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The most advanced responsive front-end framework in the world. Quickly create prototypes and production code for sites that work on any kind of device.
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Is Zurb Foundation in active development? #11767

Closed bgarrant closed 4 years ago

bgarrant commented 5 years ago

I have not seen a new pull request go through since Jan 2019. Is Foundation still in active development? I just want to know before I use on a few new projects.

Thanks in advance.

DanielRuf commented 5 years ago

I was one of the most active contributors to Foundation Sites in the last years. I'll try to answer this as best as possible.

In general this project is maintained and developed by volunteers, there are not so many people from ZURB involved anymore (which is not great). The communication could have been better.

The lead dev which helped with the last releases left the project and works on other things now. Currently I am mostly the solely active contributor. Unfortunately I (still) see no active contributions from other Yetinauts (the volunteers).

Doing this alone is not very motivating and the motivation which I had for Foundation Sites is not there anymore and I have stopped investing more time.

I welcome any help from the community and invite you all to actively contribute to the code. So far 8 people have reacted to this issue and almost all have never contributed to this project (well, maintaining something big like this is a big responsibility and being a maintainer is never easy). This is not a critic but I would like to get some support by others.

reinhardmohr commented 5 years ago

Hi, Daniel, thanks for helping so much! This is the first clear answer about the progress of Foundation since I thought something might have gone wrong. I am no developer (at least not a real one) so I can't really help maintain the code. But what else could people like me do? People who have used Foundation, benefitted from it and would now like to give back something? Could we develop a plan, an idea, a suggestion? Thanks for helping and maintaining Reinhard

bgarrant commented 5 years ago

Thanks for the work you have done Daniel. I am not a developer either so there is not much I can offer. Sorry. I hope Foundation lives on.

oliviertassinari commented 5 years ago

https://www.rank2traffic.com/zurb.com might provide a global context. It's public data.

DanielRuf commented 5 years ago

@oliviertassinari context for what? This does not change anything on our side tbh.

oliviertassinari commented 5 years ago

There is an opportunity cost in anything we undertake. I hope this one more data source that will help you best leverage your time. But I agree, it's not meant to change anything.

matteotestoni commented 5 years ago

Where are ncoden Rafi and others?

JeremyEnglert commented 5 years ago

Where are ncoden Rafi and others?

brettsmason commented 5 years ago

A lot of us are still around. But unfortunately without any clear direction or lead, my motivation to help just isn't there.

reinhardmohr commented 5 years ago

Hi, I am neither a coder nor a Yetinaut – I am just an ordinary user of Fundation. But I regret it being abandoned. So:

Given there are 100 users of Foundation each willing to give a 100 Dollars to keep the project going (I am willing to): There would be 10.000 Dollars as a starting point …

How could things be started to improve?

Thanks for answering and helping

Reinhard

xgarb commented 5 years ago

Maybe a Kickstarter for a JQuery-free version 7?

matteotestoni commented 5 years ago

As a web developer my priorities are different.

Things like this. If there is jquery or not for me is not important. If development of a version without jquery is too expensive i think is not a priority

Matteo

DanielRuf commented 5 years ago

responsive font sizes

I guess you mean CSS Locks. See https://css-tricks.com/math-css-locks/

use media queries like bootstrap

Not sure what you mean.

SassNinja commented 5 years ago

use media queries like bootstrap

Not sure what you mean.

I'm wondering the same. What exactly do you mean? Foundation provides breakpoint specific classes, too.

JeremyEnglert commented 5 years ago

Given there are 100 users of Foundation each willing to give a 100 Dollars to keep the project going (I am willing to): There would be 10.000 Dollars as a starting point …

That's a great goal, but I'm also not sure how realistic it is. Even if $10,000 was raised, I'm not sure how long that could keep someone/people working on the project. When Foundation was at its peak, it had multiple (ZURB) developers investing a ton of time into it.

How could things be started to improve?

Direction. Someone from ZURB needs to step up and lead the project or help the project cut ties from ZURB and become completely community based. At the moment, not much can be done without ZURB's input.

Maybe a Kickstarter for a JQuery-free version 7?

A "jQuery Free" version isn't going to save the project. A Kickstarter might be a good idea, but we can't build a campaign around specific features (jQuery-free).

As a web developer my priorities are different....If development of a version without jquery is too expensive i think is not a priority

Honestly, at this point there isn't even enough resources to maintain V6. It's not about funds (although that helps) or priorities. It's a lack of direction and time that is the issue.

Sven-WEBDESIGN commented 5 years ago

Hello @DanielRuf , first, thanks for your work in a difficult context, second, i am sorry that i hear this only now. For a very long time, Foundation has been for me the number 1 framework, for its quality, thoroughness and solidity.

So, i'd guess the community has to communicate clearly toward ZURB and itself to gain clarity as to who is responsible for what and in what directions. You can't go on like this and ZURB should take position clearly, as clearly as they can at least. Abandonning a project is always hard but the worst is letting this community and product down without telling it.

Daniel, would you know how to communicate officially with ZURB? I'd be willing to ask them, again if it was asked already, to position themselves. I think it's the main point, cause infrastructure and project maintenance is hard, it's a very large project already, and it's technical both in what it delivers and how it delivers it (tooling for making the source compile, ...)

Let's ask ZURB (once again?) to tell where they're going, their involvement, the reasons perhaps behind, seemingly, this letting down of the project and its community.

JeremyEnglert commented 5 years ago

Daniel, would you know how to communicate officially with ZURB? I'd be willing to ask them, again if it was asked already, to position themselves. I think it's the main point, cause infrastructure and project maintenance is hard, it's a very large project already, and it's technical both in what it delivers and how it delivers it (tooling for making the source compile, ...)

Let's ask ZURB (once again?) to tell where they're going, their involvement, the reasons perhaps behind, seemingly, this letting down of the project and its community.

There's a slack channel where Yetinauts (core contributors) and ZURB communicate. The concerns everyone has been raising here have been mentioned.

Sven-WEBDESIGN commented 5 years ago

Hello @JeremyEnglert or @DanielRuf , thanks for your precisions, i had the feeling it had been asked but was not sure. Would you know if the slack channnel is public or closed (from what you tell me it's closed except for core contributors) and if it's public, the slack channel name?

SassNinja commented 5 years ago

@Sven-WEBDESIGN it's a closed channel (core contributors only)

Sven-WEBDESIGN commented 5 years ago

@SassNinja, thanks, i'll try another way then.

dlewand691 commented 5 years ago

I'm so sad to read all of this. I've been using Foundation since the beginning and I pushed my team to use it on cognizant.com. Like others, I'm a user but not a developer but would like to get involved however I can.

If Zurb has no interest in maintaining Foundation anymore, then who would be willing to take it over? And is the project roadmap still applicable? https://github.com/zurb/foundation-sites/wiki/Project-Roadmap

Don't let the Yeti die!

JeremyEnglert commented 5 years ago

If Zurb has no interest in maintaining Foundation anymore, then who would be willing to take it over? And is the project roadmap still applicable? https://github.com/zurb/foundation-sites/wiki/Project-Roadmap

Probably not. The ideas are valid, but the timing isn't realistic at this point.

reinhardmohr commented 5 years ago

I have tried to find out what is going on with Foundation for half a year. And there were no clear signs. Now I have found this thread and I am following it for two weeks. And finally I get some information. But it seems we are all sitting around, waiting for something to happen. Or waiting for someone to lead. Couldn't we start something to initiate a rescue process? E.g. build up a website like "rescue-foundation.org"? Or inform companies who rely on Foundation as a part of their own products (like pinegrow.com or coffeecup.com) if they are willing to take over the project? Or could anyone here who is envolved set up a roadmap for rescue and publish it here? How do we start?

Thanks for your ongoing contributions Reinhard

dlewand691 commented 5 years ago

That's a good point about apps like Pinegrow and CoffeeCup. They have a vested interest in it already so maybe they would have some ideas or leverage?

Has anyone reached out to former Zurb folks like K-ball or Rafi? Maybe they have some insight?

dlewand691 commented 5 years ago

Hi all- I reached out to KBall on Twitter and this is our conversation. Seems @JeremyEnglert is correct when he said it's about leadership and direction. Who runs Zurb or their dev team? Can we reach out to them? Thousands of people rely on/use Foundation so just disappearing with no notice reflects pretty poorly on Zurb overall.

KBall! Seems that Foundation is dying...it hasn't been updated since January and nobody from Zurb will respond. Any ideas on who we might contact? Don't let the Yeti die!

KBall Hi Daniel! Thanks for reaching out. Yes it definitely feels like Foundation is dying... there are some people trying to get it out of ZURB & keep it alive, but it has been slow and ZURB while in theory in favor in practice has been very slow moving.

Jun 24 KBall Some folks you might reach out to who are trying to move things along/organize are Jeremy Englert (@JeremyEnglert) and Joe Workman (@joeworkman)

Jun 24 Daniel Lewandowski That's too bad! It's been my go-to framework since the beginning. Any reason why? I'm sure it's a lot to manage. Thanks for the contacts, I'll reach out soon. Thank you, sir!

KBall Main reason why is ZURB is no longer investing resources in it, but has not succeeded in truly releasing it to the community. ZURB stopped investing about 2 years ago when they had acute financial problems and laid off 1/3 of the company (including me). My sense from talking to some folks who are still there is it is no longer quite as dire but still very tight and everyone there is overworked, so not very responsive on things that are no longer in their main work

Jun 24 Daniel Lewandowski Makes sense from a business standpoint. They've got to focus on paying clients and not side projects. But it does reflect poorly on them when thousands of people use a product and then everything stops. Preaching to the choir, I know. Sucks to go through that, I've been there a few times myself. Hope you landed somewhere good and are doing well.

joeworkman commented 5 years ago

@kball is correct. I am working with the team at Zurb on formulating a plan to fully transition the Foundation framework over to the community. I will be heading into their offices next week in hopes that we can push things a little faster while in person.

I love Foundation and definitely want to make sure that it and all of its users are taken care of.

Sven-WEBDESIGN commented 5 years ago

@dlewand691, @kball, @joeworkman, thank you all for reaching out and responding. @joeworkman, could use this thread till your next steps are more clear regarding foundation ar Zurb? So that we have a unique entrypoint to follow.

dlewand691 commented 5 years ago

Hi all- I emailed Zurb and heard back from Rafi and Shawna Moser. Seems that things have stalled but they're planning to ramp them back up again.

From Rafi:

We have a plan for Foundation that has stalled in the past but we're ramping it up again. It definitely involves community ownership and a strong core team.

From Shawna:

We're happy to say that Foundation isn't dead and like you mentioned, the Yeti has been hibernating while we're developing Helio.app.

The Yeti will live to see another day!

rafibomb commented 5 years ago

All of the above is true, the good and the bad. We love Foundation AND we love that so many people care. We (ZURB) still use Foundation on our product Helio (https://helio.app/) which is an Angular + Foundation build as well of all our client projects we deliver.

We have a plan to transition Foundation over to the community and separate the ZURB name because we can no longer invest in it as a company. For so many reasons, this process which started in January 2019 has stalled. We don't want to just cut the ZURB name off and say bye. There needs to be a strong, official, foundation of leadership and direction to make this work.

We believe the project will be even stronger in your hands. In the meantime we need to continue finding bugs, fixing bugs, and providing opinions.

Sven-WEBDESIGN commented 5 years ago

I have not seen a new pull request go through since Jan 2019. Is Foundation still in active development? I just want to know before I use on a few new projects.

Thanks in advance.

Thx for starting this conversation, which i hope will help clear things up for everyone. Have a good weekend.

ghost commented 5 years ago

I am continuing to use Foundation - current version 6.5.3. I started using Foundation when it was pre version 4. It is the most flexible user friendly Prototype and web dev Framework out there. It allows you to develop in CSS! as well. I am also using it for really new cool projects - some of my own personal projects as well. My speciality is in design, Info Architecture, UI / UX - I also love to hand code (this allows me to fly for my clients) Foundation is just perfect for that. It also can be easily be ported into MULTIPLE other Frameworks and CMS's like Wordpress and Coding Frameworks like Agile, Javascript Centric, etc. Come on peops.

It was said Foundation was dying several times - I certainly don't believe that and I have continued on with much success. That being said the Zurbians and Yeti's need to communicate to their fan base - It is not cricket to leave people hanging out on a limb wondering...

I have no doubt there will be future releases, I am willing to contribute my two cents and help when I can. Rafi Kimball ????

Long live Foundation. Here's to Foundation 7!!!!!!!! .... Lean, mean and clean, ACCESSIBLE by default too. Don't even have to think about it. It just works. Accessibility people step up to the plate!

See you later.

tarik-wifak commented 5 years ago

Rafi mention that the framework is still alive but he told me that the forum will no longer be maintained when i have an issue to post on it , But we notice lack of discussion about version 7 even its roadmap is published, also in their advanced course Kevin claim that he left zurb. maybe should we create a new framework on top of foundation and take the opportunity to eliminate jquery !

JeremyEnglert commented 5 years ago

maybe should we create a new framework on top of foundation and take the opportunity to eliminate jquery !

To keep everyone looped in - discussions between the collaborators and ZURB have started back up. We're currently reviewing open PR's and will be shooting to push a final release (or maybe two) before focussing all work on F7.

We're also working on ways we can better communicate with the community.

DanielRuf commented 5 years ago

Hi @tarik-wifak,

The team is actively working on fixing v6 bugs, transition many things and start work on v7.

JeremyEnglert commented 5 years ago

Rafi mention that the framework is still alive but he told me that the forum will no longer be maintained when i have an issue to post on it ,

A new forum is being worked on. It will use Discourse.

tarik-wifak commented 5 years ago

thanks @JeremyEnglert thanks @DanielRuf I'm so interested in the futur of this framework i know that is too complex and more advanced but it seems that zurb will give up on the project I use foundation in all of my projects because all of them are both in arabic/english and other languages so the switch between rtl and ltr is easy also there is many components that doesn't exist by default in other frameworks like the drilldown/accordion menu, vertical grid, off-canvas, abide animation and the zurb template is so powerfull but i have a lot of issues with react and scss version

JeremyEnglert commented 5 years ago

Thanks for the support @tarik-wifak. We're trying to address as many issues with F6 as possible while still pushing to get working on F7 as soon as possible. The more help we can get, the better and faster we can get things pushed out.

Xavvi commented 5 years ago

This is welcome news. We've been using Foundation as our go-to framework for around 6 or 7 years now. Would be so sad to see it go. Really excited at the thought of an F7 release!

Baedda commented 5 years ago

This makes me really sad. I have been a fan of Foundation since v3. I don't think that an open source only project can ever be as good as a project that is mainly maintained by a company.

I had a feeling that Foundation is dying since there was a blog post (or something like that) that was called "Road to Foundation 7" (or something like that). And I try to remember that they wanted to release v7 at the end of 2018? But nothing happend.

We in our company use Foundation as our primary frontend framework. Foundation was always better than Bootstrap because of its great and abstract Sass mixins. But so many parts of the framework have become overhauled in any way so we had to replace things step by step.

The breakpoint mixin has been replace by sass-mq, Orbit by Swiper, the grid will be replaced by native css grid, Equalizer by Flexbox and so on. It's sad because we earlier had an all from one hand solution but I totally understand that all of this is too much to handle by a single company.

But please don't get me wrong. The problem I have with giving Foundation to the community is, that most of the time when we had bugs with Foundation, these bugs could be pointed to a pull request from a contributor, that was not working for Zurb. A big project like this needs to be in firm hands that know all side effects pull requests can have.

DanielRuf commented 5 years ago

Hi @Baedda,

I can understand you. Generally there are not many who work on Foundation and still work at Zurb.

I see no problem with maintainers from the community, like me. We Yetinauts still manage this and keep an eye on quality and possible side effects.

It does not mean that everyone can merge PRs.

Baedda commented 5 years ago

I did not want to say that you are not doing a great job - because you do :) I wanted to say that it is very hard to maintain a big project like this in your freetime without getting paid for this job. That's why I'm worried that development will happen fast enough so Foundation will stay future proof.

DanielRuf commented 5 years ago

@Baedda We have this on our radar so stay tuned ;-)

ghost commented 5 years ago

Hello,

Thank-you Daniel Ruf, I can see you are doing a ton of work.

That may be hard for you to keep up without enough support - would not like to see you develop "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder" or "Burnout" I second Christopher's concern. There has to be leadership and honest communication and steady progress towards releases and updating of any dependencies and checking for breakage.

Many of us have been using Foundation as our goto Framework - it is lean, mean and clean and one of the best as far as built in accessibility.

What can we do to get more coders involved?

On Tue, Jul 30, 2019 at 12:31 PM Daniel Ruf notifications@github.com wrote:

@Baedda https://github.com/Baedda We have this on our radar so stay tuned ;-)

— You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/zurb/foundation-sites/issues/11767?email_source=notifications&email_token=ADRXYALWRHVN6SZ2VMIFQF3QCCCILA5CNFSM4HT7KBRKYY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOD3E4COQ#issuecomment-516538682, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ADRXYAPFHCDPCAAZHRCLLY3QCCCILANCNFSM4HT7KBRA .

prembo commented 5 years ago

This is fantastic news Foundation is still alive. How best to manage the transition to a community driven project?

How will the project be led / managed? What are the main goals of v7? In the months were development has slowed down, is there anything that competing front-end frameworks are doing that we should consider? Any recent front-end trends / technologies that v7 can benefit from?

I would like actively and regularly contribute and can begin by working on a few of the smaller issues. What issues are a priority? Issues in the 6.6.0 milestone?

Is our priority now to clean up critical bugs / issues for a 6.5.4 release, complete 6.6.0 then get stuck into v7?

dlewand691 commented 5 years ago

In case you haven't seen this, Bootstrap has released a long-term support plan. There might be some nuggets of inspiration for Foundation's future:

https://github.com/twbs/release

ghost commented 5 years ago

Sounds good. Looking forward to pre-holiday releases. 77% ...... I can't sleep, I am anxiously waiting for the number to move up.

pebbles186 commented 4 years ago

@DanielRuf do you have any news for us? We are currently discussing how to go ahead in our enterprise applications and we would like to keep foundation if development will continue.

DanielRuf commented 4 years ago

@pebbles186 Foundation Sites is still actively developed and maintained but we can use any help that we can get.

simongcc commented 4 years ago

@DanielRuf Thanks for your great effort. Don't be frustrated.

I love foundation since a few years ago and done some projects with it because I think foundation structure is neat, less rubbish tags, class name is also intuitive. The css tools so far is also comprehensive and flexible. Although I think the gulp version's configuration can be simplified. It is overall a good project in good direction.

While I am not very familiar with working in big open source projects, I will try to share some help in simple things like bugs fixing or small issues for trial.

DanielRuf commented 4 years ago

Hi @simongcc,

Thank you very much. Any help is very welcome.

We plan to move away from gulp and use a full webpack config with a few plugins and scripts.