Hi,
As you might know, I have been involved in the calendar project for quite a while. I have played the role of ‘module owner’ or ‘project lead’ lately. But, it turned out, that I wasn’t really happy with way I could play that role. That is mainly due to time limits. Having a full-time job really takes a lot of your time, it seems.
So, we (as the calendar project) have looked for a solution to this. We have found Daniel Boelzle to be willing to take over my role. He also has a full time job, but at least his is related to working on calendar. He is in a much better position to manage the calendar project.
I would like to say a big thanks to Daniel for taking over the leadership! I’m sure he will do a good job managing calendar. I also would like to thank you all for working with me the last time. It was a fun ride!
(note: this does not mean that I am totally leaving the project. I will try to do some coding now and then, in a way that is easier to combine with a day-time job)
Michiel
Just wanted to say a big “thank you” for leading the project so far and so well Michiel!
Well, I guess changes are unavoidable. Good luck with whatever projects you might be working on!
Thanks Michel, see you around I hope…
Yes Big Thanks to have taked care off this promising project!
Good job man, love the work.
Good job Michiel. Good luck Daniel!
Yeh, thanks for all your work on Calendar, it’s much appreciated by everybody. I hope you have time in the future to contribute, and wish you all the best.
Thank you, you’ve been doing a really great job! I hope Daniel will have fun with his new position!
You did a great job… tx!
Daniel: good luck!
Definitely echoing the thanks for all the work!
Does this change of leadership alter the timeline for 0.5’s release?
Do we have an estimate/update?
The last update about the .5 release indicated a fix had been found for the Outlook UID issue and that the release would proceed, probably within the next few days. That was 3 weeks ago.
There was also an entry on the blog about the increased interest in the calendar project. The main way to keep the trend going is to keep people informed and interested in what’s going on.
Personally, my frustration level is increasing and I’m wondering why I waste time checking the blog when there aren’t any updates.
I understand there were changes in the project leadership and we all really appreciate the work done so far. Please take our impatience as a sign that we care about this project and want what you’re delivering. We just want to know what’s going on.
Crimsondryad has well exposed the feelings of lot of us and I add myself to the list of those who want to tell this.
The lack of news about the project is wasting the hopes of many, I think.
I hope you take care of this.
What kind of news do you want?
If you are waiting for a news about a new release, use a nightly build. 0.5 won’t be much different from current nightlies.
May I also suggest to those that are permanently checking the blog to use an RSS reader – when there’s news, you’ll be notified. Checking back here multiple times per day won’t speed anything up!
Leadership change a few weeks before a major release is never a good idea ;-(
Let us hope that the change will occur smoothly and the new leader will contact us shortly and let us know what is happening.
best,
m
How about something like “Hey, we thought we landed the fix for the Outlook bug, but as it turns out we didn’t,” or “During the testing for the .5RC1 release we found 2 more blockers and didn’t want to release until it was fixed.”
As for the nightly builds, there are warnings all over the place that they may contain fatal bugs. This is my production email. I’m especially not going to load a nightly build when I don’t know what the status of the project is…the Outlook bug didn’t really pertain to me, but maybe there’s another now we don’t know about? Or maybe someone will put a semicolon in the wrong place and crash the whole thing?
What’s the difference between checking the page or an RSS feed? The point here is that everyone was geared up 3 weeks ago about the release and now…*fizzle*.
You guys aren’t under any obligation to tell us anything. We all know that. But it’s the early adopters who are going to talk about this project to other people and get them involved. The more people involved, the more momentum calendar will have when the later releases land and the more corporate people who can help join in on the development efforts will sit up and take notice.
The whole point of open source was to compete with big names like Novell, Microsoft, Lotus. If we’re all acting like a bunch of cats, never going in one direction and not caring about what the others are doing, this project is never going to get the attention it deserves.
So please…sigh that we’re annoying you, then do us all a favor and take 10 minutes once a week to keep us informed.
I sympathize for what crimsondryad has said. I’d feel to repeat all his words but I just want to add this consideration: I am following the development of Sunbird/Lightning since the beginnig; my interest in this project is strictly professional because my hope and my goal is to make it a standard tool for use in my firm, for about 30 users.
With this point of view in mind I cannot give serious consideration on a project that does not inform us about the development.
For those like me who have these expectations from the project is not presumable thinking to wait for an indefinite time for having a final stable release; at this point we should think to some other commercial solution for our needs.
I already see a lot of you outraged for this reasoning but I am not offending anyone of the developers; on the contrary we are very grateful for their work; but I just want to say that we need to know if Mozilla has in mind to offer a calendar solution just for home users and for fun or also for professional users, because with this clarified we could take a decision with more awareness.
To elaborate on what xspark said, I think most of us are professional users who want an alternative to Outlook.
I own a web development company and I deal with a lot of small businesses who are looking for budget-friendly solutions. I always recommend Thunderbird, but the biggest barrier to getting them on board with it is the lack of integrated calendar functionality like that of Outlook.
In fact, if you go to my site on the resources page you will see a list of Mozilla software I recommend. I put the Calendar project on there as a means of generating interest in the project. I really hate that there aren’t any full-featured, widely accepted alternatives to Outlook, which is bloated and has a tendency to crash on large IMAP connections.
The only thing I really miss from Outlook is the calendar functionality.