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Commercial benefits of collaborating on Drupal modules

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A couple of weeks ago we announced a Drupal module, then this week I spotted another Piwik module being developed by Hass. I immediately sent the following contact message

"We already released a piwik module and have it under active development to include reporting etc. http://drupal.org/project/piwikanalytics , we should really merge these projects if possible rather than duplicating effort, what do you think? "

The response I got within 24 hours was : "Yes, we definitively shouldn't work on both projects. :-) "

Within a few hours Hass had committed some of our code into CVS and given us access to his project.

Whats my point? Its easy to collaborate and combine efforts if you are willing to make the first move and leave your ego at the door so you can focus on what makes the most commercial sense.

I have seen so many different modules on Drupal.org that do almost the same thing or actually do the same thing but for different versions that it saddens me as I see it as a waste of scarce time and resources. Even worse it becomes very confusing for newbies and inevitably complicates development of other modules that need to talk to these modules.

Commercial benefits of collaborating with another developer rather rewriting / releasing a module to do almost the same thing

  1. They may have a version that does what you want and just not committed it yet

  2. They may need what you want and be delighted to change their module to do what you want

  3. They may be happy to provide an interface that allows you to achieve what you need without the need for a full blown module

  4. They may have tried what you are intending and have very good reasons for not doing it e.g. security issue

  5. They may be looking for a co-maintainer or to hand over maintainership completely

  6. One module will probably be maintained better

  7. One module will probably be evolved better and of a higher quality due to more eyes checking for issues

  8. Its cheaper to work with a partner than do it all yourself

  9. Developing a module to suit multiple people normally makes it better as a contrib module as its inherently more flexible

  10. Its easier for other modules to build on top of one rather than having to try to extend two modules, inevitably they will choose one, are you certain they will choose yours?

  11. Its shows a mature community to the outside world, one where active collaboration is the norm, not forking and infighting


There are lots of valid reasons for having similar modules and even more invalid reasons, so if your developing a module that is similar to an already released module I would seriously encourage you to take a few minutes to contact the developer of the other module and see if you can collaborate.

The whole community benefits if we combine our efforts, even if you have valid reasons, think commercially which is worth more sharing development and maintenance costs or getting exactly what you want. Frequently you will find that actually the difference is not worth the ongoing costs/efforts and actually developing on your own will hamper you in the future.

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