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Developers should support each other to really take Oxwall to the next level | Forum

Omari
Omari Nov 20 '16
Hi there,

I just want to introduce a very important point about 3rd party development. Lots of plugins are being developed on an ad hoc 3rd party basis, and the reality is they are maintained by one man teams.


As a result, if the developer falls ill, gets too busy, or even leaves Oxwall, he/she leaves behind custom code under a licence that no other developer wants to touch or support. 


This is very bad for open source development, for users, clients and for the Oxwall project as a whole. Currently the only solution is to scrap your old plugin and code and get a whole new one custom developed to meet your criteria again, until that one itself is unable to be maintained, and we keep reinventing the wheel.This greatly affects your existing database! and may result in loss of valuable data and user information.


What I propose is that provisions be made in the commercial licence of all Oxwall plugins (possibly a new licence needs to be crafted) that allows developers to agree to having their code and plugins being edited/updated/modified by the Oxwall contingent of developers, after a certain time has passed or even after the Oxwall platform version increments.


This can be a bold new step forward to enhancing open source and Oxwall can set the precedent under this special licence and provision, you will find that this in conjunction with user requests an user voice will give never ending life to the creativity and economic value behind plugin management.


Please give it some thought and suggest ways we can improve this.

The Forum post is edited by Omari Nov 21 '16
dave Leader
dave Dec 13 '16
Hi Omari,  


Sorry i dont get to this section that often so this is the first i have seen this.  


Yes i agree in whole with your idea, however there are complicatons here that i dont see being overcome easily.  At the moment it is very difficult to get very many developers to agree, get involved, or even share their thoughts.  Many of them sadly just dont care about making things better.  Several of us have had posts to try to get other developers involved and in the end its the same thing, just 5 or 6 of us talking and the rest of them dont even reply.  


So getting them to take a drastic step like this and agree to this is going to be an uphill battle that will take a very long time to work through.  And even before that there are things that need to happen to even try something like this. 


For me i already have plans what to do with my plugins should i go south to try to keep my customers happy when im no longer of this earth. 


Its a great idea and we also had some great ideas, but many of the other devs just dont care. 


Dave :)


   

Omari
Omari Dec 13 '16
thanks for the insight Dave, I would also want developers to know that this benefits them commercially as well, they just need to see the bigger picture
Elly Dzilah
Elly Dzilah Jan 11 '17
It's a brilliant idea.