Meet Melody's Makers .

It’s the solitary reason that there is currently (but certainly not for long) no defined roadmap or Melody Version 1.0. We felt that to decide these things by ourselves would set a precedent of almost oligarchic exclusivity. Sure, someone had to do the work to get the Open Melody Software Group and the Melody project launched, but those of us who put all of these things into place didn’t want all of you who would later join to feel any less empowered to create and affect change than we did or do.

The unfortunate side effect of this rabidly egalitarian focus on community is that, with the exception of the wiki and the OMSG page, you won’t find a single mention anywhere on the site of those people who worked so tirelessly often at their own great expense to make Melody a reality.

Yesterday, one of our own, Byrne Reese, wrote a post that I think pays tribute to our group in a way that made me smile. I post that here, in its entirety, because I am proud of the team who brought this project through to its launch and because they are this projects initial leaders.

From Majordojo.com: “Meet Melody”:

People who know me, know that I love Movable Type. In fact I have devoted much of the last five years to the product and its community. Therefore it gives me great pride and much relief to be a part of the launch of Melody, a new community-driven content management and blogging platform based upon Movable Type.

I have written extensively about what motivated me and others to create this project so I won’t bother recapitulating that here.

What is likely to get lost today in whatever attention this humble project is likely to attract is any mention of the people who have helped take this project this far. Without the dedication of these people over the past six years Movable Type would be a fundamentally different product than it is today, and Melody might never have happened. So I would like to carve out a little space to say thank you to the following contributors to Melody and my friends:

• Jay Allen - While I have been remiss in mentioning it here, Jay and I are now partners in what is becoming a very successful Movable Type (and now Melody) consulting business. For Melody Jay has been playing the role of lead developer by helping manage code merges with Movable Type, organizing our source code and writing all of our developer contribution guidelines.
• Jesse Gardner - I have worked with Jesse for years. It was a pleasure to work with him on the design of Movable Type [dot org] and an even greater privilege to work with him on what I think is a damn fine looking web site and the home for our new community: OpenMelody.org.
• Tim Appnel - Tim has been a dutiful project manager as well as our system administrator taking on the unglamorous and thankless task of setting up servers, managing ACLs, and all the other stuff that makes the bits and bytes flow as God intended.
• Dan Wolfgang - Dan built out our web site, and has been first in line to take stuff off of people’s plates when they become too full. Never under-estimate the value of load balancing people. Seriously.
• Mark Stosberg - Mark’s invaluable experience in serving on the boards of several non-profits has helped us greatly in our process of writing our own by-laws for the Open Melody Software Group. He is also our unofficial ambassador to the greater Perl community in CPAN, where he helps to maintain a number of modules.
• Su - I have never known Su to be one who likes the lime light, so I will simply say this: he has been a consistent and reliable voice of reason within our group, which is essential when dealing with so many people who are as passionate as we are.
• Arvind Satyanarayn - The famous Movable Type prodigy-kid and author of Custom Fields took a break from college girls and parties to help contribute much needed code and infrastructure that will undoubtedly become essential to the project. He also surprised us all by merging all of Movable Type 4.261 into the latest development branch of Melody - hoooo-aaaah!

Finally, I would like to thank Six Apart. There is no doubt that many people will want to spin this initiative by the community in a way that impugns the company and the many people who work there and whom I call a friend. There is no way around the simple and basic truth: without them, this project would not exist and without their support of the project, I doubt it could reach its fullest potential.

And after all is said and done, this is what Melody is all about: these people, our community, and the many people who will follow. Thank you!

Needless to say, Byrne has provided this team leadership, attention to detail and a focus on the things that are truly important. He played peacemaker and negotiator countless number of times always keeping us moving forward towards the end goal. It is for these and many other reasons that we elected him to serve as the first Chairman of the Open Melody Software Group.

In conclusion, I wanted to write this post to thank each and every one of the initial founders for their hard work and dedication and to make sure that this community knew who made it all happen. Below you will find some of our individual posts talking about Melody if you’re interested in our individual takes.

And now, except where absolutely necessary, we intend to fade back into the beautiful and growing tapestry of contributors and users who make up the Melody Community. We hope you will join us in defining our shared future.

• Tim Appnel: “Breaking The Silence: Meet Melody “
• Jesse Gardner: “Why I ♥ Melody”
• Dan Wolfgang: “Introducing Melody”
• Mark Stosberg: “Movable Type fork is an opportunity to harness CPAN”
• Jay Allen: “A New Partner and a New Product”