[wp-hackers] Redactor WYSIWYG Editor for WP

[Mike Schinkel]

On Aug 2, 2012, at 7:56 PM, Stas Sușcov wrote:
>> Because this list is for WordPress developers, not for Drupal developers or developers of other CMS/blogging engines.  I don't think asking if the Drupal community would do something to benefit WordPress users would make much sense on this list, do you?  Would you go to the Romanian parliament and ask them if the Hungary, Serbia and Moldavia parliaments would be willing to do something for the benefit of the Romanian people?  Maybe, but I doubt the answers you'd get would be very authoritative.
> 
> Apparently I was misunderstood, and somebody took this personal.

I didn't take it personal, I took that you were not understanding that my *asking* the question was completely appropriate.  Remember, you told me the question was "unfair."

> You question was addressing WordPress community like this is exclusively one man's problem, and its not.

No, I did not address it as it it was one man's problem.  If everything in the world where viewed this way then no progress would ever be made because the benefits that result from efforts are (almost?) never evenly distributed amongst those who contributed.  Is Tim Berner's Lee the richest man on the Internet?

Instead I asked a question to determine if the benefit of the software was worth enough to the WordPress team to make sure it happens.

As an example, assume my family lives on a dirt road with 5 other families.  Let's assume we speak to the local government and they say they will not pay to pave the street but that if we want to pay for it they will. 
Let's say we decide it is very important to us to see the road paved. We could choose to:

1.) Go to each of the other families and spend a lot of time to convince them to pay for 1/5th of the road.
OR
2.) We could decide to pay for it ALL ourselves EVEN though the other families would benefit. 

#1 would be more "fair" in your view, but it might be a LOT more hassle and might result in it never happening and might even result in bad relations between neighbors if some are willing to pay and others are not. Plus it would certainly take a lot more time to achieve #1.

So depending on the cost and how it compares to our family's net worth and cash flow and how badly we want it it might be much easier to just pay for it ourselves even though others would benefit it.

This type of question is a completely valid question to ask in business, in families and in communities like WordPress.  

So the unstated assumption in my question was "Would this have enough value to the WordPress by itself for the WordPress community to do it without the hassle of trying to convince other communities to do the same?"  There is nothing "unfair" about that question, it was a simple, rational, amoral question. And, since I've asked I do believe the answer was" "No, it wouldn't be worth it for the WordPress community alone to make it work." So I know have more information on which to make decisions.

> To explain this as in your answer, if it were crisis in Europe, I would start searching solutions in my own country, but also ask around for help.

If you were running a country in Europe and you had a problem FOR WHICH AN EASY SOLUTION exists even if it would help others, you would be foolish to go through all the effort to try to get other countries to all agree because you would be wasting effort that would not be needed to just make it happen for your citizens.  

Of course if the problem is hard or is too expensive, then yes you can go ask others to help.  But the first step is to ask the question:  Is this a problem for which the cost of fixing it is less painful than the cost to recruit others to help. Not asking the question is to potentially eliminate the best option. That was ALL my question was meant to determine.

-Mike