[OFF] Cool Plugins

[Richard Gaskin]

TL/DR version: there are challenges, but improving the state of stack 
file sharing is doable, esp. with community participation.


Longer version for folks with too much time on their hands:

Björnke von Gierke wrote:
 > Yes, and every time the community starts to talk business about this,
 > someone from RunRev swoops in and says "we have an amazing thing in
 > the pipeline, just you wait!", making all contributors vanish and the
 > calls to action cease. It's been years of this, and nothing has ever
 > come from RunRev.

True, but something very significant has happened since then:  LiveCode 
is now open source.

And as a part of that they have a Community Manager, a role which is 
really just one of community advocacy, and so they have an obligation to 
listen to that advocacy until the griping stops. :)  Indeed, in my 
experience with them thus far it's more than a sense of obligation, but 
a process they've eagerly embraced.

The transition to open source process is very new with LiveCode - new 
for the folks at RunRev, and even for many of us in the community who've 
participated in other FOSS projects.  So we're all finding our way in 
this over time as we get this going.

But the one thing I feel confident about is that the people at RunRev 
chose their path toward FOSS with great care, and understand what it 
means.  It's more than just giving away free software, but also 
fundamentally changes the nature of the development workflow, for all of us.

With any software development, a key bottleneck is developer capacity.

With a proprietary product, this capacity is somewhat fixed, limiting 
the rate of enhancement.

With an open source project, the scope of human resources that can be 
applied to solving problems is limited only by the number of people 
willing to roll up their sleeves and pitch in.

So going forward, I'd like to believe that the rate of bug fixes and 
enhancements for everything in the LiveCode universe can be accelerated 
at a rate roughly equal to the size of its ever-growing community.



How this applies to what we currently call "RevOnline" is something 
we'll have to figure out, but I think it's very encouraging that just is 
in this one thread we have several people willing to help.

I recently discussed RevOnline with Ben, but only briefly (we had a 
couple other more time-sensitive initiatives which took most of the 
meeting - keep an eye out for the upcoming announcement of the LiveCode 
Global Jam, May 23 & 24 - more on that on Monday).

Both he and Kevin are well aware of the value of having such a 
repository, and the current need for improving it.

We'll need to flesh out what a collaborative process means for this, and 
the details of what it should incorporate, how it gets curated, etc.

I'll make that the focus of my next meeting with them this coming 
Thursday, so we can learn more about their current plans for the system 
and how they can incorporate community contributions so that everyone 
gets what they want.

In the meantime, I would encourage this discussion to continue here as a 
very valuable foundation of brainstorming which can be very helpful in 
informing what the system ultimately becomes.



 > Said that, I'm all for self help, and maybe this time will be
 > different, so let's try!

I like your positive approach, Björnke.  That can-do spirit is how 
things get done.


 > I think we need a curated experience, where categories are merged and
 > split based on consensus. I am going to make a stack right now to
 > show an example of category management.

Curation can be very helpful for the utility of the collection, but 
challenging socially.

This is one of those areas where open source communities really define 
themselves, in establishing their own forms of governance for projects.

I look forward to seeing this discussion here continue, and acting as 
this community's advocate on Thursday to facilitate the creation of a 
work plan with the core dev team.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  LiveCode Community Manager
  richard at livecode.org