I was at CG12 and just like many others I was surprised that v5 has now been discontinued.
We went to v5 training with two people and we spend time evaluating v5, all in all we are out thousands of dollars but unlike some Umbraco users we did not suffer a tarnished professional reputation or have to explain to clients why all the work done on their project has to be redone in an older version.
What is true is that Umbraco, the project and HQ, has suffered a loss of confidence due to the v5 decision. I am not a pro .Net developer at this time but at least I can understand the technical reasoning behind the decision. What I cannot understand is how a project is in development for 3 years, with double-digit man-years of effort having been expended, and then after all this time suddenly it is all over.
Frankly, Niels' comment that HQ are open source coders and not PR people doesn't cut it. In my opinion what is needed to restore some confidence in Umbraco (project & HQ) is a public root cause analysis. Alex is no longer part of the team (reasons unknown!) but the rest of the team are the exact same people who created the v5 mess.
Yes, we have heard that now it will all be better and the community will be more involved etc, that's great. How exactly did HQ work for 3 years without anyone noticing along the way that the product they are working on is becoming unacceptable. How did this happen from a project management point of view and what specific steps and actions will be taken to prevent a repeat of this disaster (that is what it is for many, although they will get over it) in the future?
Yes, the software is open source, no one was forced to use v5, people can continute v5 development since the code is available, yadda yadda yadda, none of those things are ultimately relevant. Umbraco, the project and HQ, exist because there are many design and dev shops around the world which create commercial Umbraco-based solutions for their clients. Without the commercialization of Umbraco the project wouldn't exist in its current form. Those businesses, as well as institutional users, require a sense of business continuity.
We, as many others, have lost real money and quite a bit of it. A simple "Sorry, we made a mistake." is not enough. There needs to be information forthcoming from Umbraco HQ that explains in easily to understand yet detailed terms what happened and how exactly the future will be different.
HQ needs to be make clear that Umbraco is still the best choice when it comes to business usage of the CMS especially now that the lessons learned in v5 can and will be used to significantly improve v4.
I couldn't agree more. Where was the governance on such a massive software development undertaking? Umbraco make no apologies for pitching themselves as business-grade, so how do you get this far into a software development lifecycle to realise it's unserviceable? I got a huge organisation standardised on Umbraco, luckily 4.x not 5, but it's left me with no confidence whatsoever that they know what they're doing from a directional point of view. I'm just thankful we didn't invest time and resources into 5 or I'd be seriously worried about my position.
Also they have made no comment whatsoever yet on refunding training costs which leads me to believe they won't, or just strike up informal deals on a case by case basis. If we had lost money on training I'd have no doubt they'd be looking to recoup it by any means at their disposal, and I expect many others are looking into that also.
All in all, I'd say that commercial confidence in the product will be shot now, and given that's how they fund it, doesn't bode well for Umbraco generally. But they have themselves to blame, couldn't have been handled any worse if you ask me.
If they do have any money left in the pot, they need to invest it in getting some PR help to retrieve what's left of their reputation. The only future for Umbraco is to maintain corporate funding so it's crticial they get the right message out there. As you mention just bemoaning their lack of PR skills on being OSS developers just shows up their lack of business acumen, at a time where they need to show plenty of it.
It's times like these that give the OSS haters all the ammo they need to justify the big end of town CMS systems we're all trying to avoid.
On the topic of training refunds; I don't believe refunds are feasible nor that they are needed. We went to v5 training with two people and incurred that cost. The way I look at it the v5 Level 1 training basically applies to v4. Those who became v5 Level 1 certified should become v4 Level 1 certified automatically if they didn't have the v4 cert yet.
To be honest, the certification is pretty meaningless anyway, it's really just an indicator that someone spent the money, and probably paid enough attention during the training to have some rudimentary understanding of what is going on. The cert is in no way a measure of skill like some other IT certs are for which you actually have to study hard, have to have real world experience, and get tested at Pearson Vue answering 100 questions in 90 minutes or some such.
Moving on, the v5 Level 2 training is now a complete loss. Due to Level 2 being entirely different from v4 there is no way that the cert can and should transfer to a v4 cert. But the way I look at it is what the v5 Level 2 training was a bad investment. Umbraco HQ at the time did what the promised to do for the money, they delivered the training and it was applicable at the time. That v5 was ultimatley cancelled should have no bearing on the trainings that were conducted already.
In addition, going to the training is as much about learning something and getting the cert as it is about financially supporting HQ. All that is needed from my perspective is HQ coming forward and demonstrating that supporting Umbraco is the right thing to do for business users.
I agree with most of what's been said. I don't want to see them get caught up into handling a ton of refunds. That would just lead to hurting us more in the end.
I've been a huge fan of Umbraco for a long time and it really pains me to see this happening. However, I COMPLETELY agree that they need to be more forthcoming with what went on that lead to this AND what happened with Alex. Excuses and the blame game don't do them any favors.
Trust is more important than ever for them at this point. People's jobs are on the line. In order to regain any confidence, they're going to have to get VERY detailed.
I want to recommend to my company that we go back and use 4.x, but with the information I have atm I'm putting my job at the mercy of Umbraco. I've already taken a hit with having to explain what happend with v5.
I need to know, from the project management perspective: what happened, how, and what's going to be different from now on. How will Alex's absense affect the project's future? How will be move the 'good parts' over without his involvement? Unfounded promises won't due.
I have a big job to do (1000+ page site). I'll be starting the CMS implementation within a month. I don't know of any .net alternatives that provide the flexibity of Umbraco. I'm very hesitant to recommend continuing with Umbraco at all, as my job is on the line.
I really hope that they can recover from this and provide an awesome product (as I don't think there are any affordable alternatives that can directly compete.)
The biggest problem with N2CMS is that there is a single developer at the core of it. If he is hit by a bus or simply gets tired of N2 then the project dies. Yes, it's OSS and others could potentially go on but the reality is that every project needs a champion or a group of champions. Because of that I find N2 to be unacceptable in a business continuity sense as the risk of N2 simply disappearing is too great for me (obviously not for you, but everyone needs to make thier own call there).
Regardless of v5 being dead I can be sure that Umbraco HQ (the company) will still be there tomorrow and will still work on v4 and subsequent versions. That is more than most other CMSes can offer. For the people who work at HQ Umbraco is a labor of love but at the same time thier paycheck depends on there being an Umbraco project and that the Umbraco project is commercially viable for those who implement it.
suggestions on how to handle the v5 fallout
I was at CG12 and just like many others I was surprised that v5 has now been discontinued.
We went to v5 training with two people and we spend time evaluating v5, all in all we are out thousands of dollars but unlike some Umbraco users we did not suffer a tarnished professional reputation or have to explain to clients why all the work done on their project has to be redone in an older version.
What is true is that Umbraco, the project and HQ, has suffered a loss of confidence due to the v5 decision. I am not a pro .Net developer at this time but at least I can understand the technical reasoning behind the decision. What I cannot understand is how a project is in development for 3 years, with double-digit man-years of effort having been expended, and then after all this time suddenly it is all over.
Frankly, Niels' comment that HQ are open source coders and not PR people doesn't cut it. In my opinion what is needed to restore some confidence in Umbraco (project & HQ) is a public root cause analysis. Alex is no longer part of the team (reasons unknown!) but the rest of the team are the exact same people who created the v5 mess.
Yes, we have heard that now it will all be better and the community will be more involved etc, that's great. How exactly did HQ work for 3 years without anyone noticing along the way that the product they are working on is becoming unacceptable. How did this happen from a project management point of view and what specific steps and actions will be taken to prevent a repeat of this disaster (that is what it is for many, although they will get over it) in the future?
Yes, the software is open source, no one was forced to use v5, people can continute v5 development since the code is available, yadda yadda yadda, none of those things are ultimately relevant. Umbraco, the project and HQ, exist because there are many design and dev shops around the world which create commercial Umbraco-based solutions for their clients. Without the commercialization of Umbraco the project wouldn't exist in its current form. Those businesses, as well as institutional users, require a sense of business continuity.
We, as many others, have lost real money and quite a bit of it. A simple "Sorry, we made a mistake." is not enough. There needs to be information forthcoming from Umbraco HQ that explains in easily to understand yet detailed terms what happened and how exactly the future will be different.
HQ needs to be make clear that Umbraco is still the best choice when it comes to business usage of the CMS especially now that the lessons learned in v5 can and will be used to significantly improve v4.
I couldn't agree more. Where was the governance on such a massive software development undertaking? Umbraco make no apologies for pitching themselves as business-grade, so how do you get this far into a software development lifecycle to realise it's unserviceable? I got a huge organisation standardised on Umbraco, luckily 4.x not 5, but it's left me with no confidence whatsoever that they know what they're doing from a directional point of view. I'm just thankful we didn't invest time and resources into 5 or I'd be seriously worried about my position.
Also they have made no comment whatsoever yet on refunding training costs which leads me to believe they won't, or just strike up informal deals on a case by case basis. If we had lost money on training I'd have no doubt they'd be looking to recoup it by any means at their disposal, and I expect many others are looking into that also.
All in all, I'd say that commercial confidence in the product will be shot now, and given that's how they fund it, doesn't bode well for Umbraco generally. But they have themselves to blame, couldn't have been handled any worse if you ask me.
If they do have any money left in the pot, they need to invest it in getting some PR help to retrieve what's left of their reputation. The only future for Umbraco is to maintain corporate funding so it's crticial they get the right message out there. As you mention just bemoaning their lack of PR skills on being OSS developers just shows up their lack of business acumen, at a time where they need to show plenty of it.
It's times like these that give the OSS haters all the ammo they need to justify the big end of town CMS systems we're all trying to avoid.
On the topic of training refunds; I don't believe refunds are feasible nor that they are needed. We went to v5 training with two people and incurred that cost. The way I look at it the v5 Level 1 training basically applies to v4. Those who became v5 Level 1 certified should become v4 Level 1 certified automatically if they didn't have the v4 cert yet.
To be honest, the certification is pretty meaningless anyway, it's really just an indicator that someone spent the money, and probably paid enough attention during the training to have some rudimentary understanding of what is going on. The cert is in no way a measure of skill like some other IT certs are for which you actually have to study hard, have to have real world experience, and get tested at Pearson Vue answering 100 questions in 90 minutes or some such.
Moving on, the v5 Level 2 training is now a complete loss. Due to Level 2 being entirely different from v4 there is no way that the cert can and should transfer to a v4 cert. But the way I look at it is what the v5 Level 2 training was a bad investment. Umbraco HQ at the time did what the promised to do for the money, they delivered the training and it was applicable at the time. That v5 was ultimatley cancelled should have no bearing on the trainings that were conducted already.
In addition, going to the training is as much about learning something and getting the cert as it is about financially supporting HQ. All that is needed from my perspective is HQ coming forward and demonstrating that supporting Umbraco is the right thing to do for business users.
I agree with most of what's been said. I don't want to see them get caught up into handling a ton of refunds. That would just lead to hurting us more in the end.
I've been a huge fan of Umbraco for a long time and it really pains me to see this happening. However, I COMPLETELY agree that they need to be more forthcoming with what went on that lead to this AND what happened with Alex. Excuses and the blame game don't do them any favors.
Trust is more important than ever for them at this point. People's jobs are on the line. In order to regain any confidence, they're going to have to get VERY detailed.
I want to recommend to my company that we go back and use 4.x, but with the information I have atm I'm putting my job at the mercy of Umbraco. I've already taken a hit with having to explain what happend with v5.
I need to know, from the project management perspective: what happened, how, and what's going to be different from now on. How will Alex's absense affect the project's future? How will be move the 'good parts' over without his involvement? Unfounded promises won't due.
I have a big job to do (1000+ page site). I'll be starting the CMS implementation within a month. I don't know of any .net alternatives that provide the flexibity of Umbraco. I'm very hesitant to recommend continuing with Umbraco at all, as my job is on the line.
I really hope that they can recover from this and provide an awesome product (as I don't think there are any affordable alternatives that can directly compete.)
@Dan White: N2CMS
I'm happy that i migrated mostly of my sites from Umbraco v3/v4 to N2CMS two years ago.
I have no performance issues at all on sites with 10k+ pages.
Some areas of those sites are MVC/database driven but enriched with N2CMS functionality - for me a wonderful way to integrate CMS and external data.
And my editor team just loves the way N2CMS allows jumping from the [frontent] website directly into the backend and back to the content.
Unfortunately N2CMS doesn't get as much attention it should.
The biggest problem with N2CMS is that there is a single developer at the core of it. If he is hit by a bus or simply gets tired of N2 then the project dies. Yes, it's OSS and others could potentially go on but the reality is that every project needs a champion or a group of champions. Because of that I find N2 to be unacceptable in a business continuity sense as the risk of N2 simply disappearing is too great for me (obviously not for you, but everyone needs to make thier own call there).
Regardless of v5 being dead I can be sure that Umbraco HQ (the company) will still be there tomorrow and will still work on v4 and subsequent versions. That is more than most other CMSes can offer. For the people who work at HQ Umbraco is a labor of love but at the same time thier paycheck depends on there being an Umbraco project and that the Umbraco project is commercially viable for those who implement it.
is working on a reply...