Heather kicked-off a mini-tsunami with her post on the SharePoint vision. Andrew then jumped in with a few more thoughts (here and here). Bil's got a few ideas in his response to Heather's article (see her original post).
This is a good discussion. Anytime we stop writing code and start talking about the user is a step in the right direction. Heather has some very good points but one in particular is striking enough for me to add my two cents (I think we're up to a buck by now with everyone's input - or about 50 pence for my friends across the pond). She wonders why there aren't more general use web parts available to the SharePoint community. It's a good question with some uncomfortable answers:
1) Skilled SharePoint developers are few and far between. Sure, there are lots of people who have worked with SharePoint in some capacity but very few who know what they are doing and are actually good at it. This is by far the most common complaint I hear from clients and one that causes me a great deal of grief when trying to find adequate resources for a project. We NEED more and better training. We NEED SharePoint certifications (Are you listening Microsoft? Four years on the market and no cert track? Are you kidding me?).
2) The object model is preposterous. Yes, I know SPS was cobbled together quickly to meet market demands and WSS is just not that mature (props to MS for delviering a good product under those conditions despite what Mike Drip may think); however, they've got to clean up the OM in the next release. I've seen firsthand how it frustrates many .NET programmers who could otherwise be writing good code instead of wrestling with SharePoint nuances. Simplify and productivity will improve.
3) Due to #1 and #2 commercial web parts are very expensive. Solve these issues and the number of web parts will increase dramatically with a corresponding drop in prices. Developers should always be encouraged to profit from their efforts, so let's not expend a bunch of energy arguing about open source, community, freeware and so on. The profit motive is the most effective, so let's continue to encourage commercial development and take advantage of basic supply and demand principles - the more providers the lower the price. In fact, I'd like to see MS encouraging the Micro-ISV concept with new partner programs and support.
4) No centralized web part repository. As Bil astutely points out, we have to scour the web to find web parts like we're caught in some gigantic SharePoint treasure hunt. We need a better way to organize, categorize, rank, and share feedback on every web part out there. MS has taken a good first step with the component directory but it's just cut-and-paste marketing speak - no objective reviews or comments. I'm all for Bil's SharePointForge idea.
5) Corporate intellectual property restrictions. Many organizations don't want the result of their employee's efforts released into the wild without compensation. I see this happen more often than you might think. Right or wrong, and it's often a mix of both, they worry that competitors will benefit from their investment or that employees will spend their time supporting people other than their own internal users. Not to mention the most significant concern of all - liability. All it takes is one lawsuit to stop the flow of good code altogether. This is mostly a corporate culture issue but could be solved in some instances by better communication with management and pre-authorization from legal and marketing.
Those are just a few of my thoughts. I encourage the community to keep this discussion fresh and in the fore.
UPDATE I: While I'm on this soapbox, allow me to put in a plea to the developer community for standardization in product packaging. It's not that hard to compile a CAB file - don't make users jump through hoops to implement your code. Perhaps this should be a requirement in whatever centralized directory scheme is (hopefully) implemented - poor packaging equals poor ranking and fewer downloads. Some sort of incentive system for highets rankings and most downloads would be great as well.
UPDATE II: For anyone that is interested I would be willing to host the directory on my SharePoint server (c'mon, it has to be in SharePoint, doesn't it?). I don't think I can handle the storage and bandwidth for all the downloads but I would be more than happy to host and maintain the code. Any takers?
