Mage-OS & Adobe's Response to the Open Letter - Eric Erway
Smash the Bug: Episode 33
Your host: Joseph Maxwell, Founder and CEO of SwiftOtter, Inc.
Special Guest: Eric Erway, Group Project Manager at Adobe Commerce
Show Notes
We caught Eric Erway right before Adobe kicked off their Magento Open Source Task Force, a newly-assembled group of great minds who are coming together to save and pave the way for the future of Magento/Adobe Commerce Open Source. Eric believes that developer experience is just as important as the merchant experience, and that Adobe really is committed to making sure the future of Open Source is bright and built to thrive, as it always has.
4:09
The in-person events that helped the Magento community to thrive throughout the years are greatly missed, according to Eric, because some of the most important conversations started and ended at events like Imagine. “Here’s to hoping that we are able to get together next year at Adobe Summit” - Joseph.
5:35
Here at the very beginning of the Open Source Task-Force initiative, everyone is wanting to know how this is going to work, when we will hear about planned changes and what communication we can look for. Eric helps to answer these questions. “It’s hard to do this 280 characters at a time” - Eric
7:49
The decentralization of the [Magento] communities as new technologies and new opportunities are brought into the picture, like Hyva, Vue Storefront, etc.
8:39
How do we look at innovation and take advantage of a new contribution model?
9:29
Regarding the future of the Magento Association and taking over the development/ownership of Open Source, what’s really going to happen here? Eric explains it from Adobe’s perspective.
11:52
Contributions seem to be really difficult, and when something really needs to be done, it’s hard to wait around for all the bureaucracy. Eric has a few thoughts to share about how Adobe will try to improve this in the future, how communication will work and what needs to be put into place to promote performance, security, etc.
16:11
Igor Miniailo’s blog/article (see it here) and why careful and clear communication is both a requirement here and a privilege.
18:10
So where is Magento Open Source headed? Adobe seems to believe it has reached a level of maturity, while the community doesn’t seem to agree with that. “Decentralized” is a big word that Eric uses, while diving deep into the concepts of “maintaining a lean core”.
22:31
Joseph dives deeper into the concept of maturity and the future of performance optimization. Eric brings up PHP 8.1 and the work associated with making sure everything is tested and working well. They mention GraphQL, Page Builder and more. Eric stresses the importance of creating a robust release calendar and having a better system for “roadmap communications”.
25:00
Here we are. Let’s talk about Mage-OS for a little bit. The Mage-OS alliance is set on protecting the future of Magento, and Joseph can identify with the struggles they’re voicing in that he is developing his own version of the product repository to fix an existing issue that he doesn’t think will get fixed through a pull request. Eric says that we all owe each other solid communication regarding the issues that are plaguing the platform.
28:00
How we move forward and solve this problem, as we can’t do it “280 characters at a time”. Eric has a lot of empathy for the developers in the community and wants to do this thing right.
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