RE: GA2 Release Stephan Schoenberger http://www.liferay.com/de/c/message_boards/find_message?p_l_id=&messageId=14542986 2012-06-23T09:29:28Z 2012-06-23T09:04:49Z

Hi James,<br /><br />I started to look into Liferay approx. 1 1/2 years ago and followed the product evolution and it&#039;s community for some time now in a very passive way because I had hopes that I could use Liferay for a business idea I had. The business idea died (this had nothing to do with Liferay). I thought, wow Liferay has a cool product with quite some potential. <br /><br />3 months back I installed the new version on my laptop and started to play around with it to work on another idea I am having. I got stuck with several problems, which I was partly able to overcome. I am also waiting for the GA2 release to appear for security and bug fixing reasons. Seeing the evolution which the product took I start to believe that some of the people from Liferay need to become more professional if the product shall succeed in the long run since otherwise the community which you highly praise will turn away at some stage and then you will be simply left competing with the big guys (IBM and Oracle).<br /><br />I would suggest to look into the following (some things have been already suggested by others in one or the other way and some of them are being looked at):<br /><br /><strong>Understand</strong><br />get a clear understanding of the community you are serving and you want to serve; consider their expectations and put it in balance with your business strategy<br /><br /><strong>Be concrete and clear in the communication</strong><br />Communicate prominently (and not somewhere in a forum thread) if you walk the talk. If not, then don&#039;t be surprised if people get frustrated and turn away.<br />What can be expected by a CE release and what cannot (expectation management)<br />time lines (eg. there have been talks for some time in the forum regarding fixes for security issues and that this is being looked at)<br /><br /><strong>Releases</strong><br />Don&#039;t overload a release: just put on the plate what you can eat. You still can show the menu which someday will be served<br />If you stick to a release date then you will be able to plan according to that and keep the scope more variable. So ask yourself: what is more important: scope or timeline? And for whom is it more important?<br />Do the most important things first and not the nicest ones.<br />Why don&#039;t you use: Alpha, Beta RCn as the rest of the world does? Technical people know that a beta is not stable, but who knows that 6.1 GA1 is not production ready? Also most people would assume that 6.1 would be more stable than 6.0. On top the 6.1 is the default release you display. <br /><br /><strong>Documentation</strong><br />Improve the documentation in order to ease the frustration for new users.<br /><br />Please don&#039;t get me wrong: I mean this criticism in a constructive way.<br /><br />Kind regards,<br />Stephan

Stephan Schoenberger 2012-06-23T09:04:49Z