LDSTech is dead?

[rmrichesjr]

... Although I expect that some of the information posted in that thread may be out-of-date, I also expect that the same general Church policy remains in place.

It's possible the policy might differ between the API(s) used by the directory web app (which accesses personal information about other members, which creates privacy concerns) vs. a Quote/Scripture of the Day feature (no apparent privacy concerns).

[alniles07]

Yes, I would hope that’s the case. I can see why that policy exists for user data, there are privacy laws that have to be followed. That post was also talking about making a private API public, which really could become a problem.

The API I found for the quote and scripture of the day is already public data; it’s just not documented. I could have just had it pick something at random, but since it usually follows Come, Follow Me, I wanted mine to match what the Church is already showing.

[mevans]

I have some thoughts on recent discussions on this thread:

phpBB
phpBB isn't as popular as it once was. Yes, other options exist. I'm not sure which ones are free vs. paid. My guess is that since what we have now works, the church probably doesn't want to devote time and money to a conversion project. However, if the church wanted community assistance on something, a project such as migrating phpBB to another platform could be something where outside helpers might be able to reduce the amount of time required by church employees on the project. However, it's still going to require effort from church employees.

Church Members Contributing to Projects
As was mentioned in previous posts on this thread, I've also heard that it was difficult to get significant assistance from church members on the projects. There's been discussion on open source and possible reasons why the church would not want to go open source with many of its projects. While there is much free tooling available - especially for open source projects - it's important to realize that there's a cost behind "free" software and services.

My background is software development. Over the years, I've had positions at companies where I've been involved with developer tool procurement, licensing, and use - sometimes for hundreds of developers globally. These developers would often times get excited about "free" tools. However, "free" isn't free. "Free" software is a business and pricing model. It's wonderful for open source projects, students, hobbyists, and small start-up companies. However, when you look at the pricing and licensing terms, you'll find a price discrimination model that is designed to provide lower-cost (or free) services to small organizations and individuals, while charging significant fees to deeper-pocketed companies and organizations.

Depending on the tooling used, there are potential per-seat costs the church would need to pay for every "community" developer who helps with a church project. When these community members aren't actively participating and making helpful, timely contributions to a project, this can be a lot of expense for little gain. I could give examples and elaborate more, but I'm trying to keep this post short.

Technical Missions
In a previous post in this thread, I mentioned my thought on technical missions. @sbradshaw did serve an LDS Tech mission back in the day. I don't know what the requirements were, but my current idea is that a local service mission could work if the volunteers can make something like at least at 20-hour week commitment, are interviewed and recommended by their bishop and stake president, and can be available for scheduled meetings with church teams with whom they would work. Still, this is going to take time away from church employees who need to mentor these missionaries. Perhaps as part of their missions, these individuals would need to Utah for a week or two for training and to meet with church employees (the Riverton MTC).

The technology for remote development is better now than it was several years go. We have easy video conferencing and screen sharing. The church could set up a developer environment in a VM and require developers to VPN to the VM (probably with those annoying settings that block you from doing much else on your local computer while connected to the VPN). This would help a lot with current security concerns. I've used that model to hire remote contractors at companies and it worked pretty well. Yes, the church would have a cost to provide this, but if they're getting a missionary commitment of a minimum number of hours a week for 12-24 months, maybe it's worth the cost.

[johnshaw]

Church Members Contributing to Projects
As was mentioned in previous posts on this thread, I've also heard that it was difficult to get significant assistance from church members on the projects. There's been discussion on open source and possible reasons why the church would not want to go open source with many of its projects. While there is much free tooling available - especially for open source projects - it's important to realize that there's a cost behind "free" software and services.

There was no difficulty getting significant assistance from church members, in fact, it was a huge group of silicon valley members that wanted to volunteer and contribute. However, they couldn't align well with the kind of approval process necessary for projects back in the day. Additionally, they wanted a feature-rich environment and wanted to help drive features rather than waiting on requirements from CHQ. It was more of a culture thing than anything else. Back in the day, there was plenty of resources to be found.