Josh, I’ve mentioned this already on your blog post:

Personally, I’d wish that the Zotero developers would discuss their visions and do their early-stage planning in the open. Let us third-party developers participate on your decision forming process. Let’s not only talk about site-specific translators and short-term goals, but let us collaborate on standards-based features, as e.g. microformats (i.e. embedded RDF or the like), unAPI, RSS/Atom, OpenSearch & SRU, and the planned Zotero server/client API (think synching).

It’s true that your forums are active but it’s really hard to get developer-related questions answered there. And currently, the dev list (or direct mail) is not any different. Many thanks for taking these issues into account.

I recognize that you have your own perspective on the degree of openness of your project, but my post reflected the position of a number of developers looking at this from the outside. I stand by my proposition that the measure of the health of an open source project is not the traffic on user forums, but rather on the dev list. Indeed, most of the developers that would contribute to Zotero would themselves be users.

I agree that Paul was harsh, but I hope you’re not asking me for specific constructive suggestions. I’ve been giving them to you guys for the past six months. Open up the repository and bug tracker (which you’ve now done for both; kudos), document your development plans and discuss them on the dev list.

First, I think we’re being unfairly characterized as an opaque box - for months, anyone interested in engaging with development planning has been able to access our internal tracking system and SVN; the ticket queue is the single best representation of our development plans, and at this point virtually no code gets written without being described there first. We’ve definitely not been great about regular vision updates, but there’s only so much time, and our focus has gone toward improving the software.

Secondly, beyond visibility, if anyone wants to participate in the process, we welcome all comers. Much like other open source projects, you can contribute code and, once you’re vetted, hack away. If there are particular places that people want to see us elaborate or features they want implemented, they’re more than welcome to do so. For those who don’t write code, check out the forums; I’ll hold up our record of responsiveness there against any other open source project.

Third, I’m particularly wounded by Paul’s assertions above; at this point everything is open - code, documentation, the works. We aren’t claiming ownership over anything in the “property” sense that he uses to conflate us with Thompson, and we’re not trying to make our careers on Zotero - as Bruce kindly pointed out, we got started on this because we just wanted a tool we could use, and were lucky to find funding support from institutions who agreed on the broader need.

I guess the thing I’d love to see is more constructive criticism - beyond general nods toward open governance, are there concrete things that you think we can/should do ? What mechanisms do we not have that you want to see?