Keystone and the future

[autoboxer]

Activity on all channels related to this repo ( Slack, Gitter, and here ) seem to have dropped off a while ago, picked up for a brief moment a few months ago, then dropped off again. There are many people in the community who are reliant on this repo for projects they're working on ( myself included, I just spent almost 4 years building a 30,000+ line codebase for a local adoption agency on Keystone ), and we need to know how to proceed with our work related to this repo. If this is still active, please let us know and start communicating, there are many people who need to know.

[ttsirkia]

The situation is very sad. I think the recent activity was just to fix some critical security issues. The version 4 has been in beta phase so long without any real development that it is hard to belive that the situation would change. The sudden stop of the development has also stopped the community because there is no point to make pull requests as they are not merged and nobody knows how the project will continue.

If the Thinkmill company who has been involved with the project has proceeded with the development as mentioned here earlier, they must have a private repository because nothing is visible here.

Keystone would have become the best JavaScript based CMS and framework if it had been managed better. At least in my opinion, the framework is very well done and the admin UI is one of the key features that other similar projects do not have.

I really hope that the project will continue and the stable version 4 is being published soon. But I'm not very optimistic. Are there any maintained forks?

[autoboxer]

I agree @ttsirkia. One of the reasons I was asking was in case it had been abandoned; I don't have much time, but I have a lot invested in Keystone, as I'm sure many people do. I'd be happy to build out a new organization and fork the code, as well as help understand and document what exists now. I just wish that they would say something instead of disappearing and not communicating. This has the potential to be the go to JavaScript CMS, and I'm hoping there are enough people out there willing to help push it to what it could become.

To the general community: If this doesn't get any attention from core contributors, please respond here if you're interested in helping to maintain the project.

[Elemino]

I would definitely like to help this project stay alive! Count me in! If you want to delegate anything to me, I'll do it. I am very much invested and believe there's nothing like it within the open source community. Btw, the 'try the demo app' returns a 'your connection is not private' SSL error on my computer. I am able to access the non ssl url.

[christroutner]

So food for thought: if this project was forked and managed by another organization, who will pay for it? who would manage it? What's in it for them? I think it's wonderful what ThinkMill has created. I use KeystoneJS all the time, but I don't use any of the more modern changes in v4 beta. I've been pretty content to use it as is. It's always better if a project can be actively managed and improving through pull requests. But what's the incentive for someone to take on a large project like KeystoneJS? It's got to be more than desire. There has to be some financial incentive for an organization to curate the code base, in order for the project to live on long-term.

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On Sun, Jan 14, 2018 at 11:31 PM, Elem Shalit ***@***.***> wrote: I would definitely like to help this project stay alive! Count me in! I am very much invested and believe there's nothing like it within the open source community. I noticed the documentation links are broken. — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <keystonejs/keystone#4551 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AJaej1j9XDgq8ANG5qUvPmuJ7fsB5sQBks5tKv7jgaJpZM4Rdquz> .

[autoboxer]

I agree @christroutner about how to handle the codebase through pull requests, although there needs to be a core team who know the codebase well enough to approve or deny changes. As far as cost, I'd be happy to eat it to get things going (both the site hosting and the github organization), and would make the core contributors admin along with me so we don't get into a situation where an individual has too much control. I'm busy through the end of the month, and feel a few weeks time to let the core team speak up if this repo is not in fact dead would be appropriate. In addition, if this seems like a viable option, I'd like to try to contact Jed and Max first, as well as send a general message to Thinkmill to see what's going on. If we don't hear anything by then, I'll send out a direct message to everyone on this thread and any who want to be involved can talk about how best to proceed. I personally think there needs to be a lull period where we all read through the codebase, compare notes, and fully understand how everything works together before anything can be reliably done, as maintaining the integrity of the codebase should be of the highest priority. Based on what I've seen, there needs to be an early push for stabilizing the codebase and determining what is needed to consider cutting a stable release. Things that I see missing are:

clear documentation for the 4.x branch
easily accessibly documentation for upgrading versions
more robust code commenting
strategy around pull requests and the review process
more complete unit testing
security analysis and vulnerability fixing
analyzing and upgrading dependencies

In addition, there are fixes that made it into the 0.3.x branch that have not been ported to the 4.x branch, which will need to be handled. The original team has a ton of documentation and roadmapping here, on their site, in the Google Group, on their Slack channel, in Gitter, and they have a voting app somewhere to vote on the next features to include, which could be leveraged.

As of now the people I'll be contacting are: @ttsirkia, @Elemino, @christroutner, @larskarbo, @quitequinn, @bflopez, @dlombard, @hreimer, @MichaelZaporozhets, @gionatan-lombardi, @marconucara, @internetErik, and @igorsamado. If any of you don't want to be included for any reason, just let me know and I'll make sure you're not bothered by the communication at the end of the month.

edit: @christroutner, to answer your question about compensation, I'm not sure. I'd put in time because I want to see it succeed, but we can always accept donations for the core team and hosting costs. I'm personally fine not getting paid, but I realize that's not for everyone. I think the initial conversation among the potential core team would need to included what we would all need to feel comfortable putting in the time and maintaining the code.

[ttsirkia]

I would be extremely happy to see the beta tag removed and version 4.0 published. The feature set is enough for my purposes.

I'm still running 0.3.x and the dependency libraries (Mongoose and others) and Node are nowadays really old. Apparently there are some bugs in the current beta release. I haven't started the migration process to the new version yet because I should be sure that it is a good decision.

if the framework is no longer maintained, it might be good idea to re-invent the whole website with another framework. That is, of course, a huge task and therefore I really hope that the Keystone project would continue in some way.

[larskarbo]

I have a few projects that use keystone, and would very much like to help keeping this project alive! I have some spare time coming up and won't mind reading up on the code base

[Elemino]

I believe Keystone can be very successful financially one way or another. I'll go so far as to say, in the long run, it seems plausible to me that Keystone might be able to provide an ecosystem or a service that will allow non-developers to build and deploy through an admin UI along with its use of modularity. Wherever this project may roam, whether if it stays a developer tool or not, I would be willing to contribute my time and efforts in any way possible. @utoboxer Thanks for stepping up and I'm looking forward to your correspondence.

I'll try to do my best and go over the code base to familiarize myself with the ins and outs in the days to come.

[quitequinn]

I'm not confident I have the time or skill to properly contribute to a fork (if it happens) but I am invested in keystone and would like to contribute if possible.

[bflopez]

I am on the fence of getting my company to commit to KeystoneJS. It really felt like I had found the right tool for what we needed. I was already considering forking the project and maintaining my own version specific for my company. I am willing to help.

Side note: The author of the project is still very active on GitHub. Hopefully we can get him to chime in.

[ttsirkia]

Of course it is the best alternative that @JedWatson continues the development. And that would be a natural choice because Keystone seems to still be one of the key components of the ThinkMill company. Hopefully we hear something from them soon.

[autoboxer]

I couldn't agree more @ttsirkia, I'd love nothing more than for @JedWatson, @mxstbr, or someone else from the core team to come here and let us know the project is in good standing. If that's the case, we can all happily go back to contributing as maintaining a project of this size could be a considerable commitment. Most of the conversation above is centered solely around the case where no one responds.

[dlombard]

@autoboxer Count me in. I have not officially contributed to the KeystoneJS but I've used it and ready to spend some time and money to continue the development

[hreimer]

I am also willing to help with various fixes, small tasks, though I'm not yet experienced enough to be able to contribute actively to a fork/this repository or oversee if a PR is good to be included..

Since I started using Keystone last summer for a project I always hoped for the project to continue, however since there were virtually no new features or PRs included it became kind of necessary to develop custom functions - on one of those occasions I messaged @mxstbr on Twitter, and regarding a possible involvement in the project he stated that he was not part of it anymore and unfortunately couldn't help me. (at least it seemed to be the case on Oct 5, 2017, hope it's not a problem writing this here)

[MichaelZaporozhets]

While it's disappointing to see keystone neglected, I'm yet to find anything I can't do and can't live without using keystone. i'll be hoping it has a renaissance this year, but even if it doesn't, i'll still be recommending it and using it, albeit forked, myself.