[dev] Release plan

[Chuck Hagenbuch]

Quoting Duck <duck at obala.net>:

> I agree with cleaning API and concerting on bugfixes. What I miss in
> update of the online Help too. There are too many features, that an average
> user don't even know that exists and in the outdated help aren't explained.

This should be part of updating the documentation, and is something we 
need help
with from users and translators as well.

> I general I miss applications feature list on horde web page too. Oky 
> horde is
> well known for its imp module, but that are many framework functionalities
> and applications that are useful and on the pages are bad or not explained.

This is on the radar of the developers for after the main release, but 
again, we
really could use help with this.

> Another problem is the bounties management. Oky. I don't know how 
> this part in
> internally managed and of course on one works full time on Horde, but is the
> main problem is that is not defined that if the company sponsor a bounty it
> never knows when it would be implemented. An this for a company that makes
> planes, is a big problem. Is not a matter of time or bounty values, just a
> problem of planing a company project. I don't know hot to deal with this
> issue but I think if we solve this in one or another way, that the project
> would receive more bounty sponsorship.

This is how this kind of thing works, though. Someone who needs a more 
definite
timeframe needs a more official consulting/contract relationship - which
they're welcome to contact the consulting address about.

I guess we could try to provide an option for the bounties for time 
period, but
then we'd have to manage it, enforce it, etc... the great thing about the
system as it is now is that the core team has to do *very* little work to keep
it all running.

> Maybe would not be an bad idea to allow some programers which created
> comercial product/modules based on Horde to offer itd directly at horde.org.
> So we have still the actual modules in OS plus someone that are not free (or
> only the litter versions are free). Of course, every copy sold, shoud return
> an percentage to the horde project/team.

Again, the downside to this seems to be work for the core developers - who
should be developing, documenting, all that - in maintaining this. If someone
wanted to volunteer to run it, I don't have any moral opposition to it. Though
I might want to pick ideas for things to implement in truly open applications;
I like the "get paid to write open source code" model much more, personally.

> I would give a pratical example. I writed some modules with Horde (I can send
> screenshots).  One is an articele managment sistem with multilingual and
> multiversion support. And the other is an Mapserver frontend to display GIS
> data (with features like adding points, configrable layers attributes...).

Sounds great - but again, I'd prefer to hack on them and have you make money
installing/customizing/supporting them. :)

> I think that this relationsip is not so difficult to addopt. And both sides
> would get benefit. Denvelopers that sold their poroduct based on horde. And
> Horde project/team with financial stimulation and patches/contrbutions that
> the other denvelopers will produce with their work.

I'd be curious if there's anyone else out there (well, on this list at least)
who's in a similar situation. People writing custom apps don't contact us very
often, I'm guessing, unless they really want the code integrated into the
project; I would be interested in changing that, though less so for non-open
source apps.

-chuck

-- 
"But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy." - John 
Quincy Adams