BuddyPress.org

The great thing about open source is anyone can extend it. These are just two plugins in development. Expect many more. I have both and they are very different. Gallery is still being developed so to even comapre it is not a good idea.

I totally agree with foxly. As I pronounced in another thread –

https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/bp-12-bppicture-album-plugin#post-36038

I understand developers want/ need their infrastructure and efforts paid. But it’s also in opposition to the open source idea founded with BP. A “small” webmaster like me, caring exclusively for private websites not about earning any monetary benefits, has to think twice about if he can afford a “premium membership”. Furthermore, which provider should be chosen? buddydev.com? premium.wpmudev.org? etc.

@gregfielding I never said I was “against” BP Gallery, I said it was inappropriate to use a *commercial* plugin with only *one* contributor as a BP core plugin, which is our ultimate goal for the BP Album+ plugin.

No matter what claims are made about this and that being “free”, until Brajesh releases his plugin, properly documented, into the WordPress repository under a GPL license so others can reuse its code, it is a *commercial* plugin.

In terms of features, BP Gallery *currently* has much more functionality than BP Album+.

But over the next couple of months, we’re planning on adding a huge amount of functionality to the BP Album+ plugin, and as we get more people onboard, BP Album+ will probably quickly eclipse BP Gallery.

I’m not going to try and tell you what gallery you should use for your site, but I want to point out some key reasons why I’ve chosen to team up with another developer and write a free open source BuddyPress Photo album plugin (and give it away to the community!) versus just handing over $30 and using BP Gallery for all of my social networking sites:

1) The release date of BP Gallery has slipped six times over three months, and its status hasn’t been updated since Feb 06 2010. Brajesh announced he was releasing RC2 on March 11/12. Didn’t happen. And BP Gallery Stable on March 14/15. Didn’t happen.

2) Simultaneously with all of this, the guy’s released two themes, two other plugins, and has posted that he will be releasing a chat plugin and another BP theme by the end of March. He’s also handing out free subscription extensions to all of his members for not getting his plugins working on time.

That’s impressive. Much respect to Brajesh for sheer volume of work!

But it raises some scary questions:

a) If he’s sprinting to get fifteen different projects done simultaneously under penalty of losing all his members, how efficient, extendable, and secure is the code inside BP Gallery? Has it been checked by other programmers?

b) Brajesh makes his money by releasing several new plugins every month. What incentive does he have to keep *improving* his existing plugins versus writing new ones?

c) If a BuddyPress core update breaks his plugins (as *just happened* with Manoj Kumar’s original BP Album, prompting the development of our plugin) …how long is it going to take Brajesh to repair his dozens of plugins, and where will BP Gallery fit in that lineup?

d) What happens if Brajesh gets hired by Google and quits developing plugins? Who will keep them working with future BuddyPress updates and how will they learn such a huge codebase in time to avoid disaster?

And to the people that keep saying “Well he’s going to release BP Gallery as Open Source in a week or two”, consider this:

e) If you were a website owner that’s paid $30 a month for a site membership to get the BP Gallery plugin, and then patiently waited for 3 or 4 months for the developer to finish it (and don’t kid yourself, that’s what 90% of the site members are there for) …would YOU be happy if the developer finished the plugin, then released it for FREE to EVERYONE as open source?

I’ve been wrong before, but I’d say the odds of BP Gallery being released as free open source any time soon are slim to nil.

It’s a sad situation, because if Brajesh released BP Gallery to the plugin repository, we could continue development on it for him, integrate it with our app, and release a fantastic plugin that gives the community what they want; and he would have more time to work on his other plugins. But again, very unlikely to happen.

….

There is a solution to all of the above problems: build ONE application that is FREE OPEN SOURCE, maintained by MULTIPLE developers, and can be EASILY EXTENDED. It’s how Linux is developed. It’s how WordPress is developed. It’s How BuddyPress is developed.

And it’s how the BP Album+ plugin needs to be developed.

….

As for “Community Support” …. we’ve had 600 downloads in 48 hours and will probably hit 1,000 downloads before most people even see this.

Unless Brajesh is pulling $30,000 a month from his site (=1000 members) I’d say we’ve already beat BP Gallery in terms of installed user base.

=====================================

@Modemlooper I’m going to turn this around on you and say “What if WordPress had no text editor, no file upload capability, no admin menu, and no comment functionality”. All of these are required elements to make a blog platform run, and that’s why they ship with WordPress. Twitter functionality, on the hand, is not a required element, and that’s why it’s implemented as a plugin. Likewise with BuddyPress, Forums, Profiles, User Activity, and… photo albums … are required elements of almost every social networking community. That’s why I want to stop screwing around with third-party plugins and help build something that’s good enough to ship with the core.

So there’s my thoughts!

^F^

@Foxly: I honestly don’t understand why you feel the need to be so overly critical to someone else his work without being properly informed. For me it’s quite obvious that we’re all working on the same goal here; Making BuddyPress better.

You claim to do this for the community but somehow you are throwing with number of downloads and are telling how much better your just released (first?) plugin is then BP-Gallery.. Brajesh has been helping people on BP.org for many monhts, and has released nummerous themes and plugins for free, so I think that your direct attack on his efforts and motives is pretty uncalled for to say the least..

ps: I don’t want DJPaul to ban me, so I will stay out of this thread from now on

How did you get gallery to work? the thumbnail are still broken on my site

I say kudos to the developers of both plugins. And, to each according to online community’s requirements and site developer’s preferences as well.

@gregfielding –

I prefer BP Gallery plugin even in its RC1 version and I am using it in private membership site. As for people “shunning” a free outstanding plugin, I really doubt it. Right now, users can upload to group and individual albums and I’m waiting for the BP Gallery shortcode for user’s and group blogs, plus ability to upload albums in blog posts to appear in BP activity stream and sitewide gallery directory.

@foxly –

Get off your high horse. I find it weird that you would be dissing the BP Gallery plugin which has not been released as stable yet and which the developer has mentioned will be released as free after it’s been tested by paid members and cleaned up further by Brajesh. You are insulting both Brajesh and those who chose to support Brajesh in the development of BP Gallery just for your own self-serving promotion.

What’s weirder is that you’re getting all huffed up about the delay of BP Gallery releases when I among others who shelled out at least $30 to aid in development do understand the causes for the delays and are not vitriolic like you have been in this forum.

If you’re raising hell about BP Gallery to generate attention because you’re getting involved in BP Album and want to promote it, then you’re going about it the long way. As it is, shooting from the mouth in this forum just gives an impression of a totally unprofessional developer. Free speech and all that, your comments above leave something to be desired as you don’t even have the facts correct as Bowe mentioned above.

As for Brajesh releasing it free to the community after stable version is out – I’m all for it.

Do not presume to ascribe to all members what your negative preferences would have been.

@Brajesh – way to go man.

@Modemlooper – you’re on WP 2.9.2 and not WPMU 2.9.2 right? You have GD library enabled?

@mercime – I’m not insulting anybody. I’m asking some tough questions about what this community is doing to get a high quality, free BuddyPress photo album plugin out, and that seems to be making some people in here a bit uncomfortable.

Hopefully, uncomfortable enough that people start building things.

Namely, a plugin.

What all of the people posting “BP Gallery is Free, etc, etc, it will be released free when we have a stable version” are missing, is that if Brajesh would just upload his code to the SVN *right now*, we could all jump on it and help him finish building and testing the plugin.

Look, I have nothing to gain financially by building a BuddyPress photo plugin. I just want this problem solved so I have a stable, reliable plugin to use on my websites, that doesn’t depend on just one person to keep it going.

@thekmen – good point.

^F^

Please keep it civil, people.

As a developer I agree and understand gregfielding and foxly. It is though for developers to promote an open and active development enviroment along side paid subscriptions. Developers are far and between in regards to BuddyPress in comparison with the demand from users in the forums for features. Just look at how many post come with “What I would like in BuddyPress”, however contribution to third party plugins is ever so often.

It would be good for developers to contribute to each other and stimulate open source. Subscription fees don’t allow that, because another developer is not going to shell out money. So just merely to argue the point between paid and non-paid. Paid works fine for demand and users, but on the flip side it damages open source development and developer collaboration.

However, I do think in the last few months more developers have joined the bp community, which is good.

Paid subscription also doesn’t necessarily mean quality. Nothing in regards to Brajesh intent or skill or longevity that I know off, but I have been burned before by paying for software and never getting support and the product being abandoned. However, if the team is good, then it can also mean better quality, but free open source can be just as good or better or worse. It is no measure.

So from a developer standpoint I agree with foxly and gregfielding, but from a user demand perspective I can understand you have needs and wont mind paying for it. It fills a need, but it doesn’t help the open source community, which is what we are.

Can they co-exist? Probably, but in a perfect world, duplication should be prevented and collaboration should be encouraged.

Ps. I wrote this just to share my thoughts, I have no intend to fuel either fire or take sides, just discussing the issue at hand.

@marius I also agree with this.. But there is a difference between a “paywall” and a closed beta for subscribers (which Brajesh is doing). He’s testing the plugin with a bunch of people who are willing to take the risk to become one of the early adapters. To support him in his efforts I decided to spend 30$ because I feel that the author of such a huge plugin should be rewarded, but that does not mean I want the plugin to remain for subscribers only and that’s not what’s happening, so I do not get the accusations of foxly, that was my point

@xevo: Coca Cola ftw!

Heres the real truth to all of this,

I want a facebook style gallery. Thats what I want. So when the bp-just-like-facebook-gallery plugin comes out I will rejoice and work it on my site.

Until then I think both applications are severely lacking in comfort and usability. I have only seen a site with bp-Galleries on it and it has some serious issues that I think will eventually be resolved but its alot closer then the other.

I have yet to try bp-albums so I cant give an honest review but since I already know it doesnt have more than one album I know its out.

I’ve started with bp-Galleries because I need to start themeing but the big fear is the the core team will eventually adopt a codebase that is different then that I am using. Then when I have 1000 photos on a defunct plugin what the hell will I do?

So with that I think it hugely important the the core decide on a path to go with this. If Brajesh wants to Open his code to the community so we can all contribute I think he should. Because I’ll be honest I’m already hacking the hell out of it. But I’m not going to go too far because he will release again and break my work..

I want to hack it, I want to break it, then I want to make it sing. So because Brajesh SAYS he will open it, I will stick with BP-Galleries, but since its also GPL if it starts to delay or stagnate I hope we as a community take it out of the box and get more hands on the code. Once Brajesh drops the paywall and lets some other developers offer patches, Ideas, or help I think the plugin will jump leaps and bounds. It is GPL so anyone who has it could redistribute it for free, or for $40,000 its whatever you want to pay for it.. Yay Open Source!

Or it will be replaced. I had plans to work on a plugin for a project of mine, but its so back burnner right now I cant see tackling that until the summer at earliest. But I think Brajesh is in the right path so for now I’m sticking with him.