MODx App Store or donating system to support MODx developers

I’m using MODx for developing websites for some years now and think it would be a nice idea to make some kind of MODx App Store to support the developers of MODx and its plugins.
I have had this idea for some time now, but this article reminded me of this idea.
http://speckyboy.com/2011/01/13/do-we-do-enough-to-support-wordpress-plugin-developers/

I think it is a good idea to donate a little money to make things happen.
To be honnest: I haven’t donated to MODx yet, shame on me! (17-01-11: I have now).
So I think it would be nice to have a place to post module/functionality requests and then let people donate money to make them happen.
It could work like this:

1. A person does a flickr integrating gallery request.
2. MODx developers repond to this request and the developer that can do it for the lowest cost gets the job, For instance $200.
3. Other people that also want this plugin made can donate what ever they like until the $200 is reached.
4. Then the developer builds the plugin.
5. Now all the people that donated to make this plugin happen and the developer get unlimmited licenses.

6. Every time an other person wants to use this plugin he has to pay $1 for a license.
This money will repay the donators that donated money to the exact amount that they donated.
When all the donators are paid back then the money that gets paid for licenses goes to the maintaining/adding functionality of this plugin or to the general development of MODx.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this!

Sorry for my bad English, haven’t had much practice lateley.

I think it would be nice for core or addon developers to put up a bounty of for example 200,- for a certain feature, and having people donating towards that.

I know there’s a site out there that allows just that, and on top of that is only does the payment (collecting and giving out) when a project is finished. That way a lot of people can contribute small pieces towards a goal without any risk.

Hey Mark, thats exactly what i want.
Can you give me the url to that website?

Something like ChipIn works: http://www.chipin.com/

This is a great idea and I’m all for anything that can be done to support developers.

I did want to mention, though, that in my experience recognition and appreciation are a lot more important than money when it comes to developers.

Most MODx users would be absolutely stunned at the amount of time it takes to create, support, and maintain a MODx add-on component like FormIt, Login, TinyMCE, CodeMirror, or getResources. Most people can sort of imagine the hours of code writing it might take (though they’re probably off by at least a factor of 10), but they forget about testing, improving, redesigning, tweaking, starting over from scratch, writing documentation and comments, creating and editing lexicon files for all messages and properties, updating for new versions of MODx, creating the build script, uploading the package to the repository, entering the information in the repo forms, etc. etc.

They also don’t realize that every non-trivial change to the add-on usually means updating the changelog, readme.txt, comments, online docs and tutorials, version number in multiple files, GitHub readme, build script, lexicon files, and repository info, etc. No one in his or her right mind is going to take that on for $200 or even $500, and someone doing it for the money alone isn’t going to be around very long.

Too often (and I’ve been guilty of this too), a new package comes out and two or three people say "Thanks, this is great," while dozens more say either, "Something’s wrong with this package, I can’t get it to work," or "This package is useless to me because it won’t do X."

I just wanted to take this opportunity to say a huge *THANK YOU* to all the developers whose hard work went into MODx itself and all the add-on components I use every day in MODX. We can’t say it enough.

BobRay, You are so right!
Recognition and appreciation are the only things that developers can get at this moment.
Most people are ungrateful or/and don’t have a clue what effort/dedication it takes to build/maintain MODx and its extensions.

My example wasn’t to realistic, I would pay much more for that.
If it would take $1000 to build such a extension, then I would be willing to pay $250 even if I wouldn’t get all my money paid back.

We could come up with some bounty system that works to make development more attractive and give all those hard working developers something back.

I really want to know what all other users and developers think about this.
If there is enough interest, and others want to work on this with me then we can do some research and make things happen.
Maybe we should have a poll

Hi all,

I thought about a system of that sort. Some « requesters » might work together to make a clear worksheet/workspec. Then they open a thread to know if any developer is willing to do the job, and to provide an estimate. The « requesters » then share the fees and the source/package is given back (or not) to the community.

But i’m not a system like that one would work, since each « requester » will have some specific needs.
Then, if there are more than one dev whiling to take the job, who will win? The one who contributes the most in the community? The cheapest (which might brings some « pervert » crowd-sourcing)?
On the other side, that *might* land to developers waiting for requests to contribute… which could end the spirit of this community. I’m sure nobody want that

Anyway, don’t get me wrong, i love the idea. I just think we should be carefull

My 2cents

Hey Romain,

Thanx for your reply!

But i’m not a system like that one would work, since each « requester » will have some specific needs.

That requesters will have some different needs is a good thing.
Extensions should be as dynamic/generic as possible and by simply communicating requesters could come to an agreement or just bail out if it doesn’t work out.

the source/package is given back (or not) to the community

And I think extensions should always be given back to the community.
If people want to keep it to them selves, then they shouldn’t use MODx in the first place.

Then, if there are more than one dev whiling to take the job, who will win?

The requesters should decide who gets the job.

that *might* land to developers waiting for requests to contribute…

This could get covered by the money that gets donated for the licenses.
It goes to the general development of MODx and it’s functionality.
And for this we can figure out some system to.
But lets nog get into the specifics yet.

This is an interesting idea, and we’ve got plans for something similar in the works for the new website, which you can now get a sneak peek of:

http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,59842.0.html

I’m thinking on starting up my own internet business and think it would be a good thing to give 5%/10% of the profit that I make on building MODx driven websites back for the development of MODx.
This way I help MODx help me by giving them resources for developing more of the good stuff

Maybe there should be some credits/points system involved so that contributors that give to modx can get some free licenses/modules in return.

I would also like to know how I can contribute to MODx.
I have zero programming skills.
What I can do: Concepting, Functional Design, Visual Design, HTML, CSS, Javascript (Just a beginner).