Paul - have you considered using the methodology that DNN uses to allow others to incorporate modules into Splendid while at the same time taking on the theme of the main application and appearing to be an integral part?
I would like nothing more than to be able to write plug-ins for various customers, safe in the knowledege that there's a strong underlying framework upon which I'm sitting, with an ongoing development path that won't break me everytime there's an upgrade.
I am totally in agreement with the others here that Sugar has given you a good starting point, but don't spoil it by clinging onto their shirt-tails.
If this doesn't happen, then it just becomes another product where we all sit around bitchin-an-a-moaning about unfixed bugs and missing features. The only distinction between this and a non-open source product is the cost. Everyone becomes too scared to devote time to enhancements because you end up in the situation where you can't deploy new versions until you make all your custom enhancements and test them.
I think there also has to be two versions of the code running - the current release plus fixes/patches (whether contributed by Splendid or the community) plus the next "big" version that you are working on internally. On the one hand, you have a bit extra work to do to manage the two streams of source. On the other hand, you have the community fixing your bugs, which you merely need to manage, but can incorporate into the next major version.
The most frustrating experience is going to be getting major releases with new functionality but along with long-term, known about bugs still in place. Kind of harks back to several releases of Winword which always defaulted back to Letter size paper (from A4), but we got the paper clip to make up for it.
gordon
Let me be honest to say that SplendidCRM Software is a small privately-funded company. We have great aspirations, but the limited resources means that we our growth will be directly proportional to our customers.
That said, we do intend to create a system that allows third-party add-ons. However, our technology is not ready. We are currently working on must-have features, such as Import and Team management. When those must-have features are complete, we will re-architect the product to support .NET 2.0 style of web applications. This is an important step because the new .NET 2.0 style lends itself well to allowing an add-on architecture, or at least we believe that it does. We will not know for sure until we get our hands dirty.
I'm sure that you are aware that this forum and the SplendidCRM Software corporate site are run under DotNetNuke. And with all due respect to the architects of DNN, we simply don't like their architecture. To be fair, the DNN folks have a much more complicated problem to solve in being a portal for anyone and everyone. We hope to have an add-on architecture that is simple. It may not be everything to everybody, but if we keep it simple, it will hopefully be more robust and easier to maintain.
