Excessive functionality? Let's discuss CKAN tech strategy!

Tech strategy is all about finding ways to make using the technology easier but what's best? What functionalities do you think should be taken off the core and moved into plugins? Do you think it's possible to come up with an agreement on this? What if we highlight some of the most used features via UI while hiding less-used ones further down the user journey in order to make CKAN more focused?

Early on in the interviews, there was a discussion that CKAN should be cleaned up from edge usage cases to only consist of basic functionality that every user would need. If you follow this logic, additional functionality should be added via plugins (add-ons).

It sounded reasonable from the following standpoints:

• The bigger the core codebase, the more code issues and vulnerabilities it would have. It's usually harder to understand and maintain bigger codebases.
• A specialized (focused) tool works better than a generic tool that tries to capture the breadth of needs of different user groups.
• It's harder to start using a tool with more functions.

If we agree that core is core and plugins are the only way to extend CKAN functionality, we face the following questions:

• How to decide what functionality should be taken off the core? Is it possible to have an agreement on it, or does each party have their own opinion on what the core should consist of?
• How to deal with functionality that we'd decide to move from the core into plugins? Who'd be happy to do it?
• Can we highlight the most usable functionality via UI and hide less used further down the user journey? This way, we'd make CKAN more focused through front-end changes only.
• Finally, what updates should be done to the plugins ecosystem to make contributing and discovering well-kept plugins easier?

It is time to discuss our strategy around functionality and the best ways to make using CKAN more streamlined, so please share your ideas on this open-ended topic! We can take different directions here - but first, let’s have an engaging discussion! Share your ideas here: Excessive functionality and CKAN. Have your say!

We are currently in the middle of a research initiative led by Alex Gostev that will result in our CKAN 3.0 product strategy. Involving as many stakeholders as possible is essential to achieving this goal and we rely on input from many fronts: contributors, publishers, users, and vendors. Want to get involved? Read on: You’re Invited! Have Your Say on CKAN 3.0!