Just a suggestion - you might want to make some 'connection' between the CB team and another developer that regularly makes payment gateways - one that you trust and could recommend. That way, when these questions come up you can just refer them out to that one company.
That's what we've been trying to do. What many of you don't know is we've tried hiring several companies at our expense to push new gateways for everyone, but we've yet to find any that provide such gateways at a stable high coding standard that we expect. I can not tell you how many times someone claimed to be a professional programmer and we're sent a non-working hacked together gateway. Others that do provide high quality gateways simply aren't available for hire.
But it is getting harder to find reputable J! developers - and esp. ones that have experience with CB.
This is a widespread issue that'll only get worse with time. People aren't learning to program anymore. Joomla makes sure you don't need to be a programmer to make a website. This is becoming more and more prevalent as time goes on. Especially due to SaaS (e.g. Wordpress). A lot of people learned to program, because frankly they had to (it's how I got started) if they wanted improvements. We've got CB Auto Actions which is basically a Visual Script Engine; it lets you create new code, new features, etc.. without needing to know any coding syntax or language. We're in a time now we're a lot of people using Joomla/CB flat out don't know how to write HTML or basic CSS. Kids especially aren't learning to code these days as they feel there's no need due to "there's an app for that" type of mentality going on. It's sad, but be prepared for a massive shortage of programmers as the years continue. Frankly I don't plan on going anywhere and will continue working on CB until I'm too old to, but I will always be limited by what I can accomplish within a given time period.
Also/FYI ... with most projects that I work on (or bid on), I would get laughed right out of the running if I ever suggested using PayPal as a payment gateway. It is quickly becoming a 'non-professional' options for most development projects I see. And there is a LOT of interest or requirement in moving away from Authorize dot net. Stripe is becoming THE gateway here in the US.
We offer more than just PayPal (e.g. 2co, ogone, and more). Morals aside PayPal API is straight forward, flexible, and easy to use. Stripes documentation is fantastic, but the API is so far removed from PayPal that it makes it difficult for systems designed around PayPals API structure to implemented Stripe. Most other gateways follow PayPals API structure.
To be blunt I'd need to drop everything I'm doing for probably a month to develop a Stripe gateway. That means no bug fix builds or anything for any other plugins. Heavy support days also mean some days I don't even get to touch any code. That's our biggest issue with developing gateways. They take a significant amount of time causing a lot of lost revenue.. for maybe 1-2 more CBSubs customers. The numbers just don't add up, which is why we often require significant investment to sponsor them, which doesn't really cover cost of maintaining them. We do not charge individually per gateway like other extensions either and are all simply included with your CBSubs subscription. Additionally on a personal level I find zero joy in programming gateways.
A lot of people seam to forget we are a team of 3. 2 full time and 1 part time. We're not a team of 20. We don't have the resources for that. Our business model of an all inclusive affordable subscription doesn't suite a large team. We'd have to charge individually per product exclusively (or significant cost increase to subscriptions) and probably no longer have a free CB. All of which nobody wants to happen (including us).
Basically we're all ears for any suggestions on how to better improve all of this.
krileon
