Attending: Kim Løvert, Thomas Höhler, Kenneth Solberg, Jesper Ordrup (host)
Intro:
I wanted to discuss the Umbraco project and if the project could benefit from being separated into to projects - both technically and teamwise.
Umbraco was (and still is) 2 things being: the Umbraco Framework, and the Umbraco GUI. Could both benefit from being completely separated and run by 2 project teams? Would the quality of both improve? Would it mean that more clients (like the Umbraco GUI) would appear?
Having multiple clients targeting different tasks could be beneficial:
- Clients targeting other platforms like iPhone or other devices
- Alternativ clients focusing on a simple userinterface .. addressing WAI.
- Frontend editable websites could be considered a client
The fat drawing:
( a really simple symbolic pure beauty .. ahmm...)
The framework goes all across the bottom. This is responsible (as it is today ) for providing access to content. The framework can be accessed from any number of clients - today the Umbraco GUI or any other (GUI, D). Another type of client is the Webservices which provides additional functionality for other kinds of clients .. for instance Windows applications.
What could happen when separating:
Each team should be able to benefit from focusing on their individual goal.
Framework API would become 100% clean.
Alternative clients would have a better chance of surfacing.
What are the risks / alternatives:
It's evident that the projects would be depending on each other. Having said that - the framework project could do releases with new features - not waiting for the GUI team to implement support for them.
One risk would be that the time from idea is born, added to the framework and then added to the GUI - could increase. On the other hand ..
What else?
A related question is - should we merge users and members? What impact does it have that multiple clients work with Umbraco content provided by the framework? If updating content is possible from many clients and the client as we see it is changing to become different.
- multiple directories (of members)
- configuring which clients are allowed (to prevent unwanted clients from accessing your solution)
- a matrix that allows you to assign roles and configuring which roles are allowed to use which clients.
Overall response was - Yes. Generally a good idea. Maybe it's not the way Umbraco is going and maybe the project should continue as one and maybe look into how to kick of multiple client support making it easier to get it startet.