Finally chiming in. I think there are two things at play here:
- SaaS
- Plugins for interaction between LT and other platforms
As for SaaS, I think it should be decoupled from the current LT team. A company offering LT SaaS would be welcome to contribute back upstream like normal, but the requirements of developing and maintaining a SaaS system often are in conflict with host it yourself requirements (e.g. tie-in into billing and feature limiting systems). I intend (in the coming year) to investigate LT SaaS as an extension of my Linux hosting company. I don’t know the feasibility at the moment, both in terms of code and business financially. I know we are stripping much of the old SaaS code out of LT, but I doubt it would have been useful anyway. There is lots that require designing and integrating different platforms and LT, but having those integrations are useful for more than just SaaS.
Which brings me to thing 2, plugins. A stable, full API for LT would go a long way to allowing people to develop integrations with LT, such as extending the Radio Station WordPress plugin. I think the next step in this regard is to start fielding a discussion around what would be useful in the API and plan out how to go about re-working the existing (semi-functional) API to achieve this. I have created a thread to start that discussion