[development] Custom Theme Settings, Duplication, and Sandboxes

[FGM]

Hi all in this thread,

Just to clarify some points, which I think may be needed to spare some
anguish, seeing how the thread appears unduly long:
- When I saw this announcement, I was indeed surprised to see the
duplication, and checked the three issues mentioned by John but, alas, I
overlooked part of 54990 and thought he had not taken into account my remark
on that issue, that pointed to the module in my sandbox. My fault.
- I certainly do not attempt to deny anyone the idea of creating such a
project. Indeed on the page where I announce the themesettings module I had
in my sandbox, I explain rather clearly that it is just a "proof-of-concept"
module, until something appears in core (which I hoped for 5.0, seeing how
garland had its own settings mechanism, although done differently). So,
since this
- As John said, "we are all writing Open Source software", so I answered to
the announcement to point to potential duplication, as Earl Miles initially
remarked, not for a rights issue, as some others seem to have thought.
However, John apparently was aware of this existing module, and indeed uses
the same mechanism, in a much more developed code, in his function
themesettingsapi_form_alter, so apparently there is no duplication, just a
(very significant) functionality and packaging extension.
- In the end, I think I was a bit miffed to discover a module by the same
name as mine in the dev list, after the fact without any personal mail from
the author especially since we had indeed exchanged some emails five weeks
ago. So I think that to avoid similar problems for future occurences like
this, John's latest suggestion in this thread makes sense:

"Code duplication:
Perhaps it needs to be a requirement that module developer's announce their
project on this list BEFORE any code becomes public on the d.o website.
[...] perhaps just documenting it in the appropriate places in the handbook
would be enough."

As far as I'm concerned, that's all there is to it, and I'm now pointing
users of this sandbox module to his project (I know some exist, because I
had received mails about it), because this being a project, it is supposed
to be maintained and evolve, unlike a sandbox, which in this case fulfilled
what IMHO seems to be its role: show ideas until they become ready for prime
time. I'd actually have done it earlier if the module had been preannounced.

Frederic


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John" <drupal.user at albin.net>
To: <development at drupal.org>
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2007 10:16 AM
Subject: Re: [development] Custom Theme Settings


> On May 11, 2007, at 12:27 AM, FGM wrote:
> > Funny how you created a "themesettings" module that duplicates my own
> > "themesettings" module..
> >
> > Is it the same mechanism/code ?
>
> Federick, head on over to the Theme Settings project and take a look
> at the themesettingsapi.module code yourself: http://drupal.org/
> project/themesettings
>
> Also, look at the project home page under "About the Project" and
> you'll see I referenced issue #54990 where you announced your sandbox
> module.  It's not the same code, but even if it was... aren't we all
> writing Open Source software?  :-)
>
>   - John