Open Source & Community Contribution

[gregsohl]

If you would open source the UI portion of your code (along with migration tools, Admin tools, etc) and create an API layer that is clear and documented, people like me would fix bugs and make enhancements for you and send changesets to you.

Keep the core in a nice obfuscated set of DLLs. Expose an API on top. Open up the source around the edges.

Just an idea.

Greg

[manu]

Hello Greg,

it's a really good idea but developing a regular API or a REST API takes a lot of time and resources, the idea of open sourcing the plugins and importers is on the table since time ago.

If we find a spot to develop the API I'm sure we will do, until then the only path is the command line (most of the plugins are using the command line, Jetbrains, eclipse...)

Regarding open sourcing the plugins, we are still jealous about opening them, some of the plugins such as the VS package are really powerful, even better than the TFS one. This is a topic we have to discuss internally.

Anyway thank you very much for the suggestion, we have it in our minds.

[gregsohl]

Thanks Manuel. Sorry to hear the visible API layer isn't built into the base architecture. Would make it easier for you (and others) to build new clients on top. Seems like a big architecture miss, speaking as a solution architect myself.

I would encourage you to keep secret areas of distinctive value and were challenging to implement. There are key things about Plastic that make it rise to the top of the heap. Those are your value. Other innovative visible things will get copied anyway - without the source. There are many clever programmers out there.

Keep up the good work.

Greg

[Soho]

I strongly concur that it would be of great benefit to most users if you opened up some of your modules.

I had brought up this point a couple of times.

There are several benefits.

First of all you are a relatively small and busy company with the ambition of supporting a lot of Platforms and third part integration. Something that is very hard to keep up with. For example, we use TeamCity and lately we have had quite a few issues where the Plastic plugin has barked at us with null reference exceptions and similar non-informative messages. We do get a stack trace so if we had access to the source we could have diagnosed the issue our selves and possibly even make a patch.

If you left third part integration to the community you should gain time to focus on your core engine.

Second, the community would likely develop third-part integration and utilities that you would never have thought of or have the time to create. After all you are in a very special branch of the software family, you make tools for developers. Developers who have the skills and sometimes motivation to build on top of what you provide. Making it possible to extend plugins and third-part integration would lift Plastic from great to awesome.

I understand that you want to keep a few secrets, but I think there is a lot to win if you concentrated your focus on the core parts of Plastic and let the community build the integration.