[development] module duplication in Drupal contrib

[Dave Cohen]

On Wednesday 19 March 2008, Greg Knaddison - GVS wrote:

> "Modules that duplicate functionality available from an existing
> module are damaging to the Drupal project."

Refute:

All these linux distributions duplicate functionality and this is damaging to 
the progress of linux.  Imagine how much further along it would be if we all 
embraced Slackware from the beginning.

Likewise MySQL.  What a waste of effort,  considering Postgres was already 
mature when it was released.

True story... The first module I contributed to Drupal is tac_lite.  I had to 
jump through hoops to get a CVS account, because my proposed module had 
features in common with Taxonomy Access Control (TAC), but I felt the modules 
worked differently enough that they should not be merged.  Had I been denied 
the CVS access, I would have continued using tac_lite but never shared it.  I 
would not have contributed to TAC, since my goal was to simplify rather than 
add features.  And had I been snubbed back then, I may not have gone on to 
contribute more modules.  (You can debate whether that's a pro or con.  ;)

I strongly believe more modules and themes is better.  Although we need better 
ways to rank and search them.  I'm surprised noone's made drupalmodules.com 
yet.

-Dave