + the fact that this topic is technically very advanced and it’s not a “low hanging fruit”, I might be able to help with fundraising and pm. happy to learn :smiley:

1 Like
14

ps: … and thx for the very interesting Ui rewrite insight :grinning:

1 Like
15

My top candidates for spending some of that money would be:

  • Release process / tooling / documentation - maybe even defining a budget of x€ for each release, as suggested by Christian in the other thread
  • Bugfixing - maybe something like a bug bounty?
  • Documentation
  • Marketing Material
3 Likes
16

My ideas:

  • As @tobias said a trip to Salzburg
  • Marketing, marketing, marketing (Trailer Videos, A Blog to reach the majority and editors…)
  • Improving the documentation for beginners
17

I‘d like to chime in… Like I said several times: Documentation is IMHO the biggest issue of Neos (and most software projects). We should really tackle this and personally, funding would help me to set fixed times for work. This goes together with release work.

The CR rework is really necessary but we have sooo many features, LOC and I think we should improve those first.

I know working on features is cool and is PR wise more visible. But having a rock solid product with easy and fully fledged docs is king.

Finally, improving Neos in small steps is a better way of working.

1 Like
18

Left field here - it seems a common problem to install Neos so that it works easily. I was in love with the idea of Neos (losing that love slowly) because there was no easy way to install it. I could not find a host that had a customer who had successfully installed and was running Neos on their servers. I asked some local Web Devs if they knew of a Host that could install it - and all contacted their support contacts and they said it might be possible with all kinds of Caveats, and so I could not get to a point of getting Neos onto a system to play with - Now before you all say (I have seen it in the comments previously by all you really smart tech-savvy guys) if you can’t install it and don’t understand the requirements, then Neos should not be considered. To me that contradicts the original purpose of Neos - i.e. allowing creative types to “Create” and be absorbed in the Creative process. I believe there are more creative only people out there than combination (tech and arty)!
Apple is a good example of a company that created a significant market (I am sure I don’t need to explain that one)!
The illusion portrayed in the promotional videos I saw when I was first interested was simplicity - i.e. not having to deal with WP and all its issues and convoluted way of working - but I am now directed down that path (fundamentally because I can use a simple one click install from the Web Host, and that there are tremendous no.s of people using it and developing plugins etc for it) I resisted that as long as I could - and I still would have hoped that Neos could be an option - and to get to the point of this comment - If your management team are interested in success (read adoption by the masses) then I would spend the money to get the system easy to install and to get it on the various hosting software installers - It maybe easier to do this and get 100,000’s of installs by working on a reliable scripted installer - rather than a new feature or a code rewrite or tea-shirts, mugs and or seminars (that is not going to affect no.s of people significantly interested in using Neos) but if your intention is to keep this to yourselves (expect that this will be another Beta vs VHS standards story).
Sorry for being negative - my view is shared by all those that I asked if they could get a Neos installation working - I have certainly extolled the virtues of Neos based entirely on the demonstration videos - it truly looks to be amazing - but too hard for normal people to attempt.

2 Likes
19

Hey Peter, thanks for sharing your view.
We are in fact working to make Neos easier to use for beginners - that is the special focus of some of the core team members, such as Roland Schütz or myself. We have recently released new editor docs (https://www.neos.io/docs-and-support/editor-documentation.html) and are working on improving the installer (New Welcome Screen with Neos 4.1, finally on our way to fixing that nasty Setup bug we’ve had for ages).

To continue doing so, it’s crucially important for us to know where people are failing. So if you have made any experiences that made it hard for you to install Neos, please post them in a separate thread so we can have a look and maybe improve the installation process further.

1 Like
20

@ozfossil Thank you for your detailed report. Installing could be easier. But if you managed that (which is doable given a “good hosting/web server” then you have to work out how all this new tech works.

I know several people that just want working web sites and Neos could work for them but the technical barrier (installer, upgrading, composer stuff, CR, Fusion, FlowQuery, Eel, Fusion, AFX…) is just too high.

I might be stating the obvious: not all problems could be solved by money. But working on specific issues with a set budget helps. Saying we need the new CR or more documentation is not specific enough.

The goal of a piece of open source software is usage. The bigger the user base the better. For everyone: users (faster bug fixes, more features, exisitence in the future), agencies (more customers, easy to sell)…

For me, we have a cascade of issues blocking or limiting a wider adoption.

  1. Installation and first steps should be easy like WordPress (there, I said it :tired_face:)
  2. Documentation
  3. Stability (no bugs, should behave as expected, if erros happen let them have a clear error message)
  4. Marketing
  5. New features

Those are the qualities I look for in any given OSS. I’ve worked on a different CMS that depended on a handful (literally less than five) people to do development and the releases. And eventually it broke away. They were all working with this system on client websites, earning money. Now it’s close to dead.

It must seem like I am a documentation-nazi but: Documentation is the general barrier.
Good docs support marketing, make installs easy, produces good content.

EDIT: We’re telling our clients to focus on their users needs and cater to them. To write relevant content and that stuff. And we’re not any better than them…

2 Likes
21

Thank you Bastian for the response - I was not expecting one and more importantly not looking to influence any decisions you make with the path of Neos - really my focus was to just put on record that I loved the idea of Neos, and would have been one of your disciples till my dying days. The reason I was so passionate about your success (and just a little about me being in love with the interface - read intuitive) is the early experiences I had in trying to grapple with what happened while I was asleep (not doing anything to do with web pages for over 10 years) - The rise of the WP ecosystem, and trying to understand CMS systems in general - WP is and probably always will be a mess for a newbie to get their heads around. Having an all in one solution - Neos - well I really wanted it to work for me and others that I could influence. My present situation is using and learning WP and have purchased plugins (Brizy and Oxygen2) to get as close to what I guessed Neos is (I am only guessing as I mentioned from the promise offered by the promotional videos) I laughed when I read Max-Milan’s comment

Yes Wordpress and a plugin or many is a few minute exercise and works every time with every host - it just works (and a degree in IT is not required) - Listing my experiences is not possible as I never got remotely close to an install - each host I contacted (as I alluded to earlier) was extremely evasive and avoided me as a pain in the “A…E” customer. This is what you would need to address so at least ordinary users like me could make a start. Reading the requirements and steps to install a working Neos installation and the reported issues with compatibilities and versions gave me a migraine…

I am Old - and from the very beginnings of computer systems and software to perform tasks I had a simple benchmark or requirement - it had to be more efficient than doing it the old way. And from my understanding, I believe that using WP with all its nutty protocols and quirks is more usable than Neos simply because it is just not accessible - There is an interesting organisation called W3.org that specifies standards for WEB content and accessibility - I noted that creators of websites are required in some cases to comply with guidelines listed on their compliance standards, yet if I was to apply their standards to Neos - it would not rate at all - Yes I know we as developers and creators should be smarter than the average web user - but it would sure help if we could get the tools to work !
I still want very much for Neos to suddenly become usable and easily accessible - I want the greatest success for you all. But my comments on difficulties with Neos does not exist - I can’t get off the starting blocks !

1 Like
22

Going to chip in here and even though I’m a hardcore Dev and Feature-Enthusiast, I have to second what @mstoyanov and @ozfossil are saying. There is a noticeable entry-barrier currently with Neos. Bigger than it should be and than it probably needs to be. And the first steps to improve this, are exactly that: improve the “installability” of Neos and improve documentation. Therefore I would also vote for spending budget on those topics.

23

I will suggest that all these great ideas are turned in to separate topics in the #the-neos-project:finances-fundraising category so they can be discussed without all the other good ideas “being lost”.

One example will be how @christianm crated this topic https://discuss.neos.io/t/funded-release-work/

Looking forward to read more great ideas and discussion

24

Yes, may be that … preview a budget to find out retrospectively

  • what Neos finally is (or has already become …)

could make some sense.

Knowing it, would surely facilitate documentation, communication, marketing and developer aspects …
‘Documentation’ is a complementary and complex task, as well described here

  • https://www.divio.com/blog/documentation/

  • ask probably ‘Roland Schütz’ how much effort it took to him to write a ‘Customer documentation’ … (not only time)

  • ask ‘Robert Lemke’ how to elaborate an exhaustive Doc like the ‘FlowFramework DefinitiveGuide’

Huge efforts have been done and sometimes it’s just the problem, that people (developers) can’t find the ‘right thread’ to the ‘masterpieces’ of this rather extensive Software ecosystem …
Thanks to inspiration by ‘Stefan Bruggmann’ on the last ‘Neos meetup’ in Zürich, the following 2 examples show probably the problem of ‘complexity and awareness’ of the ‘Neos Tooling’

Topic of these 2 “Cheat-Sheets” above (… should have produced more, but I lacked of spirit this year … unfortunately)

  • How to open the doors for developers ‘not involved’ in the project …

Thanks for reading.

1 Like
25

To clear up the many topics I created Budget 2018 spending suggestion: PSR-7 & PSR-15 implementation which is open for discussion

26

Hey,

as outlined in Funding Request: Event Sourced Content Repository - First Release, we would like to spend some money on working on the event sourced CR.

All the best,
Sebastian

27

hey everyone, I just created a Konsensing for the Neos Team Members to vote on the suggested topics. The voting is open until 28th Sept and we will share the results here afterwards.

Thank you very much for the discussion and suggestions!

1 Like
28

Hey everybody,

below is the result of the Team Voting and a short suggestion how we’ll continue from here.

Results of the team voting

Screenshot_2018-10-01%20SK-Prinzip%20Online%20Konsensieren%20-%20Neos%20Budget%202018
Screenshot_2018-10-01 SK-Prinzip Online Konsensieren - Neos Budget 2018.png1139×1346 236 KB

Next Steps

I’ve discussed the following steps with @christianm, as Tobias is still on holidays.

We suggest to accept the first three proposals as-is:

  • 12k€ Documentation work
  • 4k€ Release Neos 4.2
  • 16k€ 1st phase of Event Sourced Content Repository

Total so far: 32k€.

The problem with the 4th result Marketing is, that we don’t have a clear budget proposal or responsibility yet; so we’ll ask if somebody will step up with a good proposal here.

Regarding 5th result (retrospective release budget), I asked Christian whether his intention was to ask for funding for the last release, which he declined. So effectively we could spend the money here, but we could spend it otherwise as well.

We are yet undecided how to spend the remaining 8k€ in our account - and we’ll check if this already includes the subscriptions which are due in Q4 2018. So the 8k€ could still increase.

Hope that’s fine for you :slight_smile: - Christian and myself propose the stuff I’ve just written; just to ensure we can proceed quickly and actually can get some things done at end of this year.

All the best,
Sebastian
PS: Personally, I think it is important to have some money still available for the Salzburg sprint; to ensure people with higher travel costs can afford to be there (e.g. @dimaip and others)

2 Likes
29

Hey, sounds very good! :slight_smile: Jsut one note: My original Docs funding request was for 12k€, Tobias accidentally put 10k in the Konsensierung, and it could not be changed afterwards (he added a comment documenting that). I would like to plan with the original 12k if noone objects :wink: