My thoughts on Curse holding back the potential of BukkitDev, looking for an answer.

Hi Bukkit,

I posted this a couple of days ago in another thread but it received no reply and I figure this would be a more appropriate place to post it and perhaps get an official answer to my question as well as promote friendly discussion on the topic. Please read it in full before replying to this. The entire post in it's entirety can be found below. It contains my thoughts on Curse holding pack the potential of BukkitDev, the future of BukkitDev and where it is headed today, as well as a few questions I have related to BukkitDev. Thanks.

@EvilSeph (I know you're busy moving but some clarification on this would be great if possible.) @TnT @mbaxter

Because nobody ever took the initiative to actually turn the idea of the fill into a real thing, where plenty of resources were available to make it happen. Instead, it went on without ever being made until they decided to use Curse's system. But I'm sorry for saying that. So, I drop my argument to replace it with a new one.

Personally I wouldn't mind Curse handling BukkitDev, but I feel that you guys should at least have access to the code and be able to make changes. It's almost been a year and the forums haven't transitioned over to BukkitDev simply because we're still waiting on features from it, and things suggested months ago still haven't been added.

Many of the features on BukkitDev are highly customized towards other Curse sites and have absolutely no purpose or reason to be on BukkitDev (I assume because all of the sites use the same backend code), such as the repository, semi-normal file statuses, Curse-client related features, etc. The reward points were added months ago but still aren't functional.

If you could actually have power over BukkitDev I wouldn't mind Curse "taking over" the forums. They can put up ads, throw up a Curse bar, whatever they want for all I care, as long as we actually get a working BukkitDev. But I don't think it's acceptable for them to have complete control over BukkitDev and not actually listen to what the community using it wants (that's like someone offering you a free Minecraft server - but all you get is mod, and they get complete control over the files, plugins etc.). I think BukkitDev could turn out to be a great site if the feedback given by the community was ever actually implemented. And as I said earlier the result of these features being added and things being fixed are holding back the community from moving on (e.g. transitioning the forums to BukkitDev).

I'll be happy to spam the JIRA (Site Bukkit) with tickets with everything I consider wrong, broken, etc. with BukkitDev - but seeing as there's things that haven't been added/fixed that were reported over 5 months ago - does that give any kind of a better chance of those things actually getting done?

I'm not a mod or an admin, but as far as I can see Curse is important to Bukkit. As a popular open-source project, I can see why Curse helping with hosting and funding is important. I agree with your points, but is this issue something we accept because Curse are vital to the project? Without Curse I don't think we would be as far as we are now.

IMO a major reason curse it doing this is to get more publicity (I may be wrong)

True, they are a very important aspect seeing as they host the forums, but as stated in my original post I feel they are holding us back. Going back to my "it's been almost a year now and things still aren't fixed" point, I feel within that year timeframe, we could have independently developed our own BukkitDev-like system with less bugs and one that is more thought-out.

Why don't they make it open-source then (I might be mistaken in thinking it's not)? I'm sure the community could add features and fix bugs.

Exactly. But it's all owned and controlled by Curse, nothing we can do.

I have had the same thoughts recently. See my rather long winded reply to the new policy changes which have been rolled out with very little notification to actual developers.

The current system at best is cumbersome and at worst works against you. What is a semi-release? Why are all my downloads marked as one with no option to change it? Where is my static link to the latest version uploaded to bukkit dev? Why do email notifications format so badly on a iPhone? Why when I search from the main page do get tickets and bugs when I just want plugins? Looking for a 32x32 texture pack, why can't I add a filter to do that? The list goes on.

Curse actually have an opportunity here to be the premier place to go for minecraft mods, texture packs and plugins. The competition in this area is frankly pants but I doubt it will stay that way forever. I am keen for improvements to be made, but I am not holding my breath given the progress over the last year.

I agree.

I should note that I mentioned semi-normal somewhere in my first post. It's a file status, from what I've seen, entirely related to the Curse client and has absolutely no use on BukkitDev. It gets applied to your file if Curse can't find a ".toc" file (which has again, absolutely no use in relation to plugins).
http://www.curseforge.com/wiki/knowledge-base/projects/file-statuses/

They scratch our back and we scratch theirs, so whats the problem?

Did you not read a single word of my post?

Yes and I disagree, maybe they don't want to take unnecessary steps that might not help in the long run. Why can't we just sit back and relax and know its all be handled to the best of its ability?

Because it's not? We've been sitting back and relaxing for a year now and nothing has changed.

You probably don't know this yet but the bukkitdev mods are already trying to communicate with curse to push changes.

It would be nice to hear from a mod/admin on this issue.

If you want a mod to see something you can use the report button.

That's exactly the problem and most of what I outlined in the first post.

Some already seen it just don't seem to want to reply.

As someone who missed that statement first time round, could you please point me in the direction of where there is a statement made on the progress of dev.bukkit?

Refer to my other post about change.

THE FOLLOWING IS A PERSONAL MESSAGE AND DOES NOT REFLECT ON THE VIEWS OF THE BUKKIT STAFF.

@chaseoes I may take you up on an unofficial fill site. Sounds like a fun project. *begins tinkering*

Decided not to read it and just be honest and say... Curse sucks, there full of ads and have binds with Microsoft. Unbelievable ...

Keep us updated! This sounds like a great idea.