Module Development and Distribution on Campus
The Stanford Theme and Webauth Module provide a model for central IT development, but many modules developed by drupallers have not yet been shared. If these proved useful to others on campus, would success be rewarded only by requests for bug-fixes? What incentives would drupallers and central IT have to take responsibility for code upgrades? We would like to focus on concrete examples of modules under development, and put these questions to the Drupal community.
Agenda
Hear from Stanford's Drupal community, in order to imagine scenarios of how modules developed in programs and departments might be distributed and maintained?
Goals
Clarify how am Open Source development framework might be implemented on campus by asking questions, for example:
- If a developer for a program shared an alpha module "as is" how would it be maintained?
- Would bug fixes, expansions and updates provide a disincentive to share and could a module which proves to have scope among drupallers be promoted to be maintained by Central IT?
- What inefficiencies can be foreseen, and how are they different from known ones, when tools are developed centrally instead of at the periphery of campus IT?
Resources
Link for alpha module forthcoming, but what follows describes what Dustin Selman is developing.
Humbio's Drupal website uses content types as the basis for complex student application processes. Even within the context of humbio we have begun to see certain use cases that crop up across most of the forms we create. For instance, we often have a need to automate the process of attaching faculty comments or recommendations to student applications, and also to auto-email reminders to advance the application process. Some of these processes involve both webauthed and non-webauthed participants (like off-campus mentors for internships, or letters of recommendation.) We doubt that these problems are unique to Humbio, and think it likely that the whole Stanford drupal community could benefit from finding news ways to share and refine these units of functionality.