I'm @david_peterson, primarily one of the main contributors for CommandPost, a tool that adds automation and additional features post-production tools such as Final Cut Pro X.

I'm a big supporter of open source development and have been writing open-source code since the mid-1990s. Early on I wrote custom widgets and tools for the Bongo GUI builder made by Marimba, which led to becoming a lead developer on the app when it was open-sourced as "Free Bongo" further down the track. I also created and maintained a collection of open-source plugins for Atlassian's Confluence and JIRA server software for many years, before handing them off to ServiceRocket several years ago. And in between, there have been many libraries, apps and extensions that have come and gone.

Why Sponsor?

Since teaming up with Chris Hocking in 2016 to transform FCPX Hacks into CommandPost, my availability has been dependent on whether I was actually earning a living in post-production. This has meant there have been some periods with a lot of progress on CommandPost, and longer periods with very little. Being sponsored would mean I can focus more on improving CommandPost.

Goals

I tend to work on a lot of the "under the covers" code, so a lot of my work is focused on improving quality, reliability, and performance, as well as making it easier to add new features in the future. As such, some of the areas I'd love to dig into include:

• Improving test coverage, enabling us to pick up bugs in our code (and detect breaking changes in Final Cut or other apps) faster.
• Improving performance in key areas, such as hardware integration (MIDI/Tangent/etc)
• Making it simpler to add new supported 3rd party apps such as DaVinci Resolve, Apple Motion, and the Adobe suite.
• Adding the ability to have downloadable plugins from public repositories, hopefully encouraging more plugin development from other contributors.

If you want to chat about any of these things, join us in the CommandPost Facebook Group or email me directly at [email protected]. If you feel my work is valuable, your sponsorship will help me do more of it. Either way, I'm looking forward to hearing from you!