Hi, On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 1:21 AM, Antonio Vieiro <[email protected]> wrote: > ...Should NetBeans support Apache Spark? Tomcat? The Go programming > language? R? Whatever? Just find a big pool of developers and ask them > what to do next, what they need, what they want...
Funding such work is a problem - I could tell you guys that I want to use NetBeans for Go, but why would someone work for free on implementing that? If you're a consultant (I used to) it's not really "for free" as that work is also your marketing and might lead to you getting gigs because you know the thing inside out. That can work well for programming tools where expert users can quickly become active contributors. People can also contribute as a great way to learn new things, of course. However I think NetBeans is more an end-user tool. I use it myself but don't really care how it's built, and learning that would not help me progress much in my careeer where I'm doing other things - with similar technologies but other things. What I'm trying to say is that it's harder for "end user tools" than for "programming libraries and tools" to find active contributors willing to work "for free" to improve the product (all quoted things mean "ok not really but you see what I mean"). And I think NetBeans is closer to an end user tool than programming libraries and tools. So it might be worth experimenting with other models than the usual "hey guys can you do this please" one, for a tool such as NetBeans. The ASF itself does not fund developers, but independent crowdfunding campaigns are possible, see https://community.apache.org/committers/funding-disclaimer.html for an example that I think worked. -Bertrand
