[development] Can cash for views/cck help speed Drupal 6 adoption?

[Robert Douglass]

Here's my take on the situation. There isn't very much really good 
in-depth writing about Views from the smart developer's standpoint. I'm 
not talking about how to do Views integration with your module, which is 
pretty well understood. There's a little more out there for CCK, and 
that might be one of the reasons more people feel equipped to develop 
CCK. CCK has already been around longer, and was the result of much more 
collaboration from the onset. These are just historical observations.

Where money might really make a difference in the long run would be to 
hire someone smart to really dive into Views 2 and write about how it 
works. The whole Views developer ecosystem is focused on "providing 
views integration with X" and lots of people can now do this. It's a 
different matter altogether, though, when it comes to understanding how 
it works in the back end.

-Robert

Earl Miles wrote:
> Steve Dondley wrote:
>> 1) CCK and Views modules conversion to Drupal 6 is far behind.
>
> Depends what you mean by behind. I had a commitment to Panels before I 
> had a commitment to Views 2, and it's not feasible to work seriously 
> on both simultaneously. Once Panels 2 hit beta, Views 2 work started 
> picking back up. That was less than a month ago.
>
>> 4) CCK and Views module conversion is slow because they are complex
>> modules done in people's spare time.
>
> I spend a lot of sponsored time on Views 2. CCK is more spare time, 
> but there is a bigger group working on CCK and they had a 4 month head 
> start on me.
>
>> 5) Paying experienced drupal coders to work on these project will
>> speed development of these modules.
>
> The main problem I see is getting developers up to speed. It requires 
> my resources to teach people what I want them to do. That said, I can 
> still use the help of a couple of really good devs, but I don't have 
> time for devs who aren't already very familiar with Views. And I can 
> count on my hands the number of devs I've spoken to who qualify, and I 
> can count on my head the number of those devs who have time to commit 
> to it (and that's with or without a monetary incentive).
>
>> 6) Firms that build websites using Drupal have an interest in rolling
>> out newer and better versions of Drupal so they remain competitive.
>> 7) These firms have cash to pay experienced Drupal coders.
>> 8) It would be wise to have these firms pool money together to help
>> speed the development of Views and CCK.
>
> PingVision offered, but I think they were expecting me to be more 
> proactive about assembling resources. Unfortunately, one thing I am 
> not is a good project manager -- I find it distracting and difficult 
> to try to manage developers when what I really want to do is have my 
> head deep in code, coming up with solutions.
>