Closed GuacheSuede closed 6 years ago
arjarn
commented
6 years ago Many many people are same interrogation : Semantic UI is great framework (with default but lot of good points). I'm really sad to see development stopped. For development (newer), using a framework without news about futur is not attractive.
etshy
commented
6 years ago Same here I'd love to see semantic continue its development. Maybe the semantic team works on something huge, like a V3 ?
GuacheSuede
commented
6 years ago @etshy not in the Semantic-Org Repo, and @jlukic activity has been low too.
jeveloper
commented
6 years ago Nothing since august last year
I've decided to move to material ui, this isnt worth investing time
I would however be happy to pay an annual fee for a premium plan that will guarantee bug fixes and improvements.
GuacheSuede
commented
6 years ago @jeveloper I agree. perhaps a fork could be created
arjarn
commented
6 years ago Agree too. I'm developper and do little stuff for fun. This month, I begin new project (not for work) and have to choose between SUI and Metro-UI CSS V4 (I'm already using V3). Finally I choose Metro-UI : lot of high level components and very active developper.
Too bad : I like SUI, it's very good framework but no dev and with time, chatroom become empty... so no support.
For fork, possible if people are ready to participate...
GuacheSuede
commented
6 years ago @arjarn Do you happen to know what is needed for Semantic UI to be better ?
arjarn
commented
6 years ago In my opinion, SUI is almost perfect ^^ But :
But it's my feeling after my poor SUI experience, why don't making "BOX IDEA" here or elsewhere ?
PS : sorry for my poor english.
y0hami
commented
6 years ago I have been considering making a fork for a while now and I would love to help get peoples features added and patch the current bugs.
I have some knowledge for the semantic code base but I will have to learn some more before I make a fork.
I will 100% make a fork if people are willing to contribute. 😃
GuacheSuede
commented
6 years ago @hammy2899 Count me in, I think it's doable.
witrin
commented
6 years ago @GuacheSuede @hammy2899 @arjarn @jeveloper @etshy Please read the following:
y0hami
commented
6 years ago @witrin thanks for bringing this up!
Bodom78
commented
6 years ago @witrin Good to know.
Hopefully @jlukic finds a way to finance future development as this framework has some great concepts.
GuacheSuede
commented
6 years ago @witrin I agree with his sentiments, but what seems to be an issue is that this open source project goes dead without @jlukic, zero developement, zero updates, and for nearly a year at that. Even pull requests are not moving. Could there perhaps be a solution to this ?
GuacheSuede
commented
6 years ago @Bodom78 Could you share what great concepts Semantic UI has from your POV ? For me it is mostly Modular Theme-ing
PhilLehmann
commented
6 years ago As there seem to be people willing to support SUI, maybe @jlukic considers adding them to the team.
Bodom78
commented
6 years ago @GuacheSuede The human friendly markup is something I love, I find much easier to work with compared to Bootstrap or Foundation.
Another thing I really like is the amount of variations on offer for elements, look at the lists or buttons pages in the docs. So many variations already there and with the theming, overrides and variables it's easy to add your own building up on what is already there.
I've found I can take a website from design to html much faster and with less nonsensical markup then the other frameworks I have used.
As a start I would love to see more contributors working on clearing out the issues and pull requests.
arjarn
commented
6 years ago @witrin : thx for information
+1 @Bodom78 : like SUI for same things, can add bricks to make great site with original design, but I haven't find easy way for theming so for this, I'm agree @GuacheSuede
And, obviously, priority to resolve issues.
In last, more high level components : I think, dev / people like have all-in-one framework. Tiresome have 4-5 third party library for image slide, date time picker or other... I know, 100% needing is not possible but several components missing in SUI in my mind.
GuacheSuede
commented
6 years ago That is good to hear ! @Bodom78 @arjarn
@Bodom78 I agree, SUI's feature of markup seems much easier than Boostrap or Foundation. I agree that the variations of the the framework seems wonderful !
@arjarn Thanks for agreeing :). I agree SUI is lacking a few features that would be much desired. Could you list out the components you would hope to see in Semantic UI ?
Issues are a large priority.
I am thinking it would be better for Semantic UI if it was switched to SASS/SCSS due to more features
GuacheSuede
commented
6 years ago I have so far not been able to get @jlukic reponse when I private messaged him a few days ago
Joshfindit
commented
6 years ago Since the discussion includes forking, I suggest that future maintainers seriously consider moving Semantic-UI to CSS Grid.
GuacheSuede
commented
6 years ago @Joshfindit Definitely would, do you have an example of a framework that does this ?
witrin
commented
6 years ago Here are my two cents:
For me it's the core concept of this Framework what makes it so valuable and (of course) the rich feature set.
We are using this framework with our custom build tool chain (YARN only with Fluid templates) and the big effort with this concept is separation of concern! We don't need to copy fat boiler plates for each project, we reuse our investments, we spent less time and the projects are just that big they only have to be. So the possibility to layering components with definitions, themes and sites are a huge step forward in this (CSS) area.
Also having a clean wording makes it more fun to work with this stuff ... but I know structures needs to grow and kept clean, so the only thing I'm most aware of when a fork would came up, core concepts and/or structure became a mess because too many cooks (might) spoil the broth. E.g. when tickets like might accepted in a hurry https://github.com/Semantic-Org/Semantic-UI/issues/5785.
I also think the @jlukic should be still part of this; sure, if he want. Maybe he could find a way the community could be involved a little bit more, thus we get faster releases and he gets more free time. I also see financial support for this project should be a part of the future discussions.
GuacheSuede
commented
6 years ago @witrin Yes definitely.
I agree too many cooks (might) spoil the broth and that @jlukic should be part of this as well as financial support as an issue to be brought up.
What I am suggesting however would be a change of operation for the project has come to a halt for a year and it would be a waste if it died especially as you said of the good concepts of it (modularity, build tool chain, rich feature set and wording)
I assure you that I totally agree with you especially on the key point of keeping structure and maintaining quality. But the dilemma is of such that Semantic UI is not moving with @jlukic nearly disappearing for a year, remember this is a 39 thousand stars project. Do you think a Semantic UI should stay dead ?
witrin
commented
6 years ago @GuacheSuede Semantic UI should definitely kept alive! :D I think the next step could be a discussion about a change of operation for the project; like you mentioned. If I get the last messages from @jlukic right, I think he is currently in Russia on vacation. So maybe we wait a little bit more until he pings back and a discussion about operation then could be forced. And when he really would not answer within the next n weeks (what I don't think) maybe a discussion about a community driven fork needs to be started earlier.
GuacheSuede
commented
6 years ago @witrin Yes, I agree. Glad we are on the same page and understanding, perhaps let's wait till Mid Feb and see if he responds till then ?
levithomason
commented
6 years ago Note, Semantic UI React is still in development. I'm the owner/author over there and I have owner rights to the Semantic Org at large. I've also had offline chats with Jack about the future of SUI.
Jack's focus is mostly on pursuing a semantic component standard for the web at large. A W3C for UI, if you will. Frameworks like Semantic UI and library implementations like Semantic UI React would serve as premier examples of how to implement the UI specification.
All said, I am interested in keeping development moving forward on both Semantic UI and Semantic UI React. The next frontier, in my mind, is to abstract out the styles and state of the components so that other implementations can more easily adapt them. It would also serve to protect us against future changes in the technology landscape. I've discussed this with Jack on a video call and he is in agreement, regarding the abstracted styles at least.
In my experience here at Semantic Org, what we need is a core of truly dedicated members. Over the last few years, I've seen a lot of conversations like this one begin, and sometimes an effort is started, but there is no follow through. I think the reasons behind the lack of follow-through are what we need to address.
One idea I've had is to start with regular meetings. At least get a core group of folks together to talk about a realistic way to move forward. I am more than happy to hear thoughts as to how we can get folks to commit in a sustainable and productive manner.
Who's up for it?
dannyBies
commented
6 years ago I have been in contact with @jlukic for the past couple of weeks and hopefully there will be a patch before the 1st of Februari. He has been quite busy lately.
I would be more than happy to help in any way I can!
jlukic
commented
6 years ago I think it'd be reasonable to have a video call with people who are interested in SUI to discuss what's going on in the project.
I'll summarize the story of the project here, as I know I've told it through different mediums at different times and it's probably more difficult to track these days.
My goal is to share my thoughts as I understand them myself, naked without a filter, and I hope you can do me the kindness of being forgiving for any parts where I may have faltered in character or conclusion.
I've generally thought of the core SUI goals as a descriptivist standard for web UI, a counterpoint to the top-down approach of the W3C. This is something that is still my primary life ambition, and that I hope I can be thinking about until my later days.
The issue though, is that indefinitely financing open source can be difficult. It, at the very least, requires enough financing to cover one persons expenses indefinitely which, in real financial terms, is a multi-million dollar affair. I'll get to that in a bit though. Perhaps first I'll try to share the story of where the project came and where I am now.
Semantic UI 1.0 was lucky enough to exist because I was able to open source much of my work done at the now defunct startup Quirky where I was working as head of front end development on solving the general issue of how large teams can work on a front end codebase without developer scaling issues. The aspirations for the project were to show how aspects of semantics from natural language, (noun modifier relationships, plurality, significant word order) were better at describing physicality than classic CS models which function more like 'cooking recipes' (or behavioral specifications).
When I left Quirky I ended up travelling a bit and working on Semantic UI, generally spending through savings and hammering out ideas around types of UI, naming conventions, reasonable methodologies for constructing UI definitions and generally looking for a path forward.
Around a year into this plan I got an interesting email from someone who had recently bought The New Republic. I ended up coming in and discussing what I was doing, and found out it was a good match. I was offered an interesting arrangement where I could work to help recode the magazines aging codebase (using SUI) and redesign the magazines website, on a 75/25 basis while working on SUI one week a month without pay out of their office.
After around 6 months the redesign was done, and I was itching to get back to SUI full-time. Chris was kind enough to offer me the opportunity to keep a desk at the New Republic offices while working on open source full-time. I then spent the next year, keeping a desk at their Union Square office, greeting guests as if I was an employee, but working without pay on open source full-time--from summer 2014 through summer 2015, when i finally finished 2.0 of Semantic UI.
This was my second period working entirely from savings and taking no salary while working on SUI. In all honesty, it was perhaps the most fulfilling and liberating period of my life. Though at the end of it, on medicaid with no money, I knew it wasn't going to be sustainable. I had now saved and then spent ~$60-80,000 in savings in two separate periods working on Semantic UI.
At this time I started talking to some investors around perhaps raising a seed round for a company supporting Semantic UI. From talking to investors and angels, I was introduced to some interesting people who founded other OS companies like Meteor, and Ionic and had calls to discuss their story. I also started talking to a list of valley VCs, preparing my seed round slide deck, and began to get ready to sell the idea of Semantic UI as a company.
But something hit me in my gut, that felt wrong about it. When I think about the people that have inspired me to create in my life, the idea of attaching a 'profit motive' created cognitive dissonance. There was no "Dostoevsky LLC", or "James Joyce C Corp". Perhaps, one could argue, there were publishers, but these arrangement didn't require the same quick turnarounds and preposterous hockey puck revenue charts as is expected in the valley these days.
The idea of attaching a company, and shareholders to SUI didn't feel right to me, and from looking through the direction of open source companies who had tried, it did seem clear all of them, without fail, ended up following the money eventually. At its worst, if I relented and tried anyway and decided it wasn't correct the intellectual property for SUI would, most likely, never be available again--owned by the stakeholders in the company.
While I was weighing these thoughts, a few SUI companies were reaching out about 2.0 and how to use SUI in their company. One of those companies Qualia was starting to raise their series A and asked me to come out and look at their codebase and give feedback on their design. They were fresh Stanford and Penn grads using an entirely Meteor/SUI stack, and with very stimulating views on code and business. From talking with them, it was clear I would be able to 1) have access to a significant equity stake in an early stage company that had not been available in any other period of my life 2) be able to use SUI as the core of a startups codebase and test out longitudinally it's utility and triage any scaling issues.
Around fall 2015 I ended up signing contracts and starting full time as head of design at Qualia, something that I was very sheepish to talk about publicly because it was a difficult conceit to explain. But I was penned in for two years, which seemed in the scope of a lifelong project as "not forever", and so I soldiered on.
I ended up agreeing to a "week on week off" schedule from NYC -> SF. Which in hindsight, may have been a very silly thing, leaving very little weekend time for open source that wasn't recuperating or traveling, or reconnecting with friends. My 2 years ran up in July of this year, and I was offered the same equity to stick another 2 years, a contract I accepted.
Now it's not difficult to see how this could be construed as 'selling out', but having gone through my life savings twice, having tried the contracting/OS balance, having looked at SUI as an excel spreadsheet of a seed deck's financial projections, and having calculated the multiples of current donations that i'd need to receive to be able to pay rent, it didnt seem feasible to go any other way.
The only way forward I can imagine for the project is to raise, at once, enough money to carry the product indefinitely, what I've been thinking of as 'escape velocity' for OS. This number begins at the cost of one developer to work, in perpetuity, on an OS project. The calculations for this looks something like this, the numbers may vary somewhat, but coarsely still look the same.
Cost of living NYC $85,000
Cost of living with savings and possibility of family $125,000
Safe rate of return for annuity/investment 4%
Endowment/Annuity that could produce cost of living indefinitely $125,000 / 0.04% = $3,125,000
Long term capital gains tax 20%
Amount of pre-tax money necessary to finance an endowment for one-man Semantic UI non profit: $3.906,000
All and all this is a fair amount of money that doesn't seem reasonable to raise without institutional investment, or personally putting up enough capital to cover the lion's share of the non-profit.
I'm trying my best to do the latter for now, which has caused me to make some clear and perhaps single-minded concessions for the project.
Generally, I think this idea of developer annuities, is something that I will be trying to pitch as a means of escaping the treadmill for OS developers. I think the numbers can vary between $1-4m per-person in funding, but paint a more clear picture of how much it truly costs to support something which can exist in perpetuity. When not thought of as personal wealth, but as an endowment, or non-profit, perhaps it's not seen as unreasonable. I've been thinking of this as the "wellspring" model of open source, and if it's something I can prove for myself, I'm hoping I can use it to help other projects finance their visions with the long-term in mind.
All and all though, if I'm capable of financing a non-profit, where I can say for certain my children will be able to have long term access to an open source UI framework (or standard) without profit motive, or need for solicitation, I'll be very proud of this time.
Joshfindit
commented
6 years ago @GuacheSuede: Currently there is no framework that I'm aware of that is based on CSS Grid. It's very new (but has excellent browser support), and I think this is a technical opportunity as well as an SEO opportunity: CSS Grid does a lot of things very intelligently and so obsoletes some of the old methods of page placement, and for as many people who talk about 'with CSS Grid we don't need [Bootstrap] any more', there are possibly more who recognize that CSS Grid doesn't bring design cohesion, design language, or even a design direction and these are really where Semantic-UI shines.
Bodom78
commented
6 years ago @jlukic Thanks for the update, it's good to know and have put into perspective the origins, difficulties and future wishes for the project.
@levithomason If the project was to move towards adding some dedicated contributers to assist in maintaining the project, then I feel a "call to arms" would best be placed on the semantic website somewhere. I generally find Git issue threads is mostly users looking for fixes and messaging can get lost easily. (Looking forward to using Semantic UI React in the future!)
jlukic
commented
6 years ago If you'd like to participate in a conference call about Semantic UI, I've created this link for listing availability.
GuacheSuede
commented
6 years ago @jlukic Thanks Jack for your long and candid explanations in relation to funding and your struggles.
I think that we need to talk yes and personally would like to manage the project if you do not happen to have time for this as i do see many new features that can be done that would benefit users.
I have filled the poll and look forward to talking to you soon.
w96k
commented
6 years ago @jlukic It's nice to hear any updates about SUI because even without actively maintaining SUI is the best OS CSS library available, it's much easier to use than any other CSS library I think it would be nice to have more maintainers to review all pull requests and issues. Maybe you should look to React SUI, they tried to solve the problem of styled components, but without a result.
jlukic
commented
6 years ago For what it's worth i jammed out a release tonight https://github.com/Semantic-Org/Semantic-UI/releases/tag/2.2.14
arjarn
commented
6 years ago Nice to see motivated people for this great project. Agree with @jlukic's thought about SUI.
Unfortunately I haven't lot of time to devote for new project. But I'm coming here for proposing ideas or issues ;)
Good luck for conference call, I cross my fingers for positive issue :)
kurbar
commented
6 years ago @jlukic I would be happy to help out as well. Unfortunately I wouldn't be able to join on those meeting times. Simply because I live in Eastern Europe and for me, those times are from 1am to 5am.
brunotourinho
commented
6 years ago Hey folks! Been using Semantic-UI as my projects' framework for a long time. It's good to hear that is not dead. Thanks @jlukic for your honesty and of course for sharing your time and work with all of us. Hope that you guys can manage to keep things going.
y0hami
commented
6 years ago @jlukic It's great to hear what you're trying to do with the project and I fully support that and would love to see semantic grow into a standard for modern web.
Over the past few weeks I have been contributing and helping out by updating some things and I want to help out as must as I can because I love this project and I have been using the framework for well over a year now, with that said I am hoping to become a contributor/maintainer so I can help sort out the issue right now with the current amount of issues/pr there is and get semantic in a stable bug free version with components for every scenario while keeping the style and easability which Jack is going for.
I have joined 2 of the days on the meeting planner which @jlukic posted so I can see what the next moves are and so I can help out in anyway I can.
khornberg
commented
6 years ago While I cannot make the discussion, I'll offer my thoughts here beforehand.
A community seems to be here to help. How do we capitalize on that desire for the health of the project?
Things I would like to see in the future:
I think these things are possible, albeit, slowly, regardless of funding if there is by-in by the current leaders of SUI.
arjarn
commented
6 years ago @khornberg : nice analysis.
I cannot make the discussion too (schedule problem), so also offer my thoughts here...
Calendar and slider module are already written (for slider, I think it can be improving). Be great to incorporate it in SUI. For slider, technically, why not same as Vegas Slide (https://vegas.jaysalvat.com/) : using background image in HTML component with optionals controls to swap between pictures. With that, it's possible to place above picture text, button... offering lot of possibilities as mostly SUI components ;)
Maybe others components can be adding :
and for design, wave effect when you activate button (like https://mdbootstrap.com/javascript/waves-effect)
All that is I'm dreaming in my devs : I know some ideas may be good, other very bad ^^
Last point, with multiples / heterogeneous device today, it may be useful to add two more breakpoints for responsive : one below 768px (576 ?) and one upper 1200px (1500 ?).
y0hami
commented
6 years ago @arjarn I agree with getting the calendar and the slider (range) module merged into the core UI and I also agree with the idea to add toasts or some sort of notification yet I don't agree with the button ripple effect, this is a material design feature and in my option doesn't fit the design pattern for semantic. I think adding lots of features like this would make the framework too clunky when it is only required for that specific thing therefore you could just add it to your theme.
I definitely think a talk needs to be had about new and current components on what needs to be added and what needs to be changed to stay relevant to the current web standards and design.
I also agree with adding a new break point for smaller devices like smart watches for example.
arjarn
commented
6 years ago @hammy2899 I agree your opinion about button ripple. Perhaps not so good to mix components features and design feature.
GammaGames
commented
6 years ago @arjarn I can see toasts being handy, right now we made a custom saving notification that served that purpose but having it built into the framework would be really nice
GuacheSuede
commented
6 years ago @GammaGames Definitely sounds good !
kappaknight
commented
6 years ago What about a KickStarter or similar where some of the more desired components would be worked on as part of the reward? Font Awesome raised millions in the last year for version 5 of their product... maybe something like that could work for Semantic?
We just released the facelift of our new automotive classifieds website based completely on SUI. We definitely want to see this project continue moving forward. Once the site gets a bit more traction, we'd love to help out financially.
dannyBies
commented
6 years ago It seems 3, 6 and 7 Februari are the dates most people are available for a conference call about Semantic UI. The most people can do the call on the 3rd, I will be out of country that day but I can make some time available to participate.
@jlukic are you organizing the call?
DanielSwain
commented
6 years ago Perhaps an endowment wouldn't be necessary. ~40,000 stars x $5 / year. I'd sure be willing to do that for a LONG time.
italomaia
commented
6 years ago What is the opinion of core devs on a kickstarter? font-awesome kickstarter seems to have done well for them.
GammaGames
commented
6 years ago If there was a kickstarter it would have to be done well, but another alternative could be patreon. Just throwing some ideas out there for the people making decisions on the project
@jlukic 's last commit was 5/6 months ago and even then did not have many improvements nor much changes.
What would be the status of Semantic UI especially with Bootstrap having much more development than this ? Is it in active development or are any features planed for the near future ?
Note: This open source project goes dead without @jlukic or @quirkyjack , zero developement, zero updates, and for nearly a year at that. Even pull requests are not moving. Could there perhaps be a solution to this ?
Please do not say plans for something, for that might be for another half a year of waiting with no promises or answers
There will be a meeting at 6PM EST tomorrow on Hangouts !
I hope to volunteer to maintain/run this project if @jlukic does not have the time for it