Ideas and directions
Keith Hutchison
--
Keith Hutchison
http://balance-infosystems.com http://realopen.org
Ed Kleban
Second time you've asked, isn't it. I had a full plate the first time.
Here are a few notions that come to mind however, based on a great deal of
ignorance of what REALOPEN really has to offer:
There are clearly some things it may not have currently:
1) A good forurm/mailing list/bulletin board capability -- which you have
compensated well for through the excellent use of gmail and Google Groups.
2) A free-for-all wiki capability, which George's generous contribution of
RBWiki is serving as a great backstop for.
It strikes me that the most valuable service RO has to open, for my
immediate interests is as a storage location for files to be distributed to
others.
On 12/22/05 6:55 PM, "Keith Hutchison" <keith.kjtl...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Ed Kleban
On 12/22/05 7:29 PM, "Ed Kleban" <E...@Kleban.com> wrote:
> Hi Keith,
>
> Second time you've asked, isn't it. I had a full plate the first time.
> Here are a few notions that come to mind however, based on a great deal of
> ignorance of what REALOPEN really has to offer:
>
> There are clearly some things it may not have currently:
>
> 1) A good forurm/mailing list/bulletin board capability -- which you have
> compensated well for through the excellent use of gmail and Google Groups.
>
> 2) A free-for-all wiki capability, which George's generous contribution of
> RBWiki is serving as a great backstop for.
>
>
> It strikes me that the most valuable service RO has to open, for my immediate
> interests is as a storage location for files to be distributed to others.
>
continuing...
However, when I went to look into using REALOPEN to set up a project I
discovered that there was a significant barrier to entry in that there was
something of a bureaucratic step in choosing what kind of license you wanted
for your project. If you take such decisions seriously, as I do, then
there's a potentially large deliberation or research project to be
considered before setting up a project.
What I'd like to see somewhere is something with the convenience of
"drag-and-drop" of an open wiki -- in the sense that there is no bureacratic
setup step any more complicated than establishing a login ID, that allowed
someone to setup a protected (therefore REALOPEN project) area in which they
could simply place their files, to subsequently reference from a wiki or
wherever. In otherwords, something that would be as easy for Scott Steinman
to use for Reality Check, to pick an example, as it is for him to employ his
.Mac account for this purpose. He didn't have to pick a license basis, he
just dragged his files there. He DOES however have some rather detailed
license information in the content he drags there I believe.
We've already gotten a couple inquiries or pseudo offers from folk along the
lines of "Hey guys, I have some code you may be interested in that does X".
I'd like to have a much easier place I could point to and say "just put 'em
there and reference 'em from the Wiki", or if that's still to much of a
barrier for them, an ability to say: "Fine, send 'em to me... oops I mean to
Keith... and we'll throw 'em in there and make the wiki link for you."
There may be some licensing concerns regarding this "quick-and-dirty"
approach on the part of those who really care about such matters. But I'd
like to see a really simple means of doing things of this sort for those who
really don't care. They just want to donate some code.
Ian M. Jones
More marketing, realopen.org is a great idea but I don't think people
know about it.
When you see people announcing open source classes and stuff on the
NUG why not approach them to offer free hosting of the project for
them, even if it's just as a mirror with prominent links back to
their own website (so they are less likely to lose traffic and mind-
share).
Announce new realopen.org additions and major releases to the NUG.
Do you submit each project to rbgarage?
Do you submit each project to RBDeveloper?
Have you contacted any of the developers that have open source stuff
on rbgarage?
Realbasic is getting bigger and bigger market share by the day, you
should really try and make realopen.org the first place people think
of for open source RB code. I know it's going to take a bit of work,
but if you want to make a go of it you need to start promoting.
The news section (front page) of realopen.org should highlight all
open source code released into the wild, whether it's hosted on
realopen.org or not. Impartial promotion of open source RB code will
help get people to visit your site, or at least think about it as a
good source of information on open source RB stuff.
You need a RSS feed for your news, and include news items that
directly affect the RB developer community, e.g. new RB releases,
tools and code whether free or not, but do not waste developer's time
with news items about a new Pope or new Apple hardware (except when
you're talking about developer effecting stuff like switch to Intel
etc).
Reviews of open source classes and modules might help too, and
comparison with commercial offering would help potential developers
decide whether they can get away with using the open source code
(maybe with a few modifications that could be fed back) or whether
their time/money would be better spent on the commercial product.
Come on Keith, show us how much you love the open source RB developers!
Regards,
--
Ian M. Jones
___________________________________
IMiJ Software
http://www.imijsoft.com
http://www.ianmjones.net (blog)
Ed Kleban
On 12/22/05 7:56 PM, "Ian M. Jones" <i...@imijsoft.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 23 Dec 2005, at 00:55, Keith Hutchison wrote:
>
>>
>> Request for ideas and directions for the future of realopen.org.
>>
> Announce new realopen.org additions and major releases to the NUG.
>
> Do you submit each project to rbgarage?
>
> Do you submit each project to RBDeveloper?
It would be great to have some checkboxes or a form to inform and/or
simplify this for the project owner/manager. However I would certainly hope
that this is not done automatically by the infrastructure.
> The news section (front page) of realopen.org should highlight all
> open source code released into the wild, whether it's hosted on
> realopen.org or not. Impartial promotion of open source RB code will
> help get people to visit your site, or at least think about it as a
> good source of information on open source RB stuff.
In other words become yet another RBGarage? Do we really need another? If
the existing version is slow, poor, out of date or whatever, that's one
thing. But unless there is someone with a lot of long-term determination
and commitment to keep such a thing up to date, this doesn't sound very
attractive. In my experience RBG works pretty darn well.
Perhaps it would be better to find way for RBG to work more closely with RO
in terms of providing automatic classification fields in RO that RBG spiders
for, or automated detection of changes, or "click here to automate your RBG
entry". Or have RBG set up a RO page, and link to it from RO. I don't
know that this is really a wheel worth taking the time to reinvent rather
than support.
Ian M. Jones
On 23 Dec 2005, at 02:08, Ed Kleban wrote:
>
>
>
>
> On 12/22/05 7:56 PM, "Ian M. Jones" <i...@imijsoft.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 23 Dec 2005, at 00:55, Keith Hutchison wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Request for ideas and directions for the future of realopen.org.
>>>
>> Announce new realopen.org additions and major releases to the NUG.
>>
>> Do you submit each project to rbgarage?
>>
>> Do you submit each project to RBDeveloper?
>
> It would be great to have some checkboxes or a form to inform and/or
> simplify this for the project owner/manager. However I would
> certainly hope
> that this is not done automatically by the infrastructure.
Naa, I was thinking more along the lines that when a project hits a
particular milestone or whatever that the "admins" of realopen get
some sort of notification or see it on a report so that they can take
the decision to contact a few sites and the NUG to promote the
release or muster up volunteers.
RBGarage doesn't host anything, it's simply a catalogue that points
to external websites where more info and the actual goodies can be
got at.
Certainly realopen and RBGarage should try and work closer together,
that would be great, but RBGarage is (and should be) broader in
interest than realopen which should concentrate on open source.
Ed Kleban
On 12/22/05 8:18 PM, "Ian M. Jones" <i...@imijsoft.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 23 Dec 2005, at 02:08, Ed Kleban wrote:
>
>>
>> On 12/22/05 7:56 PM, "Ian M. Jones" <i...@imijsoft.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On 23 Dec 2005, at 00:55, Keith Hutchison wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Request for ideas and directions for the future of realopen.org.
>>>>
>>> Announce new realopen.org additions and major releases to the NUG.
>>>
>>> Do you submit each project to rbgarage?
>>>
>>> Do you submit each project to RBDeveloper?
>>
>> It would be great to have some checkboxes or a form to inform and/or
>> simplify this for the project owner/manager. However I would
>> certainly hope
>> that this is not done automatically by the infrastructure.
>
> Naa, I was thinking more along the lines that when a project hits a
> particular milestone or whatever that the "admins" of realopen get
> some sort of notification or see it on a report so that they can take
> the decision to contact a few sites and the NUG to promote the
> release or muster up volunteers.
>
Right. And my point is that if when I created MY project on real open or
changed MY project preferences to check a box labeled "Help to popularize
this project by keeping other Websites up to date with changes", then that's
just fine. But if I haven't given the administrators my blessing to do that
then I wouldn't expect or even want them to do so.
Now if they chose to advertise or blog or review projects on the RO site to
feature them, they certainly could do that just like anyone else in the
cyberverse can. But proactively sending announcements to other sites
without explicit permission sounds like a recipe for pissing off someone who
is simply looking for a low-profile site they can place files for a small
community of interested users to download until they're ready to manage
their own publicity campaign on some larger scale.
Exactly. And in my opinion they do that very well. Which is why I suggest
that RO find some other niche to fill and let them do what they do well.
> Certainly realopen and RBGarage should try and work closer together,
> that would be great, but RBGarage is (and should be) broader in
> interest than realopen which should concentrate on open source.
Sure.
> --
> Ian M. Jones
--Ed