Reach out to Developers

[LoudLemur]

When we find a new application we would like supported on Cloudron, I think the default procedure should be to:

1. List the application in the Apps Wishlist section of the forum
2. Contact the developers on their platform/forum and invite them to participate in the thread.
3. Engage with them to help them package their application for Cloudron
4. Could we have a form or something to help onboard developers from outside Cloudron? Tick boxes, etc. so we could look at and monitor their progress through Cloudron and their reasons for exiting, if that happens?

I think this is the best way to increase the number of well made Cloudron supported applications.

To make this process more effective, it would be helpful to look at some feedback from developers who did decide to try and package their application on Cloudron. What motivated them to do so? What friction was there? Also, some reasons why they decided to not proceed, when that happens.

If Odoo were supported on Cloudron, we could make use of tools there to collect such feedback. Or we could use the already supported Limewire LimeSurvey!.

[fbartels]

@LoudLemur said in Reach out to Developers:

Limewire.

Do you mean Limesurvey?

In general I think its a good idea to reach out to the upstream project and getting them interested in Cloudron, although I am not sure if this needs already automation with forms and status dashboards to inform everybody else on the progress. Maybe we could make use of the already existing @appdev group to pair up interested upstream projects with people that already have experiences with Cloudron packaging?

[nebulon]

I think your list is very well put and resembles like the ideal process. We are also aware that adding more apps to our library is happening at a slow pace by now. A main reason is the lack of resources on our side, also given that the library already is of decent size and we spend a big chunk of our time already with just updating those. Some apps are pretty smooth in updating, but it also happens often that we need to work on fixes or tweaks to the package for an update if upstream projects change, to ensure smooth data migration.

As you all may know, we are a very small team so far, essentially only Girish and me. But by now we are in a position though to possibly grow this a bit and our midterm goal is to bring another person on board to especially help out with app packaging and maintaining. So let me take this opportunity here to say that if there are people interested in potentially joining us, ideally from this community, please reach out to us personally

[LoudLemur]

@fbartels said in Reach out to Developers:

@LoudLemur said in Reach out to Developers:

Limewire.

Do you mean Limesurvey?
Haha! Yes, I do, indeed. Thanks.

In general I think its a good idea to reach out to the upstream project and getting them interested in Cloudron, although I am not sure if this needs already automation with forms and status dashboards to inform everybody else on the progress. Maybe we could make use of the already existing @appdev group to pair up interested upstream projects with people that already have experiences with Cloudron packaging?

[LoudLemur]

@nebulon It is great that the Cloudron team has already established a high bar for quality control. Additional applications ought to endeavour to exceed that bar.

I think the centralization is a strength for quality control but a drawback for growth. If we can find a way to decentralize the packaging effort, and allow the core team to focus on quality control, that might be good.

The hard part then would be to persuade developers of other applications, people who might never have heard of Cloudron, to turn their attention to this project, understand it, appreciate and value it, and invest time and effort into packaging and providing ongoing support into the future.

It would be nice to hear some real life stories from developers about their "journey to and through cloudron" to help us grasp what the experience is like.

Other than that, we could just put ourselves in their shoes by walking through the ordeal ourselves: Lets say I approach Cloudron with a project of my own, call it, " Nebularon". Cloudron's community has never heard of "Neublaron" and yet I ask you to pause what you are doing for a moment, and start supporting Cloudron on Nebularon. I suggest that the easiest way to get going with this would be to use ZeroInstall, and that you should create a https://0install.net/ package. I don't think anybody here is enthused with dedicating any of their time to Nebularon yet. That is the situation Cloudron is facing.

If you are reading this thread, what would cause you to do the work necessary to support Cloudron on Nebularon? What questions would you ask yourself? What questions would you ask me?

[iamthefij]

Very interesting conversation.

Getting upstream projects to support Cloudron distribution as well as others (eg. Docker Compose, Helm, Flatpak, etc.) would be the most scalable, but probably a hard sell. Additionally, even if it were done, would that be the right call? Even projects like Debian maintain their own repositories.

I'm not sure if this is available somewhere, but if there were install metrics for apps, that could go a long way in showing upstream projects how many users are using their application on the platform and encouraging them to offer more support, even if Cloudron maintains the repo.

For example, this is how Home Assistant reports install metrics: https://analytics.home-assistant.io/#integrations

Actually, Home Assistant also has their own "Addons" features which installs managed Docker based applications from a repo that is mostly maintained by the project leads but is also community supported. Much like Cloudron. They also have addon stats here: https://analytics.home-assistant.io/#add-ons

[LoudLemur]

@LoudLemur https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=Umc9ezAyJv0

[girish]

@LoudLemur is that related to this discussion somehow?

[LoudLemur]

@girish It was just an attempt at a joke, really, grilling developers to find out why they aren't helping support their project on Cloudron.

I think that when there is a developer potentially interested in supporting their project on Cloudron, somebody from the Cloudron community should spend some time with them and in their community stimulating interest and trying to involve people there in doing the necessary work and establishing some sort of Cloudron group or section of the forum over there.

[girish]

@LoudLemur ah ok, I didn't actually watch the video External links always worry me, thanks for clarifying.