Last Week in #eecms

I was traveling last week and the conversation on Twitter took off pretty quickly but I wanted to sum up some major pieces here.

Stephen Lewis reacted to Twitter conversation about the number of open bugs in the ExpressionEngine Bug Tracker and the suggestion that he pitch in to make things better:

The whole idea that fixing ExpressionEngine’s bugs is somehow a problem for the “community” is completely wrong. This isn’t Open Source, this is a commercial product. We’re paying for the privilege of using it.

The ExpressionEngine community is incredibly loyal, in this case to a fault. We want our beloved CMS to be solid, reliable, and bug free, and so (the illogic goes) we should just roll up our sleeves and make it so.

That prompted Ryan Masuga from Devot:ee to post his take:

Anyone that has looked at the EE Bug Tracker recently knows that it is growing, and there are numerous bugs that haven’t even been looked at or assigned. Some of the bugs are posted by EllisLab’s own team members. Some seemingly simple-to-resolve bugs have been hanging out for months. The state of the bug tracker coupled with the company’s self-imposed radio silence are maddening, especially for us, as we make out entire living off of this CMS in one way or another.

Jack McDade also chimed in and highlighted the community:

We’ve managed to stay banded together because of great community sites like Devot-EE, and because great add-ons like Structure (shameless plug), Matrix/Playa, and a hundred others and their respective developers. Being a part of the community has changed my path as a developer for the better, I just hate to see this much dissension in the ranks. The community has always been one of ExpressionEngine’s best features.

For those of us who have a lot invested in ExpressionEngine, the cause of the last week’s uproar—and the tone of some of the uproar—is certainly deflating and discouraging.