Some Support, on 03 April 2013 - 05:38 AM, said:
The current problem with our vanilla eMule is that there are not enough active developers for a fast paced development. Basically this means if you want to change something, don't write about it but do it. There is no lack of good ideas but a lack of working time.
More or less it has always been that way and that is how forks like aMule, xMule and eMule Plus were created. You can write about and publish your forks on this board (and on your own homepage of course), discuss development on this forum and so on. It is however unlikely that the vanilla eMule becomes such a fork, so you need to improve it enough so that users feel your project is worth switching.
Why not hand over the vanilla project to someone who says he has more time? Trust. While the development is currently slow (and probably will stay slow) we always garantueed and will continue to do so for certain features of eMule. Responsible behaviour for the network, privacy and security for the users before other features, FLOSS and most importantly no commercial background like advertising, bundled installations and so on.
If the official devs dont have the time, and understandably dont want to risk a trust issue, then why not try being a way more publicly open about what you want accomplished? Then a coder could see what is wanted done by officials who has the time could see an idea, like it, say they will code it put it into their own "mod", then prove that their code works. Then the official devs could look it over and approve it to be added to official (or not).
Personally I absolutely hate the idea of forks. It creates the exact same effect as an existing problem. Besides every mod is basically almost a fork anyway, its 6 of 1, half dozen of the other. There isnt really a whole lot of incentive for a developer to create a true fix for a real existing problem because it will only be as successful of a fix as to the number clients that end up adapting it, which is never the majority (official eMule). ex. Features like netfinitys sub chunk transfer would only make a big impact and be highly useful if the majority of clients used it, which they dont. I think that leads to a lot of mods primarily having kinda silly semi useless features that just make it look nice nice. Dont get me wrong, I do love a lot of the kinda silly semi useless features like country flags, coloured qr, etc but honestly they dont really improve the actual network in anyway. Clients without these features work the same.
I would love to see the official devs if they are retired from coding become more of a Board of Governors who decide on non officially developed features and adapt them into the official. And/or why not have a eMule Revised ed, which every modder should use as a base. It would be a community decided/updated base, which would be fully supported (looked over, approved 1st) by officials and any updates would be on the official DL page so all users could see if theres a new version and decide to use the non official base or not.
Possibly name the next official rel v51,52 etc and have a-z as non official but approved by officials as a community dev eMule Revised editions.
Have it work something like this: Coder has an idea, makes a new feature, pust it into his own mod, proves it works. Forum users try it, like it, agree that its great, and want it in eMule revised, it gets added. Official devs look over eMule Revised, like some of the new ideas and add them to official.