May 10, 2012
The priority policy of my addon projects
In recent days, I discussed on the issue about scrolling of the vertical tab bar. It made the priority policy about my addon projects clear, again. So, let's sum up them.
- I assign the highest priority to issues I actually annoyed. Most projects were started because I wanted to use such addons. This is the main motivation to continue developing for me. In other words, when I suffer from a bug in my daily use, I'll fix it prior to other bugs, even if the mine is just trivial and the yours is very serious. After that, if I have time good enough, I'll research and fix your issues. If I've never used the feature (and I never use it in the future), then there is extremely low feasibility rating.
- I'm negative about adding new features (especially digressive features) to existing addons. Because I currently have no plan to switch to other browsers (Google Chrome, etc.), I want to keep codes easy to follow up to future releases of Firefox. Even if the new feature looks simple, it can cost much time for maintenance in the future chronically. Long term sustainability is prior to short term convenience, for my projects. I'll reject requests which can lose maintainability or independency of the project, even if it is very useful feature, fixing serious bug, and so on.
- I think that any addon shouldn't break features of Firefox itself without any apparent reason. For example, because the tab bar is automatically hidden in the full-screen mode (F11 key) by default, the vertical tab bar also should be done. If my addon breaks Firefox's default behavior unexpectedly, then I'll make effort on fixing it. However, if the issue is not introduced by my addon, then I often step back from it.
Because currently I have less time to develop addons, I have to apply these policies strictly. Actually, in recent days, I spend just a few days of my time per a month for my private development. Sadly I have to keep many requests pending.
However, codes of my addons are licensed under open source licenses. For example, Tree Style Tab is licensed under GPL/LGPL/MPL. You can fork, develop, or re-distribute any project based on my codes, by your hand. Your version can be better alternative for people who suffered from the issue ignored by me. (And, if it is enough reasonable, I possibly merge your changes to my repository.)
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