Description

It's hard for XWiki users to know which extension is supported by whom and how it's supported. Right now there's only a concept of "Recommended" but it's lacking information and the support (it's more an indicator of quality of the extension).

Proposal

•  Drop "Recommended" and keep only "Supported By". The main reasons are:
  • It’s hard to have the "Recommended" status in sync with the reality and we’ve been failing so far to add/remove that status on extensions.
  • It’s much easier to delegate the quality level to Individuals, Groups or Companies. They become responsible of associating their name with a certain level of quality of extensions they support. This means a lot less maintenance for the XWiki developers. Users will recognize and trust "supported by" names.
•  All extensions will have a "Supported by" field that need to be filled, even extensions bundled in the XS flavor.
•  Each supporting organization is registered on e.x.o with information asked:
  • Id
  • Name
  • Description
  • URL (URL where to find more information about the organization)
  • Contact email
  • Whether the org is still active or not (if not active then all its plans are also inactive)
•  Each plan will have the following information
  • Associated organization id
  • Plan id
  • Plan name
  • Plan description
  • URL (URL where to find more information about the plan)
  • Whether the plan is free or paying (boolean)
  • Whether the plan is still active or not
•  The "Supported By" information for each extension will consist in:
  • A list of organization ids who support this extension
  • For each organization, a list of plan ids under which the extension is supported.
  • For each plan id, whether it's active or not for this extension
•  Make the Extensions LiveTable filterable by Supporting organizations + Support plans
  • Ideally using a single column to save space.
•  Display on each extension page the active supporting orgs + active support plans (with a label about whether each plan is paying or free)
  • Note: The code needs to be done in the Repository Application
  • TODO: Design a UI for it (Thiago is on it)
•  Display in XWiki's EM, for each extension, the active supporting orgs + active support plans (with a label about whether each plan is paying or free)
  • TODO: Design a UI for it (Thiago is on it)
•  Any sponsoring company or author/contributor of an extension is allowed to register himself/herself as a supporter. Sponsoring companies can register themselves on any extension.
•  There'll be a "XWiki Community" organization to represent the full XWiki open source community, and a "Community" support plan (through the Forum)
•  To make it simpler, we would also add the “supported by” entry automatically for the "XWiki Community" organization, upon page save when the "Bundled in XS" xproperty is set fo an extension.
  • Open question: what about extensions found in xwiki-commons/rendering/platform that are not bundled in XS? 
•  Automatically drop the "Supported By" field, based on a date, in order to have up to date information:
  • When adding a supporting org/plan to an extension, make it be active for 1 year from the date of the entry creation
  • After 11 month is elapsed, send an email to the org email, to warn that the support needs to be renewed, and with a link to an e.x.o page (see below)
  • After 1 year is elapsed, expire the plans for each extension
•  Provide an e.x.o page that lists all supported extensions and all plans for a given organization and which makes it easy to renew support dates
  • And also to make it easy to register plans for several extensions at once (by filtering an extension LT/LD, e.g. on "Bundled in XS")

Backward Compatibility

• Existing XS instances will continue to ask e.x.o to return "recommended" extension, and thus we will need to find a rule for it:
  • Proposal: Any extension having at least one support plan registered for it will be considered "recommended"