> 1. Learn to program QGIS, add the functionality, and commit it back to the community. From where I currently sit -- I've never developed for QGIS, I don't know its language -- that's an investment of several months, at a minimum.
If you do this, then at the very least there will be one more member of the community who knows how to do it and is willing to accept the liability for their contributions, if any actually make it in. It's an intrinsically valuable asset, as long as your time is available and deemed useful.
> 2. Vibe-code the extension I need -- or just make a bespoke GIS application which has the small subset of GIS capabilities that I need, optimized for my particular use-case. Depending on the complexity, that's an investment of either days or hours.
If you do this, then it solves your immediate problem, and the scope of liability is limited to your own results or those of people you make it available to. QGIS or similar projects, imo, only gain anything when people are contributing something that lends to the long-term stability and quality of the project, anything else is basically high-risk and noisey. A lot of that comes from nuanced technical discussions between people with a depth of domain and codebase specific knowledge about how to approach a problem and decide whether it's even a problem.
The project survives by people and companies investing in it's long-term survival. If it's not worth a potential contributor's time to understand why they've submitted what they've submitted and why it's correct, then it's not the place for them.
It's my view that worthwhile software products are artifacts of good, durable, and stable processes that are intended outlive them, in the same way that stable economies and governments are artifacts of suitable long-term policymaking that's resilient to rapid fluctuations and malicious actors. One-off rebuilds and fly-by-night features are neat party-tricks, but that's not what I'd encourage a professional to rely on as a tool, because it's unclear what skin the maintainer has in the game.
If you do this, then at the very least there will be one more member of the community who knows how to do it and is willing to accept the liability for their contributions, if any actually make it in. It's an intrinsically valuable asset, as long as your time is available and deemed useful.
> 2. Vibe-code the extension I need -- or just make a bespoke GIS application which has the small subset of GIS capabilities that I need, optimized for my particular use-case. Depending on the complexity, that's an investment of either days or hours.
If you do this, then it solves your immediate problem, and the scope of liability is limited to your own results or those of people you make it available to. QGIS or similar projects, imo, only gain anything when people are contributing something that lends to the long-term stability and quality of the project, anything else is basically high-risk and noisey. A lot of that comes from nuanced technical discussions between people with a depth of domain and codebase specific knowledge about how to approach a problem and decide whether it's even a problem.
The project survives by people and companies investing in it's long-term survival. If it's not worth a potential contributor's time to understand why they've submitted what they've submitted and why it's correct, then it's not the place for them.
It's my view that worthwhile software products are artifacts of good, durable, and stable processes that are intended outlive them, in the same way that stable economies and governments are artifacts of suitable long-term policymaking that's resilient to rapid fluctuations and malicious actors. One-off rebuilds and fly-by-night features are neat party-tricks, but that's not what I'd encourage a professional to rely on as a tool, because it's unclear what skin the maintainer has in the game.