Funding plugin dev

It might be a good idea to start a fund/get donations to develop some of these plugin ideas. I, for one, would be willing to fund some plugins but I need a repository of ideas that I can look through.

I'd like to see:

  1. plugin desc: what does the new plugin aim to do? The plugin dev or nominator should create this and pitch it to the community.
  2. popularity: how many people want this plugin? A voting or rating system would do the trick.
  3. cost: how much funding is needed? Maybe a progress bar could even show how far we've come along in terms of getting 100% of the amount.
  4. time estimate: how long would the plugin dev take?

Considerations:

  1. Would people send funds to a PayPal account or just pledge the money without paying anything until the 100% mark is reached? If the former, how can this be refunded? Would an expiration date help solve this? For example X amount must be raised by X time. If not, all paid money will be refunded.
  2. Can the developer take donations or charge for the plugin?
  3. Are there minimum or maximum donations?
  4. Could we host this elsewhere? We all know the pains of having to search for plugins here on Elgg or having discussions about them (eg, notifications on topics, not groups)... might another solution be better?

I'd like to see more growth here on Elgg but it's obvious that there aren't enough good devs out there. We support them already by giving them feedback, suggestions, even thanks but sometimes they just don't have the time to give back to the community because they have paid work to do. Might paying them help?

I see a number of existing plugins that are good but could be even better, however, I'm quite sure that the dev can't add features or integrate the plugin better because of lack of time.

Your thoughts?

  • abandoned

    Btw, I have no idea what this "friendpicker" is that has been alluded to twice. Can someone please link or elaborate?

  • I would always applaud the approach from developer (who have to make a living) posting a basic plugin and having a commercial version... I tried Vazcos GMap plugin, liked it bought the commercial one, like that too (in spite of a few shortcomings) and am in discussion about some additional work to it for additional features... a good model I think.  If anyone is interested in sharing the development costs for this... let me know.

    Other things I would like to see is Event calendar evolution to make that even more interesting and useful... moving to a version 1 rather than a 0.x beta...

    Groups and Forms could get similar treatment too...

    I'll pledge $20 towads each of the calendar, groups and forms plugins as a start.

  • Anna - http://community.elgg.org/mod/notifications/, section "Notifications per user" - nobody can show 8bit letters in letter-selector, they all shown as *, Picker also used on creating friend's collections (can't recall URL and can't find fast)

  • I'd rather pay a developer directly, someone who's making a business out of writing code, then have this democratic/communistic attitude that Anna is expressing - let's all put our money in one pot and then distribute it to the developers.  As for the past and Elgg, it was very popular too.  Anna just hadn't gotten on the internet yet to find out about it.  LOLZ.  Snotty attitudes don't encourage anyone to donate to anything.  I don't trust someone with these expressed attitudes, anymore than I do the next commy.

  • Dhrup, you are wrong somehow

    With correct HTML I get correct result

    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"&gt;
    <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="ru" lang="ru">
    <head>
    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; UTF-8" />
    <meta http-equiv="content-language" content="ru" />
     <BODY>
      <?php
    echo "<pre>";
    echo "\n....+....1....+....2....+....3";
    echo "\nIñtërnâtiônàlizætiøn";
    echo "\n....+....1....+....2....+....3";
    echo "\n",strlen("Iñtërnâtiônàlizætiøn");
    echo "\n</pre>";
    ?>
     </BODY>
    </HTML>

     

    ....+....1....+....2....+....3
    IУБtУЋrnУЂtiУДnУ lizУІtiУИn
    ....+....1....+....2....+....3
    27

    You can see your test on my testpage.
    If I'll replace langcode for any EastEuropean - I'll get accented text for this country. It's Unicode, bro!

  • Everyone, please let's keep this thread on the topic of plugin development and stop with the ad hominem attacks.  There is never a cause to be rude.  Thanks.

  • Sorry Brett, I was gonna mssg Alex to move b/c became off-topic. I'm copying the extraneous material to a different, more aptly names post elsewhere. Then Alex and and I can come back here to delete the extra comments ;-)

  • Thanks...no need to delete the posts here...good for posterity as to how it got off track ;)

  • Mark, Yakiv and all,

    The challenge I have on my site, I beleive, is my "features desired" are headed in a different direction than most. Example; my biggest issue is getting the profile to act as a quasi public website for each user, with feedback for non logged in etc. . I fear I have some major code work required (maybe not) and few people looking for those same features as I. In other words, as features get more complex and custom, the view of extensions and possibilities widens out, making it tougher to find common needs, no? If I am correct, then getting what you need, that is truly custom, is going to be harder and more expensive, not easier and cheaper. These coders have to make a living and don't owe me a damn thing! I am afraid the tease is up front, but the goods are going to cost. The core work seems to be in great hands, so what's the issue? The issue is if you want to build something, you need to find the resources to get it built, typically that requires money. Finding people to co-op on funding seems like it will get harder and harder as sites head in vastly different directions.

    Just my thoughts...:)