[development] CVS Approval Policy: was Re: new features in D6 core?

[Adam Gregory]

"This calls for the set up of an "incubator" repository, where modules
can mature and stabilize before getting into the "mainstream"
repository. Projects could be promoted from the incubator to the
mainstream repository via a review process."

I think the problem with that is who is going to be in charge of reviewing
all these modules. Has anyone looked at the issue queues on d.o? Those alone
are full of unresolved issues, even in some of the most used modules and
core for that matter. It's not like there is a full time staff of reviewers
to look over modules and decide if they are good enough.

Not to mention the fact that let's be honest even the most seasoned and
smart developers out there simply do not have all the knowledge about all
the different modules and their functionality to make a sound decision about
what is and isn't a duplicate. Are we going to expect people to set up test
installs of the modules just to make sure that one is really different from
the other? It's just unrealistic to expect that adding more management work
to a community of volunteers is really going to solve this "problem".

And on that note, is it really a problem? Wordpress has 7,308 plugins,
Joomla has 3651, and we've got roughly 5090(which I had to calculate using
the page #'s because we unlike the aforementioned products don't highlight
the # of contributions). If you've ever used either of those other two
systems then you know that the problem is relegated to Drupal, they both
have the same problem with low quality and duplicate contributions. Heck on
WP I searched for Google Analytics and got roughly 80 results. On our site
with the same search I got 14. Now either our search is way better at
filtering out junk (which it is, but I doubt thats the issue), or maybe this
isn't as big a problem as we think. Imean half the results for GA on d.o
weren't actuall tracking mods, but just things like Ubercart or IMCE that in
some way mention GA.

I understand that we want to keep the module area clean, and we don't want
to have a bunch of junk downoads cluttering it up. I agree that adding a
rrating system (Fivestar) to contrib stuff would be a great idea. But I
think in the end trying to administer the submission process to death, will
do just that, kill contributions. We are an open source project, that means
that sometimes we are going to get some junk code and some duplicates, but
that's what makes OS great, is that people can code things the way the want
and then share that code with others. If we make it more difficult for
people to contribute then how is that serving the Drupal project?
-----
Adam A. Gregory
Blog: AdamAGregory.com
Twitter: twitter.com/adamgregory
Skype: aagregory2
Cell: 706.761.7375
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