WordPress Openness (was Re: [wp-hackers] UI development for 1.6)

[Firas D.]

Matt Mullenweg wrote:

> Adding lanes to a highway doesn't make traffic any faster, and having 
> everybody and their brother mucking around directly with the core 
> would not make development any faster. (This is a separate issue from 
> having modules or sections that people take ownership for, which we 
> need to do more of.)


Good thinking, Matt---more delegation would solve a lot of the 
brick-wall-of-silence type issues people are coming up against.

I think a great example of what should be done is what the Mozilla 
project does. They have official core meetings and publish the minutes, 
mozillazine collects status reports from plugin authors, their 
representatives are always hashing issues out on one mailinglist or 
other--if you want to be 'in the know' about Mozilla, there are lots of 
places to go, with many decision makers always hanging on IRC. In fact, 
there's so much that most people would be fed up by the amount of 
information available long before they've finished reading the week's 
worth of info.

With wordpress, we have the svn log and 'scour everywhere for statements 
by matt'.

(Of course, they don't have the magnificent codex + forum resources that 
WP does.)

(Note also that I don't mean to suggest that organizing the developer 
community like that is solely Matt's responsibility.)

-- 
http://firasd.org