[TYPO3-typo3org] Useless extension inflation, part 22311

Ernesto Baschny [cron IT] ernst at cron-it.de
Mon Apr 3 13:34:36 CEST 2006


Michael Scharkow schrieb am 03.04.2006 11:05:

> 1. Another shitty guestbook extension whose sole purpose seems
> self-advertisement of the author. Not only that the extension completely
> ignores the CGL, inserts a promo link on every page, implements its own
> captchas and other ridiculous things, it has also triggered
> 
> 2. another extension-extension (oh, how I love those) which sucks just
> as much.
> 
> 3. Not to mention the other guestbook (sorry, Franz) which adds to the
> list. Man, we have more guestbooks in TER than ZOPE has overall
> products! Aren't we l33t?

I think the problem with guestbook is that it is such a simple thing
that doesn't require a "developer-group" to work on. But then each
individual has different views of what is important in a guestbook, so
working together here seems to be impossible. And as long as I can
compare and see which guestbook does what, I have no problem with that.
And this is what is not possible yet.

There should be a stricter criteria for an extension to get reviewed in
the first place, in two special cases: 1) If you submit an extension for
a purpose which is already covered by similar extensions in TER
(guestbook, shop-system etc), or 2) your extension extend other
extensions functionality.

In case of "common" extensions, I could imagine that the author have to
fill out a table (e.g. in Wiki) where he lists all features his
extension have (which features it doesn't!!). There should be one
"feature-table" for calendars, one for guestbooks, etc. Being in Wiki,
every author (or even users?) can contribute to the list of "potential
features" in this table so we (and the "reviewers" and even the authors
of the concurring extensions) can COMPARE which guestbook does what and
if the existence of an extension has its purpose or not. An extension
without purpose (feature list is the same as an older extension) can be
safely dropped.

Extensions that extend other extensions also need some special
information from the author to get reviewed: Why didn't the author works
with the original author? If original author is unreachable (say, for a
couple of months), it should be possible for him to "take over" the
project. "Taking over" projects should be made easier, as most
"guestbooks" are probably "done-once" jobs by the authors, which then
have little interest in continuing development.

> 5. Plus an extension that is completely in Italian and another one
> completely in German (that rating stuff also just dropped out).

Extensions that are to be published in typo3.org's TER should be
primarily in english, that's a big "+1" from me! Any extension that
doesn't have:

- name
- description
- documentation
- source-code (!!)

in english, should be immediately deleted.

Since we now can have mirrors, if the italian TYPO3-developers need the
italian-extensions, they could create its own TER repository.

> I know I can get rid of some by means of the security review (shhh, I
> don't tell which) but even doing a security review of that crap is
> wasting my time already. And reviewing is broken atm.

I once was asked by Sebastian Kurfuerst if I want to join the
sec-review-team, but haven't had an answer to my questions on how I
should do that. Where do I start?

Cheers,
Ernesto



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