[development] Duplicated modules

[arthur]

 From my perspective, one of the reasons why the question of  
duplication has been an issue lately is that the community of  
developers has grown dramatically in the last few years. For many of  
us, when we started working with drupal we basically knew every module  
that was in the CVS repo- I'm not sure this is even possible anymore.

I think that the question of duplication is maybe the wrong question-  
for me, I'd like to frame things more in the vein of "how do we help  
contrib modules have better apis, larger support base, and better  
functionality?". The Drupal Tough Love project I think is one aspect  
to how we do this- strong peer review can be a really good foundation  
to build upon. Secondly, I think we've seen groups of developers  
gathering around specific functionality  which has created at team  
people helping push contrib code toward core. I would like to see this  
model expanded- not specifically to push code toward core, but to  
address areas of functionality that need more coordination.

For example, myself, Aaron Winborn, Alex UA, Darrell O'Pry, Roger  
Lopez,  Drewish, Travist and a number of other folks have started a  
very active conversation of how to address the issue of rich media in  
drupal as a whole. While each of us maintains multiple projects, some  
of which very much duplicate aspects of one another's work, we are  
attempting to create a common set of tools which will enrich all of  
our projects.

We know there are going to be edge cases and duplication of effort  
here and there- this is completely fine- the point of our work,  
however, is to provide a common tool kit for developers who want to  
build off of the joint work and have better integration with the  
common code and each other's projects. We are actively trying to get  
as many developers on board with this project so that people who are  
currently doing work can plan for this functionality as well as help  
direct the project.

For me, I don't want to tell people what to do or how to work. I do  
however, want to help provide the tools and community that can help  
people develop high quality work that benefits the entire drupal  
community.

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arthur at 24b6.net


On Mar 10, 2009, at 10:24 PM, Andrew Berry wrote:

> On 10-Mar-09, at 6:41 PM, Morbus Iff wrote:
>
>> To some degree, chx and I already started that with  
>> DrupalToughLove.com.
>
> DTL looked to be very promising. I found the reviews done to be  
> practical in that even though they weren't my modules, they still  
> had good suggestions to apply elsewhere. I was disappointed not to  
> see more reviews. If you had a donation widget set up I think it  
> would get some use, especially if it allowed those donating to vote  
> on a module(s) to be reviewed.
>
> --Andrew