[TYPO3-english] Customers and Extensions

[Michael Miousse]

Georg Ringer wrote:

> Hi Mark,
> 
> what you describe is very common and IMO everyone has to deal with those
> issues!
> 
> Mark Kuiphuis wrote:
>> I don't feel comfortable modifying
>> someone else's extension. First reason is the current "lack of technical
>> insight in an extension" and second: I don't want to break the added
>> functionality when the extension has an update in the TER. (A security
>> update is always a good reason to upgrade imho).
> 
> First of all: Don't hesitate to change someones extension! There are 2
> different usecases:
> a) You need a feature which won't be needed by anyone else ever: So just
> hack it into the extension or add only 1 hook which will be less work if
> you update once.
> 
> b) The feature will be needed by everyone (the same for translations):
> Contact the author and send him the changes ingluding a description.
> Provide either a diff or just the files you changed and the changes will
> be hopefully in the next version.
> 
> 
>> We cannot expect of an extension developer to add functionality
>> immediately (even if we are willing to pay for)
> 
> If you got the money and less experience this is usually the best and
> fastest way because an author just knows the own extensions the best and
> maybe there is already a new version in progress which will be just fine
> for you too!
> 
> Hope that I could help
> Georg

to be honest i made lots of modification on lots of extension in the past
few year and i am not a shame to tell you that i did not propose more than
10% of the modification i made. The reason is very simple, not everything
that customer need is a good thing for extensions. Customers have sometime
need that no other customers will have.

in my opinion theire is 3 ways to modify an extension:

1.  if the extension is yours, you simply modify it, if not and the feature
could be use full for anyone else, you create a patch and propose it to the
extension author 

2. if your functionality is to specific and would not be usefull for the
community, you try to use an existing hook to add your functionality.

3. if no hook exist and you can use xclass, you  do it.
-- 
Michael Miousse
Infoglobe
michael.miousse at infoglobe.ca