[openspending-dev] Modularisation

[Martin Keegan]

On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 9:56 PM, Adam Stiles <adam.d.stiles at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Lucy,
>
> Would love to see the "list of questions that it is possible to answer with
> Spending Data". This could be really helpful for communicating the
> usefulness of OS at the local level.

It is this kind of thing which should motivate most of the paid work
on OpenSpending.

If volunteers want to fix the core (as opposed to helping with apps
and data and stories), well, let them fix the lack of modularity. But
let them fix it piece at a time, not according to some grand plan.

If we don't pay down the massive technical debt on this software
project, then it'll become unmaintainable, so this work is important,
but it shouldn't be the main focus.

I'd also like to place on record my continuing objection to the
"central database" model, and whatever process it was "adopted2 by.
It's a good idea to have OpenSpending.org as a central database, but
we mustn't let this mean that we don't encourage external developers.
If there's no good installation documentation, then others can't
contribute insofar as this relies on being able to install their own
copy.

If organised groups do happen to install their own public copy of
OpenSpending, we can always extract their data into our central
database automatically.

Mk