[ckan-discuss] Clear scoping of requirements

[Jo Walsh]

dear all,

I was chatting to Paola di Maio about what i see of the work on CKAN, 
she had some interesting reflections.

There is pressure from different directions to do a lot to CKAN, but if 
all the requirements are clearly set out, i don't know where that is.
There is a risk that we (meaning OKF, and developers working on CKAN) 
assume the risk created by larger organisations depending on CKAN, 
because exactly what we are responsible for may not be clearly defined.

"One needs to be clear what kind of responsibility one is accepting".

This means there must be clear and complete deliverables and 
specifications for work on CKAN, included in the project documentation.

This means individual contributors should also be very clear about the 
scope of exactly what they are responsible.

I doubt anyone who is really familiar with the CKAN codebase will 
contradict me when i suggest that it needs re-engineering from the 
inside out. The sooner this happens, the less problems (to do with lack 
of modularity and compatible extensibility) will be happening in future. 
It should happen yesterday.


jo
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