I clearly see two different kind of developments.
In my view, the (group of) organisations that initiated the building of a
'component' could be the group to "vote" on bugfixes, adding functionality,
etc. Of course, in close cooperation with the developers community / MMC.
You could e.g. be asked to give a second opinion on every next development
step and have a veto-right. Everyone would still be free to use any other
poll available, but we would have a 'default' and upward compatible
MMBase-poll, build robust en generic, well documented, etc.
The first one can be seen as an MMBase project. This is functionality that 'the community' wants and will be supported by the community. Meaning that these applications should be tested for new releases and upward compatibility should be provided as good as possible. This mechanism of development is already used within the MMBase community. See projects like: database search project, media project, document project, etc.
The second area of development, are those that are done by a group of organisations / programmers that develop software, which is not initially supported by the developers community (otherwise it could be a mmbase project). Such applications can be called '3th party applications' and could be supported/hosted by the MMBase foundation. In this case the 3th party developers are in power of making decisions about their own application.
If organizations are developing 3th party applications they should be careful and make sure that they use well defined MMBase interfaces to ensure upwards compatibility with MMBase. Also if changes in the MMBase core are needed for a 3th party application, this change should be communicated well with the MMBase developers community. A little adaption could be integrated easily in the MMBase core (bug fix, or maybe a vote). If the adaption is bigger (such as the implementation of a workflow mechanism, or versioning) than it can be useful to start a separate MMBase project for the implementation of that part.
Gerard van Enk is working on a paper that clearly defines all different kind of software parts. Hopefully this will give more insight on how to cope with this.
I think i would be nice if the foundation can support external organization that wants make 3th party applications with cvs, mailing lists etc.The developers community would thus be able to concentrate on the core development.
The Foundation would like to discuss the issue with all parties involved. And of course examine the possibilities of hosting the MMBase-components (CVS, proposals for adding functionality, bugfixes, documentation, etc).
Greetings Rob
