Well, I am back after a long hiatus and here is the update!
5.0.3 was tough and then some more …
We have been busy with getting our house in order.
- The code base is being cleaned up further to ensure that the product remains slim and trim.
- We are trying to make the product more user-friendly and good-looking ;-).
- There are some areas in the product wherein we feel that the design out to be changed so that there is enough room for flexibility and customizations. Right now, it is a beast at times to customize in certain areas.
- The patches are being integrated. We took around 34 patches to integrate of which close to 20 made into the product. Down the line, it will be wiser to have Patch Reviewers who do this. This time around we have done it but it is surely not scalable and certainly not practical. Minnie is burning midnight oil to get a review of all these THIS time.
- We are working on making the modules complete. Most of the modules are 90-80% complete. There lies that crucial gap being good and usable that we ought to bridge and that is where we are focusing on. We DO NOT intend to bloat the product, we just want the common features in and then give provisions for adding/extending more.
- There has been a spate of business deployments of vtiger and that is keeping the team in very high spirits. Gopal is doing twice the amount of job that a stretched human can do and still there is miles to go to meet the enquiries and follow ups. This also highlights to me that we need to make certain changes to vtiger to make things easier. The day I have Gopal happy is the day when vtiger is set for life. By the looks of it, it does not seem so anywhere in the near future 😉
- We have opened an office in the USA to facilitate the business handlings. SVK is the person who is heading the US office. He will be handling all partnerships. You can touch base with him at svk at vtiger dot com. vtiger is booming now and all this has been simply due to your overwhelming support.
- As Gopal has mentioned earlier, vtiger has been nominated for the SourceForge Community Awards. SVK will be representing us in the awards ceremony. Do visit us at booth no: 425 at OSCON on July 26, 2007. I hope to be there too but my itinerary is not certain yet so let us see.
- The forums are booming. The Italians are pounding the hell out of the forums and man, am I happy! First, it was the Germans, then the French and now the Italians! Welcome all to vtiger!
- We are also working on fixing bugs. We have shortlisted around 70 odd bugs to be taken up for fixing as of now.
- utf-8 support at the PHP level is being integrated.
- We plan to update the third party packages used in vtiger so that we are supporting the latest and greatest versions out there.
- PHP-5.2 support has been integrated and released. This was a big relief for me personally as there was intense heat on this issue what with half-baked information floating around. People do not realise that it is very easy to make statements on an individual level but when we need to take the onus of delivering a product which supports an entirely new version of a particular product, we have to think ten times and then work. Just a screwup is needed to get all bad publicity and loss of faith. With the web-world, bad publicity spreads faster than light. What with backward compatibility added to the mixture! There has been quite some criticism on this front for not supporting PHP-5.2 but then it was too late in the release cycle and I did not want to muddy the water anymore. I standby that decision.
- There is no time frame set for the next release. We will release when we think that the quality is good and we have a good product that we are proud to release. This is a VERY BIG lesson for me personally
- Support for module addition too is a similar ask. Yes, it is a dream to do that and do that damned well but it will take time. Let us visit the basics and clean them and ensure that the very tenets are proper instead of going out for an all revamp.
In order to be big, we must become small first. Only when we have a strong foundation, can we create a magnificent building.
I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all for the support and the encouragement. vtiger has done just the technical part, the rest has been done by you. Thank You.
And yes, before I forget, please do spread the word!
