Re: n homage. I built project:RS2 because ResourceSpace made us believe it was possible.

[David Dwiggins]

What open source license will it be released under?

If the answer is that it is proprietary software, then you are, in fact, launching a competitor to ResourceSpace, rather than another open source project inspired by ResourceSpace. The amazing thing about ResourceSpace is that it has been a community endeavor since day one, and community improvements have routinely been incorporated into the core product. 

You are obviously free to do this, but I think it's potentially disingenuous to thank Montala because they "made a lot of us believe open source DAM was possible, and that belief is exactly what made us build this." while working to market a solution to RS users that is not, in fact, an open source DAM. 

-David

On Sun, Mar 1, 2026 at 8:01 PM 15 Timberline 15 Timberline <15timb...@gmail.com> wrote:

TL;DR — Been running ResourceSpace since 2009. Love it, know it cold, but my users outgrew it. Built a modern replacement called project:RS2 that feels like ResourceSpace on day one but runs on a current stack. Migration takes two scripts. Sign up for early access at https://prs2.com 

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Hi everyone,

I want to start by saying something I mean: ResourceSpace changed how I work.

I've been in digital asset management since before the category had a name. I'm talking Excel and FileMaker in 1994. Peeling oil-soaked negatives off a drum scanner. ResourceSpace launched in 2006 and I picked it up in 2009. I've been running one version or another of it ever since. Nearly 17 years. I've forked it, written custom plugins, reskinned it, and broken it more times than we can count.

"Sorry, an error has occurred. Please go back and try something else."

If you've run ResourceSpace for any length of time you know that message by heart. No line number. No hint. Just you, staring at logs that have seen the whole thing and decided to keep it to themselves.

And still. I've run it for clients, recommended it to colleagues, and defended it in conversations where people wanted to spend ten times as much on enterprise software that did half as much. I still do.

But I've also been hitting a wall.

My users are demanding things that are genuinely hard to deliver on the current ResourceSpace stack:

• Sub-second search across large libraries
• Asset intelligence on ingest
• Slack-native workflows. Not just notifications, but actual DAM work happening inside the conversation
• REST API access so developers can build custom interfaces on top of the asset layer

These aren't exotic requests anymore. They're what people expect from tools they use every day.

I spent a long time looking for something that had what ResourceSpace has. The way it thinks about metadata. The collections. The resource types. The permissions model. All of it, but built on a modern foundation. I couldn't find it. So after a lot of late nights, I built it.

It's called project:RS2. The name is intentional. This is not a competitor to ResourceSpace. It is an homage to it.

The data model is deliberately familiar. If you've run ResourceSpace you will recognize everything immediately. It should feel like slipping into your favorite easy chair. I also built a migration path I'm genuinely proud of. Two scripts. The first reads your existing ResourceSpace data and produces a detailed report covering every custom attribute, every collection, every user, every asset, so you can confirm line by line that everything is coming over exactly as you expect before anything moves. The second script does the actual migration. Your labels stay exactly as you named them. Your collections structure comes with you. Nothing surprises you on the other side.

What I added on top of that foundation:

• Asset intelligence on upload. Every asset is analyzed, described, and enriched automatically. Tags, colors, mood, subject matter, technical attributes. The metadata is there before your first user opens the file. And it gets smarter every day. The system builds on your own library over time, so the more you use it the better it understands what you have and what you need.

• Typesense-powered search. Faceted, typo-tolerant, under 50ms.

• Format transformation built in. ImageMagick and ffmpeg under the hood. CMYK to sRGB, TIFF to JPEG, video proxies, strip metadata, all through the API or a named preset.

• Full Slack integration. Search, upload, approve, and transform without leaving the conversation.

• API first architecture. The interface I ship is just one client on top of a clean REST API. Any developer can build a custom UI for their brand.

• Self-hosted. Your data stays on your infrastructure, always.

I'm at https://prs2.com Sign up for early access. ResourceSpace users get first notification. You're the people who will get it immediately and give me the most useful feedback.

I'm not posting this to poach anyone from this community. ResourceSpace is still the right answer for a lot of situations and I'll keep saying so. I'm posting it because I can't be the only one who has loved this product for a long time and quietly wished it could do more. If that's you, come take a look.

And to the Montala team, thank you. Genuinely. You built something that made a lot of us believe open source DAM was possible, and that belief is exactly what made us build this.

Thanks ! 
https://prs2.com

--
ResourceSpace: Open Source Digital Asset Management
http://www.resourcespace.com
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[Jan Steinman]

Exactly!

I'm to the point that I no-longer support any software that is not open-access and preferably, not-for-profit. And I voluntarily contribute time and money to not-for-profit open-access software.

But I've been burned many times, and I'm on retirement income, and will no longer support for-profit software.

I'm not saying for-profit software people are evil. And I'm not saying people don't deserve to make a living from what they do. But somewhere between "making a living" and "for-profit" there seems to be a stage called "selling out".

So, clearly stating your intentions for RS2 would be fantastic. I didn't see that addressed anywhere on your web page.

Jan

To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/resourcespace/CAKfk2DFBtSFaxvj_4xiPminDJD44upOiUVvLCKA7icTHrpjsgw%40mail.gmail.com.

[15 Timberline 15 Timberline]

Hi David,

Fair point and I appreciate you raising it directly.

The license is still being finalized. It's with the attorney, because as it turns out even giving software away in the United States carries real liability. I'd rather get it right than get it fast.

Source will be on GitHub. Some assembly required.