In Groovy and Grails

Status update – the plugins hanging around my neck!

Posted by: on Apr 22, 2009 | 5 Comments

I’m extremely busy at the moment with work projects, and this has meant I’ve got a backlog of Grails plugin updates to tackle.

There’s a number of tweaks to Navigation Plugin, improvements and fixes for Functional Testing (G-Func), as well as some bug fixes for the Authentication plugin.

I’m not sure when I will get time to do these, but they are on my radar. Sadly one has to earn money and plugins don’t generate any (directly). I really want to work on these things but you know how it goes. Good will doesn’t pay the bills!

I was toying with the idea of “crowd-funding” updates to plugins, for specific iterations of plugins that users are willing to pay small sums for in order to get it turned out quicker. I think the model could work… eg 100 people pay $10 to get a new iteration of G-Func released. It could be a new model for open source..

The tools for collecting crowd-funding revenue are already out there for fundraising projects.

Anyway I hope to knock out a new nav plugin iteration in the next week or so, ditto for G-Func. I just can’t promise it :(

5 Comments

  1. Søren Berg Glasius
    April 22, 2009

    Hi Marc,

    I think the idea of getting paid to do a piece of work is more than fair! And I like the idea of donations – that way it’s free to people if they want to pay, and it’s up to you (and your conscience) when to get the job done.

    So keep up the gr8 work, and I might pitch in too :-)

    /Søren

    Reply
  2. Matt Passell
    April 22, 2009

    I like your idea, too. The only problem is that you first need to write a donation plugin. ;)

    –Matt

    Reply
  3. Patrick Haggood
    April 23, 2009

    > you first need to write a donation plugin

    Or just use the existing paypal plugin – http://www.grails.org/PayPal+Plugin

    Reply
  4. Paul Wallace
    April 23, 2009

    Hi Marc,

    In case you have not see this -> http://www.atlassian.com/starter/

    Fantastic software, a noble cause.

    BTW, I sent you an e-mail but it came back undelivered with error:

    : data format error. Command output: marc: Mailbox does not
    exist

    Reply
  5. Raphael Miranda
    April 23, 2009

    I support you’re idea and would support such model too. A bounty system would certainly heat things up in the plugin dev scene.

    Lol @Matt.

    Reply

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