[Qgis-developer] plugins: what's next?

[Alessandro Pasotti]

2014-09-01 9:31 GMT+02:00 Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it>:
> Il 30/08/2014 18:55, Niccolò Marchi ha scritto:
>
>> about trying to optimize plugins through the merging of the similar ones. something
>> like having a package of more plugins related to a single topic (i.e. qProf +
>> ProfileTool + VogisProfilTool   or   all the CAD ones, etc).
>> in this way would be easier to concentrate single devs' efforts on a single plugin
>> instead of having more than one, and obviously it turns useful also for users not to
>> be lost among the hundreds already present.

The plugin website has two underused features that could be beneficial
to put some plugins in stronger evidence:
"featured"  flag and "score" (the "stars" coming from the voting
system plug the number of downloads weighted with the age of the
plugin, if I remember correctly).

The purpose of those "stars" and the "featured" flag was also to ease
the choice among a group of similar plugins.

The problem is that nobody took the time and responsibility to test
and examine all old and new plugins and to flag them.
Any comment or proposal in order to make this classification better
would be welcome.

Comments on plugins would maybe also help, see what happens with the
two biggest plugins markeplaces I know:
http://extensions.joomla.org/
https://wordpress.org/plugins/
Comments are often very useful (when the author doesn't offer a
discount for every positive review).

>>
>> does it make sense? may be hard to organise the working groups? or it may lead to a
>> heavier loading of the software?
>
> I personally would like this very much. However, it is a matter of plugin authors
> goodwill. Could you start finding a small group of plugins and try to convince their
> authors of the beauty of unification?


Good luck :)

Sorry for being a bit OT but about the benefits/problems of
cooperation and forking and other anti-patterns [1] affecting and
empowering the FOSS ecosystem I strongly suggest this amazing video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pOxlazS3zs (be sure to watch it until the end)


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern#Software_engineering
and, in particular:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here#In_computing
-- 
Alessandro Pasotti
w3:   www.itopen.it