Create sig-community-plugins

[Rugvip]

This proposes the creation of a new community plugins SIG to discuss the setup and maintenance of the upcoming community-plugins repo.

Draft for now as we iron out details.

[balajisiva]

Great initiative. Happy to support this from Red Hat. We will be moving all our community plugins to this new plugins-repo. Looking forward to a great collaboration in the community

[BethGriggs]

Hi 👋🏻, Is there anything I can do to help here? Perhaps, setting up a Doodle poll to find a good time for the biweekly meetings?

[MartinWallgren]

Is the intention that everyone who develops plugins for backstage should contribute to this central plugins project or is it just for a set of plugins more closely related to the Backstage main project?

The reason I ask is that we recently created our own Backstage plugins project and it has made our daily life a lot smoother than having to contribute to a centrally governed repository and we don't want to risk becoming less visible than we already are. Sure there are downsides to having our own repository but overall the sense of ownership (reviewing and approving changes our self) has made it worth it.

We have some internally developed plugins that were developed behind closed doors just because it felt cumbersome to get them approved upstream. These are now being migrated to our open source project instead. Now we can develop plugins in the open and still have a quick pace. So there is no need for an internal fork of plugins just to be able to do quick fixes, we can do the main plugin development in the open.

[kadel]

Is the intention that everyone who develops plugins for backstage should contribute to this central plugins project or is it just for a set of plugins more closely related to the Backstage main project?

Hi @MartinWallgren, The intention behind community-plugins repo is to make it open to anyone. I don't expect that there will be any barriers to what plugins will be accepted than just "it needs to work" and that there needs to be a commitment from maintainers to update their plugins. But we are still working on the details.

[MartinWallgren]

My main concern was not really about what plugins you will accept (I might have phrased my initial post badly). I guess my main worry is that plugins that are not part of the sig-community-plugins project will become citizens of lower standing.

As long as the plugins directory will continue to accept plugins from other sources there is probably nothing to worry about.

[kadel]

I guess my main worry is that plugins that are not part of the sig-community-plugins project will become citizens of lower standing.

Ah, I see. This is a good point. We don't want that to happen. Plugins are equal no matter what repo they are coming from. We will have to be careful about how this gets presented so people don't get the wrong idea.

[Rugvip]

Hi 👋🏻, Is there anything I can do to help here? Perhaps, setting up a Doodle poll to find a good time for the biweekly meetings?

@BethGriggs yep I think that would help a ton! 👍 @kadel's suggestion should certainly be included as an option but I think it'd be good to explore a few more options to find what fits best for the most ppl.

[tudi2d]

Thank you all for your interest in the SIG! Let's find a time next week for a first meeting to kick-off the Community Plugin SIG. Suggestions & voting takes place in the #community-plugins channel in Discord.

Looking forward to meeting you all & share the ideas we have for the SIG. Please add topics you want to talk about here in this pull request or in the Discord channel.

[Rugvip]

Alright gonna ship this that the project area update has landed, can always tweak if needed