[Owncloud] Migrating 3rd party apps into ownclouds github, repository

[Amgine]

(top-posting due to length of quote)

Dispersing 3rd-party apps is an anti-pattern for supporting future forks
of them, and causes a increase in content maintenance cost.

If you maintain a dump for community apps, listing them is automatable,
and the cost to document them, etc., is downloaded to the
community/their developers (and the expectation is many third-party apps
will not be maintained.)

If you do not, you will be expected to maintain links and minimal
documentation/teasers to third party apps which will, generally, be
stale/broken because you don't have the motivation to maintain them.

Such a decision is a hurdle to users and developers who must locate the
3rd party apps they wish to use/fork, and makes your site look like a
cobweb.

Amgine


On 28/02/13 06:05 AM, Jan-Christoph Borchardt <hey at jancborchardt.net> wrote:
> We had some discussion about a similar question at the developer meeting.
> This is only my personal opinion: Especially apps which are planned to not
> longer be maintained should not just be dumped in the owncloud/apps repo.
> No one will just pick them up or fix errors. If they are important to
> someone then they will go to your Github account, fork them and work on
> that.
>
> We shouldn?t use the owncloud/apps repo as a dump for community apps,
> actually every app should have their own repository. It?s a big mess to
> have multiple apps in one repo, issue tracker etc. where all the commits
> are mixed. Working via pull requests to manage contributions is much better
> than cleaning up possible mess afterwards. Everyone can easily use their
> own Github account or whatever development platform of choice and put the
> apps up at apps.owncloud.com
>
> So as an answer, just put the apps in separate repos on your own Github
> account. Then put the address in the description of the app with a note
> that you won?t maintain them any longer and if anyone wants to pick them up
> they can fork your repo.
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 11:13 PM, Christian Reiner <
> foss at christian-reiner.info> wrote:
>
>> > Hi all,
>> > during the last month I wrote a few simple apps which are published on the
>> > app
>> > store. Despite quite some positive feedback, constructive suggestions and
>> > helpful assistance in tracking down bugs I failed interest anyone into
>> > contributing to the apps themselves. This means I ran a one man show over
>> > the
>> > last month. Unfortunately I have to accept the fact that maintaining those
>> > apps simply takes too much of my time. I have other ongoing projects, some
>> > of
>> > those being more important for me personally. But since aparently there are
>> > many users of the apps out there and they appear to draw attention I think
>> > it
>> > might make sense to keep them alive.
>> >
>> > Community interest asumed I suggest to transfer the apps in their current
>> > state from my own subversion repository into ownClouds github repositories.
>> > That way at least bugfixes could be done where and when required. The last
>> > step I contributed was to migrate the apps to be usable under the upcoming
>> > OC
>> > version 5. Aparently that is done, the apps 'Shorty', 'Shorty Tracking' and
>> > 'Imprint' can be installed and used likewise under OC-4.0, OC4.5 and OC-5
>> > as
>> > far as I can say. In my eyes this means that *now* is a good time for a
>> > migration.
>> >
>> > My questions:
>> > 1.) is there interest to accept the apps (in a community like sense)?
>> > 2.) maybe there is someone who volunteers to take (temporary)
>> > maintainership?
>> > 3.) where should the apps be imported to and how? (Sorry, I don't know
>> > git...)
>> > 4.) maybe someone volunteers to give me a hand in that migration to prevent
>> > serious damages to the ownCloud repositories?
>> > 5.) obviously also alternative suggestions are welcome
>> > 6.) as well as any form of constructive feedback ;-)
>> >
>> > --
>> > Christian Reiner (arkascha)
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Owncloud mailing list
>> > Owncloud at kde.org
>> > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/owncloud
>> >

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