[Typo3-dev] Sharing the load of development?

[Kasper Skårhøj]

On Mon, 2004-04-26 at 17:59, Troels Kjær Rasmussen wrote:
> Hi Kasper				
> 
> While we are getting those EXTs organized....
> 
> Some of those extensions you mention have 1 or more dublets, such as the mininews, which has several "cousins" .e.g. tt_news, news++, moc knowledgebase, press center...and I could go on. Also theres is 2 or 3 newletter subscription/distribution EXT´s out there. 
> 
> A real shame that everyone has to re-invent the wheel everytime they want to create an extension and that the created ones often are incompatible.

I think many agree.

Finally, we also have to consider that most of the times extensions are
started because someone had a problem to solve here and now. And
frankly, it *is* often much quicker to do your own from scratch than
taking the time to a) investigate others work, b) adapt others work
while being backwards compatible.

This is my personal experience. It doesn't invalidate the general
argument that when it all comes down to it we should have as few
extensions as possible doing the same.

In my vision; lets say we have 5 news plugins. They are all created to
do the same but slightly differently. I suggest that someone say "Hey,
lets learn from all these 5 extensions, and make a new super-extension
that can do all of it, but in one and made right from the start!" - then
the 5 old extensions will be marked "obsolete" and the new one will be
promoted officially.

I also want to warn about a thing: It is BETTER to start such a
"super-extension" from scratch with a new extension key than building on
an old extension key IF you cannot obtain 100% backwards compatibility!
We have to respect the thousands of installations which would otherwise
be locked into using an old version of the extension (and maybe even
TYPO3 core!) unless they invest a lot of time into conversion. We should
never force anyone to do that.


> 
> STANDARDS is the answer I think.


Good thinking!