Progress Report: moving to Redmine developer platform, changes in team structure, joining the team

To get the synergetic benefits of "model-view-controller" (MVC) it is necessary that we port the Frontend of VirtueMart as well as its Backend. The structure for the Frontend is now nearly done. We hope to get a release candidate at the end of this month.

Maybe some people are wondering what has happened recently, seeing no real changes in the trackers and not a lot posts.

We have actually been very busy lately. After a long fight with the CodeBeamer development platform, and almost every new developer fighting with this system, we decided to switch to Redmine. We have tested it thoroughly  in the last few weeks. Redmine works very well and we got used to it so quickly that we have only used the Redmine system for the last weeks.

With the switch to Redmine we needed to establish a new teamstructure. We recognize that we have a big pool of people, who want to support the project - but they often just joined the team and didn't actually have the time to work (but will do so later), some lost their available free time (new job) and some had an accident or big change in their life. All okay, and we hope that each team member who volunteered will provide active help later, when they are able. But it is hard for us to find the people in the first place. It is much easier to have a team in which everyone is actually participating. On the other hand, people need a way to communicate with the team and to see if they can actually participate.

The idea now is that we open the internal VirtueMart forums even more for experienced VM users and third party developers who request to join. The internal forums are not strictly team-internal anymore. They are meant as a communication platform of VirtueMart experts who want to exchange development ideas and discuss possibilities.

Redmine will be a VirtueMart developer only platform (of course with testers, writers and so on). We will choose the people for the team out of the forum. This makes joining and participating to the project a lot easier. The badge in the forum just indicates the abilities of a new member and we can see if someone fits to the team.

Everyone who wants to participate in the internal forums should register here, write a private message with your reasons to "Milbo" or "Jenkinhill" (forum nick names) to gain access to the internal forums.