And how do you envision the mechanisms to work for when and how something is integrated into that testing branch while ensuring that it would be "reasonably stable"?
Some changes are fairly safe. For example, the word-count macro (I keep using it because I think it's a very good example). It's a fairly safe feature. It is not likely to cause chaos. The other example I used was, if I wanted to add a few functions to Calc. That's something simple, that I could do, and the reprecautions for getting it wrong are not catastrophic. These are things that could go on a testing branch. Things that are small and self-contained for one. Which, if they turn out to have a bug, are not likely suddenly make the entire suite unusable.
Especially with the SDK and the pkgchk/unopkg tool it is already very easy to develop and deploy add-ons. Those community developed add-ons could be collected on the OpenOffice.org website from where people could download and test them if they find them useful. Once these add-ons have matured, they could be added either to the core product (if they provide functionality that most people will use), or they could be moved to a "stable" add-on area on the OpenOffice.org site for download.
Just an idea from a "non-coder" Erwin
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