Premium or certified modules overview

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Boris Mann's picture

This is a cross-post from the development list. Share your own list of install profiles and/or modules you can't live without.

On 15-May-06, at 5:30 PM, Karthik wrote:

Premium modules are those that are:

a) release-critical - A new version of Drupal cannot be released
unless these are up-to-date.

Not going to happen. We have to decouple contrib from core, otherwise we create an expectation that that entire universe of modules will be carried along by us, the developers, automatically....a kind of tragedy of the commons, where the expectation will be set without necessarily any support.

If you DO want to have a release critical aspect, then make a distribution, as CivicSpace does.

b) quality controlled - these will be 'core modules' in all but name.
c) well maintained - HEAD, current release and previous release should
all be maintained preferably by a number of maintainers.

This are not controlled in any way by the Drupal community. Pretty much, economic factors will determine this (I spoke about this at length with David Geilhufe of CivicSpace the other day). I think we can get there by each publicly supporting (code or financial) which modules we (as individuals, dev shops, consultants, etc.) believe to be critical and need to be of consistently high quality.

For what it's worth, here's what we're thinking for a "Drupal Base"
* core
* views
* viewfeed
* image
* img_assist
* tinymce

I think this is a useful discussion in getting peoples' views on modules (albeit somewhat non-development), so below are my notes on your list. -1 indicates I don't believe it's ready to be a premium module today, +1 indicates I think it should be a premium module.

actions

-1. Evolving. Lots of interesting functionality, perhaps part of a higher end "big enterprise" set of use cases.

casetracker

-1. Evolving, not quite there yet.

cck

+1. More complex use cases. Don't necessarily want to overuse this in contrast to, e.g., page, blog, event, image.

ecommerce

+1. Specific use cases. Good candidate for a Drupal Ecom install profile.

event

+1. Needs refactoring -- turn it into a calendar "view" to display CCK and event-enabled content.

flexi*

-1. I understand that lots of people have used this in the past. CCK is the clear path forward, I for one am uninterested

i18n

+1. Should be headed towards core and/or a Drupal i18n install profile.

image

+1. Move image.inc into core, have image.module be somewhat minimal.

og

+1. It already is a premium module, modulo some of its recent very rapid development which has led to some instability.

project

Neutral. I understand its supreme importance for drupal.org, I have seen little evidence of use outside of drupal.org.

sections (when it is done)

-1. Has this ever had an official release? taxonomy_theme seems like a very good, robust solution here.

subscription

Neutral. I'm still unhappy with what is happening here.

trackback

-1. Can we say spam? Appropriate for a Drupal for Bloggers install profile.

views

+1. Fast track for core for some components. It already is a premium module.

voting api

Neutral. Good functionality

Comments

but I thought Dries said...

drob's picture

Last night on [Dev] -

We've discussed this a dozen times -- like most of the things we're talking about nowadays. We'll use "usage patterns" to determine what the important modules are. Automatically sorting modules by popularity is something we're working on. Clearly, this will save us a lot of trouble. ;)

Followup

Boris Mann's picture

See the followup from Dries where he agrees with my "ratings". It's not a matter of usage patterns, it's a matter of the actual quality of code and whether there currently are people supporting it.

I cross-posted here so that people not on the dev list could see it.

Ahhhh

drob's picture

I didn't read that far. So where are we going to vote???

No voting

Boris Mann's picture

Sorry, I'm still not being clear. There is no such thing as premium/certified modules. If you want your module to be premium/certified, then spend time supporting and improving it

The list I posted was my view of the current use cases/functionality combined with my perception of the support level/code quality.

I didn't (for example) list the survey module. I think it's functionality that is needed/desired, but we haven't spent enough time improving/supporting it for it to be considered in any way premium.

So, the challenge....pick the modules you want to stick around and/or grow and thrive, and spend some time (or money) improving and supporting them (not just using them).

From this, we may eventually evolve other systems -- e.g. require that unit tests or other supporting structures are put in place for the module to be considered premium.

lol

drob's picture

then not much sense talking about this - nothing's changed. I thought I saw Dries give a +1 to the idea of actually creating a category of "class 1" modules. Funny how after every release we have the same conversations... :)

Is voting really such a bad idea?

Max Bell's picture

I don't see that it could really hurt to throw together a survey and find out who's using what. I'd like to know how what I use compares to what anyone else uses. The same effort could as easily call attention to whats out there that's not getting the support it deserves (or needs, if people use it frequently enough).

Phone home

Boris Mann's picture

Drupal 4.7 now has "phone home" capability in the Drupal module. By turning it on in your sites, it sends info back to Drupal.org, so we have real statistics based on actual usage.

Again, what I posted was my view on the relative quality of modules. Feel free to post your own list. Premium modules are not driven by what people use, but by how well maintained they are and how well they are coded. The only way to make a module premium is to make it better. This doesn't mean everyone has to code, but if you're not developing, then you're paying someone else to maintain it for you.

If you intend to make a particular module premium, stand up and say so, and then do things like:
* write simple unit tests for it
* document it well
* make sure it complies with coding standards
* have it peer reviewed for security and other issues
* respond promptly to issues/bug reports

Hope that's clear...

Cool. First the NSA, now Drupal...

Max Bell's picture

Seriously, though; I wasn't aware that such a feature was available -- are the statistics available publicly?

I completely take your point, though. I just fixated in on availability rather than the quality of development aspect so much.

Available

Boris Mann's picture

The stats will be posted on Drupal.org. 4.7 just got released, and I don't think there is even a write up / promotion saying stuff like "please turn on this feature so we can find out more about how people are using Drupal". It is off by default....just like the NSA :P