The core development team of Revive Adserver often see questions along the lines of:

Why is feature X missing from Revive Adserver?
I can't believe Revive Adserver doesn't do X. Why doesn't it do it?
Revive Adserver is useless without feature X. Why isn't it there, and when are you going to add it?
Everyone needs feature X! Are you adding it in the next release?
Why don't you have documentation for X?

Background

The core development team of Revive Adserver took over what was then called OpenX Source and re-named it Revive Adserver back in 2013, with one goal in mind - to offer the project a new chance to progress once again, after years of stagnating.

We are proud to say that we believe we have met that goal, beyond all of our expectations. We now have a large number of active installations of Revive Adserver worldwide, and over the years, we’ve released a load of new features, and fixed a lot of bugs - including many security related issues that we inherited from the original software.

For the first three years, though, everything that the core team did was on a volunteer basis. Although the core team are dedicated to making as much happen as possible, as soon as possible, the truth is that there will alway be more ideas for new features than a small team that volunteers its time will be able to do. So, to achieve even more than we did in the first 3 years, something needed to change.

Patreon

In 2017, Revive Adserver launched a project on Patreon - a crowd-funding website that allows supporters (patrons) to help fund Revive Adserver development and support work, by making a small (or larger!) monthly contribution.

In the course of the first year, we are thrilled that Revive Adserver users have helped us meet our first two goals, and that we are now well on our way to meeting our third goal.

What About Feature X?

If you're wondering what all of this has to do with why feature X is missing from Revive Adserver, it's going to come down to one of two reasons:

It's not a feature the core team wants to support - there doesn't seem to be many people who are really interested in this feature; or
It's a feature the core team does want to support - but the team simply hasn't been able to dedicate time to build it yet.

The good news is that in either case, you can do something about it!

If the core team doesn't want to support your feature, then get more people interested in your idea. Open a topic on our forums, or respond to an existing topic, and talk about it, passionately! Get other users of Revive Adserver enthused about it. Convince the core team that it's a great feature that everyone wants, and will make Revive Adserver better.

Alternatively, if the core team does want to support this feature, but hasn't been able to dedicate time to build it yet, then you have a few more options:

Support Revive Adserver on Patreon

Supporting Revive Adserver on Patreon is by far the most effective thing you can do, if you're not a developer who can implement the feature yourself. Although we're delighted with the progress made so far, and the current level of support we have is amazing, we definitely need more. It might seem like we're making a lot of money each month, but in 2017, the core team made less than 1/2 a month's rent from Patreon. This helps a lot, compared with where we used to be, but we have a long way to go before the core team can start to turn away other paid work to really focus on Revive Adserver on a more regular basis.

Develop the Feature

If you're a developer, and you can build the feature, then please do so, and submit us a pull request on GitHub!

Sponsor the Feature

Finally, if you use Revive Adserver in a commercial setting, and you're making money from the product, then consider - if the feature is absolutely essential to your business, but you're not able or willing to sign up to Patreon, then please consider if you'd be willing to sponsor the development of your feature. Although the core development team prefers Patreon sponsorship, we do accept corporate sponsorship for specific features.