Kickstarter-like campaign for incorporating extension functionality?

[snupy]

There have been a few interesting threads regarding extensions lately. One of the topics discussed is if SW could/should incorporate the functionality of certain extensions (generally by coding it themselves rather than incorporating the extension original code). As many other users, I believe the answer to be yes.

As far as I have seen, the main problem seems to be that incorporating extensions functionality risks to be investing many coding hours without sufficient economical return. For this reason, I wonder if a kickstarter-like model where some functionality is going to be incorporated (and maintained obvs) by SW provided that a certain level of funding is reached could be viable.

I would be interested in opinions about this by both SW and fellow users. I can already think of a couple of potential issues.

- FG is not subscription based, and I believe we all want it to stay that way. General development of FG should not become paywalled, but imho there is space for a kickstarter format for more specific/niche features.

- The developing team at SW is pretty small I think. Funded development of niche features could risk delaying the not funded more general development.

- It is healthy to have external developers working on FG extensions, so SW would need not to step on their toes.

There are probably other issues which I am not seeing. Still, I believe that, if carefully approached, the system could work. How does the community feel about this? Would SW be willing to consider something like this?

[Laerun]

There have been a few interesting threads regarding extensions lately. One of the topics discussed is if SW could/should incorporate the functionality of certain extensions (generally by coding it themselves rather than incorporating the extension original code). As many other users, I believe the answer to be yes.

As far as I have seen, the main problem seems to be that incorporating extensions functionality risks to be investing many coding hours without sufficient economical return. For this reason, I wonder if a kickstarter-like model where some functionality is going to be incorporated (and maintained obvs) by SW provided that a certain level of funding is reached could be viable.

I would be interested in opinions about this by both SW and fellow users. I can already think of a couple of potential issues.

- FG is not subscription based, and I believe we all want it to stay that way. General development of FG should not become paywalled, but imho there is space for a kickstarter format for more specific/niche features.

- The developing team at SW is pretty small I think. Funded development of niche features could risk delaying the not funded more general development.

- It is healthy to have external developers working on FG extensions, so SW would need not to step on their toes.

There are probably other issues which I am not seeing. Still, I believe that, if carefully approached, the system could work. How does the community feel about this? Would SW be willing to consider something like this?

I like where you are going with this.
Potentially make a top 3-5 to include and go for it, as long as the original extension authors are able to sign away their code.

[Atua]

I like this idea too, seems that it may work

[Egheal]

I'd find it annoying to have official features that would be considered premium, i.e. not usable by everyone.
Especially with features that should already be integrated like Auras for D&D or better-looking character sheets (Big Portraits extension).
I'd certainly pay for them to be integrated via a kickstarter, but only if they become free for all users thereafter (considering kickstarter participants as benefactors of sorts, I suppose...).

[snupy]

I'd find it annoying to have official features that would be considered premium, i.e. not usable by everyone.
Especially with features that should already be integrated like Auras for D&D or better-looking character sheets (Big Portraits extension).
I'd certainly pay for them to be integrated via a kickstarter, but only if they become free for all users thereafter (considering kickstarter participants as benefactors of sorts, I suppose...).

I didn't make it clear in the initial post, but what I had in mind is exactly what you wrote: once developed, features are available to all users, not just the ones who participated to the kickstarter.

I also agree that some functionality should really be integrated without any need for a kickstarter, but that's a separate topic.

[anstett]

From what I see some of the reason extensions are not integrated by SW that many people use is a question of contract work and copyright.

If you develop an extension that fulfills what you see as a need in the system (using Auras as an example) most casual developers will write the code to match the ruleset they most often use, they will cobble together what works for them (Ruin has made this point several times) and leave it at that.

They are effectively not being paid by anyone, the small amounts made on the Forge are not going to even pay for someone's time of coding, and they likely do not do much of any notification about Creative Commons release. Smiteworks is a professional company designing code to be efficient to update and expand to use with hundreds of rulesets. They could (I would argue should) take such ideas as Auras and add them to the roadmap for integration into the core coding for all rulesets to take advantage of.

One way is to pay the community developer like a contract worker: build this bit of code to our standard, release all ownership to SW, and it get added to the code base. Many more detailed problems with that way of doing things including taking one of your current employees off of developing things and putting them on QA.

A good compromise is to have a space for updated code to be shared for any developer who wants to build extensions to test their code against the new updated code set about to be released. This gives the community the chance to develop what they want the way they want with almost no restriction and not offload the QA onto SW few employees.

Hmmmm, if only there was a space in the forums for that to happen......

[SilentRuin]

Some obvious problems with this...

A kickstarter with the goal for general adaptation of extensions at large?

What is the contract to fulfill the Kickstarter? What is "good enough" on extensions implemented? How do you address the extensions copyright safely and legally when its an unspecific set of goals for an unspecific set of extensions which all differ? While some of us are happy to kick our extensions to SW (me) - what about those who don't "play" their extensions but make them to sell? Who decides who gets the money and when and if there is any division?

I see so many legal dangerous morass of things in this unspecific general "lets get SW to take over extensions" that it does not seem practical to actually apply.

Gist being - great thought - interesting approach - but to unspecific with lack of details to actually solve the issue. The only real solution is if you could increase SW year to year revenue to point they could expand their developer base with permanent new hires - and that is not something solvable by an open ended unclear Kickstarter.

Just warning that this is not a simple solution. The reason extension support is a mess is not because SW won't take them over - its because they can't afford to take them over and in a lot of cases are such twisted pieces of code developed over time that not even the authors (if they are still around) know what was hacked together and spliced in to "make them work" release to release.

The ideas I've read on shared FORGE ownership of deliveries (there can only be one right now) or some approval process to easily switch owners of a FORGE output is by far the more practical solution. No money - not forced maintenance by SW - pure community driven. As soon as money comes into the picture it makes things dangerous for companies entering into an agreement without iron clad contracts and copyright statements.

IMHO only.

[snupy]

Some obvious problems with this...

A kickstarter with the goal for general adaptation of extensions at large?

What is the contract to fulfill the Kickstarter? What is "good enough" on extensions implemented? How do you address the extensions copyright safely and legally when its an unspecific set of goals for an unspecific set of extensions which all differ? While some of us are happy to kick our extensions to SW (me) - what about those who don't "play" their extensions but make them to sell? Who decides who gets the money and when and if there is any division?

I see so many legal dangerous morass of things in this unspecific general "lets get SW to take over extensions" that it does not seem practical to actually apply.

Gist being - great thought - interesting approach - but to unspecific with lack of details to actually solve the issue. The only real solution is if you could increase SW year to year revenue to point they could expand their developer base with permanent new hires - and that is not something solvable by an open ended unclear Kickstarter.

Just warning that this is not a simple solution. The reason extension support is a mess is not because SW won't take them over - its because they can't afford to take them over and in a lot of cases are such twisted pieces of code developed over time that not even the authors (if they are still around) know what was hacked together and spliced in to "make them work" release to release.

The ideas I've read on shared FORGE ownership of deliveries (there can only be one right now) or some approval process to easily switch owners of a FORGE output is by far the more practical solution. No money - not forced maintenance by SW - pure community driven. As soon as money comes into the picture it makes things dangerous for companies entering into an agreement without iron clad contracts and copyright statements.

IMHO only.

Relatively unspecific goals and what is good enough are excellent points, but I think you could make them for every kickstart. I don't think there is much besides trust, good faith and communication which can be done about it.

But for your main point: what I was proposing is for SW to independently develop certain specific functionality, which may happen to be implemented in some extensions, not to use the original extension code. Being able, say, to apply an effect when an attack hits is certainly not something which can be copyrighted, so there would be no copyright or legal problems (by the way, this is an example of something I think should just be in FG without requiring a kickstart).

Of course, adapting the original code if the extension author is happy to do that (and the code is up to par), or sub-contracting the job to the original extension author could be ways of doing it.

The problem would be for SW not to overly step on the toes of independent developers who sell their extensions - although the fact that a given software or extension may be made obsolete as the os or software evolve is something which cannot be entirely avoided and in fact routinely happens.