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Spiffily Software is a software organization. But what does that mean?

In the FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) world, there are many software organizations and communities. For example:

• The GNOME project seeks to create a simple and elegant desktop experience that just works out of the box.
• The KDE project is more focused on asthetics and power when it comes to their desktop experience.
• There is also a community which focuses on making electron apps from web apps.
• There is a community that works to make good, stable drivers for Linux. They've done an amazing job too.
• The Linux Gaming community focuses on getting games of all kinds for all ploatforms to run on Linux, and there is even a sub-community of that which is working hard to bring better gaming hardware support to Linux.

There are infinitely more than this of course. These are just a few of the ones that come to the top of my head.

So what is a software organization?

A software organization is a community of developers who seek to furthur computing in a specific way. They will often have Guidelines and a common goal or goals, and all help each other do what they do so they can do it better.

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What kind of software organization is Spiffily?

Spiffily has a few goals, but they all strive to furthur computing and make computers do more for people.

1. The first is to provide a development community for those who don't have one or don't fit with any.
2. Provide a strong and reputable name for developers who haven't yet earned one. Of course to obtain this reputable name, Spiffily has some stricter Guidelines than most software organizations, but all of them are quite reasonable.
3. Fill the gaps in computing where possible. There are some places where a significant function that people love and use (or would should it exist), that have huge holes in it's capabilities. One of Spiffily's goals is to fill these holes. See a need, fill a need, as it were.
4. Promote safe and ethical computing. Big tech doesn't much care whether a thing is safe and/or ethical when it comes to their policies. Because tech is so relatively new, they are not yet held to any ethical standards and at Spiffily, we beleive this is very dangerous indeed. Spiffily works to promote safe and ethical standards across computing in general by recommending alternatives where appropriate, and making alternatives when we can. Freedom for all!
5. Sharing knowledge. This one is so simple but is so remarkably helpful. I have found that while the internet can reciprocate almost any knowledge you wish to know, it can be remarkably difficult to make sense of it at times when it comes to the tech world. When you're in the Spiffily community, don't be afraid to ask for help! We will work together to find the solutions!
6. Sharing strengths. Some people are better at a thing than another. The Spiffily community wants to trade strengths when possible. Maybe one person is great at writing backends but does not write good frontends, and another person writes beautiful frontends, but is not very good at writing backends. Why not trade? Each person could trade their strengths and help with each other's software!

The Guidelines

Spiffily has some stronger Guidelines for it's software than most software organizations in order to create a strong, reputable name that's known for it's quality. The Spiffily Software Guidelines are listed below.

1. Write software for others, not for your own gain. This is by far the most important of these requirements. Your software should be to furthur the computing experience for others, not to profit from those people. by all means it's encouraged to accept tips for your hard work! But don't expect or require payment from your users. Your motivation should be to donate your time for others in the form of writing software.
2. Your software is your hard work. Take pride in it. When you write software with others in mind, your goal should be to provide the best possible experience. You should strive to create the best software you can. People should be able to tell that you put a lot of time and effort into this product.
3. Listen to feedback. Feedback is the most helpful thing someone can contribute to your software. If you can do better, seek to do better. And the best way to figure out what better is is to listen to what the users think. The best software is writen by the users.
4. Do not discriminate against certain ploatforms. Even if you really don't like them. You should build your software with all applicable platforms in mind. If you are writing a good note-taking app that can be built for Linux, macOS and Windows, build it for Linux, macOS and Windows. Even better, try to make it as responsive as possible so that you can build it for mobile users too. If it costs money to publish it, we expect you to pay to publish it. But if you can build and publish it for a certain platform for free, do it. Obviously this does not apply to some apps and that's fine. I am soon going to write an app called The Ultimate Globstar, which will let users easily autoconfigure any Linux distro for gaming. Obviously it is not reasonable to try building this app for Windows or macOS, but it should be built for all distros since it can be. The easiest way to do this is to publish to Flathub and/or the Snap Store. Preferrably both, since doing so would reach pretty much all Linux users. Others should try to do the same for their apps.
5. One size fits all is a bad software policy. Your software should not be designed with a one size fits all mentality. Customization is a good thing. Let people do it.
6. Keep it open. Spiffily is all about FOSS. The power of keeping software open source is great. If a developer goes off the deep end and does something horrible to their software, someone can fork it and continue that software the way the users at large thik it should be. Open Source also makes it super easy to contribute code, ideas, and even to gain a whole bunch of extra help debugging your software. All in all, the benefits of open software tend to outweigh the drawbacks. Spiffily Software is open.