I have been following threads in different modules and that prompted me to ask a few questions:

1- Are there volunteer coders who actively fix bugs, contribute new code and their contributions are being used? I am asking this because there are modules which haven't been updated for over a year and people are still complaining about big issues? (eg: notifications in forum module)

2- Do some module owners/admins or whatever you call them have too much control? I mean if they stop working on the module, does the module start to rust because admin duties are in their hands and they don't delegate. I get the impression delegations are minimal which affects volunteer contributions to pass through slowly to a trickle.

3- How come bad bugs go through to deployment? Why aren't enough beta releases or release candiates being released to the wild quickly and frequently so the public can test as we go?

I posted earlier asking if 5.0.1 will have a release candidate so users can properly test the fixes under different conditions and setups. It's very common that a developer thinks they fixed a bug because it works on their machine but doesn't work on certain machines due to other variables.

These are some of my concerns. What do you think?

Tony

I know DNN is developed by volunteers. I meant the individuals from the general public who are are not part of any project team and who contribute randomly.

What I am feeling that if one decides to be a volunteer that it's going to be some some kind of obligation to contribute. If this is the case, then yes people will lose interest. Plus you don't "recruit people".  You welcome volunteer work and a team lead should devote some time to look at the contributions and make some honest effort to test and merge the code into current code. People want to contribute without any kind of obligations.

I was actually talking about the modules. The core framework goes into a more rigorous process. 

Very few.  Those that do provide relevant contributions usually get hooked into being on the module teams.  But in reality, many "teams" are one active person, maybe a few.  It's not like the teams are several hundred strong.

On the other hand, there are plenty of volunteers who provide code and fixes who do not go through official DNN channels and releases.  Some, Like Mitchel Sellers, get pulled into the core module development, others provide code on CodePlex and then rely on future users to update it.  There are hundreds of one-person "teams" that release code, snippets, fixes and so on on their blogs, even developers who work for the major commercial DNN aggregators and consultants.

And then there's Michael Washington.  Who is in reality either multiple people under a single name or a cyborg sent from the future who never sleeps or eats and simply writes DNN code that will one day become SkyNet...

I wonder if he can introduce me to Summer Glau?

Jeff