The difference is that you have clients, most developers here don't. Let's say taht four things motivate to program: own need, money, respect and creative selfulfilment

And now the thing
1) If any of the core members would need search, it would be available
2) Money does not flow much here
3) Search is pretty much a backend thing, thus you get more respect by releasing bits and pieces and having some hype. (see trails karma)
4) There is nothing creative about building search, just plain programing that has been done thousands of times before

Furthermore, search is quite a bit of code to make as a standalon (not hack) and thus taking this endeavour is not as tempting as doing little things. For the core members, the bugfixing is natural, because there are a lot of them and peolel need support when they encounter these things.

Everything clear this far?

The problem with the community thing is that peripheral members (i.e) members with little activity, do not really make the value in social point of view of community. That is, the feeling of the most active members is what counts more and if people want to make nice looking tabs insted, then that it is.

Furthermore, your community is a lot diferent and not connected to this one, so it is natura that there is little value that it would add here.

And in a way you are wrong in your statement that people must take care of the end users. You need to distinquish between active members and freeriders in all projects/communities. I have no idea why this component was initially built. Maybe because joomlajoe at the time needed a component like this.

The reason for me to program here is that I need the features that I have contributed, I am getting paid for one little feature and then I would like to see my code to live and maybe get a few thank yous. Furthermore, I like the intellectual challenge of programming something that is considered hard.

You must be referring to public good in your post, that is something that is none rivalrous and non excludable. This ie exactly what GPL licensing is for. Anyone can use it and if I use it it does not hurt you at all. Doesn't it seem rational to you that the people who control this public good steer it to the way that they require?

If any serious programmer would have needed the search, it would have been programmed. (Propably has too, but not published)

Those are pretty much what I meant. In addition, there is the backend serach by me which could be packaged as a module with minor effort.

-mikko







-mikko

As a user and 3PD developer here are a few thoughts to add

1) Many components and modules for Joomla do not require hacks... None of the components I have installed currently require such hacks... Community Builder, Ext Calendar, Z Weather, JoomlaXplorer are just a few.

2) My CB plugin also requires no CB hacks... phpBB Connector. It is freely available in the Downloads area under BETA. The only hack it has is to fix a bug in phpBB.

3) The main use of CB for me is as other have stated... modify registration by adding extra fields and for the personal profile views.

4) One thing to think about before doing search on all of the profile fields is that some you won't want to be able to search for Credit Card numbers, addresses, phone numbers, etc. are just a few items that users may not want shown let alone searchable. So for this to work well it also needs to foundation work so that the users have control over which items in their profiles are searchable along with some admin control over the whole process... so it does seem like quite a bit of work. At least if you want it done correctly.

5) The plugin architecture that CB released in RC2 is phenominal and I for one am glad that they decided to work on that prior to adding search.

6) Search for fields will come... it is just a matter of priority. CB is not missing a wheel as you have stated numerous times... probably more like missing a radio... You can drive without the radio... but if the engine (CB Core w/o errors) is bad then it doesn't matter what extras you add. You can have some really nice wheels on a car that won't drive