To open source or not?

May 02, 2008

Jedi Master, Raymond Camden recently did a presentation on Open Source and RIAForge. The synopsis pretty much covers it:

It is time for more CFers to start contributing to Open Source, for the benefit of the Community and the product. Ray provides us a road map for getting started, the information you seek on a topic few CFers know anything about. All that’s left after this recording is your will-power to get started contributing.

It is a very good presentation and well worth watching. In fact Raymond is always worth listening to whether it's about ColdFusion or the next episode of Lost!

When I started developing the code that powers this blog there were a few things I wanted:.

The blog has now been up for a month and seems to be working well so should I release it? Well, one of the things that Raymond said was that he had been discussing with Sean Corfield what made a project worth releasing as open source. I apologise for the para-phrasing, but a few points stood out:

I agree with all these points and it made me think about whether I should release the code for this blog as I had intended. It's not proven like blogcfc and both Mango blog and blogcfc have many more features. I'd like to say I'd support it, but how much time could I realistically dedicate to it? I even know of a bug that I haven't got round to fixing.

My conclusion is that I that I can best serve the community by running the newly founded Devon CFUG (I'm the manager) and through my posts on this blog. If any wants the code for this blog then I'll be happy to supply it. As for RIAForge, maybe not this time, but I would still like to do this in future when I write something worthwhile to the CF community!

6 comments

  1. Perhaps you might consider "donating" the source of your blog as a sample app for the Fusebox website?

    Comment by Sean Corfield – May 03, 2008
  2. Hi Sean,

    I'd be more than happy to do that. Just let me know who to email it to.

    Comment by John Whish – May 04, 2008
  3. I would still be interested in this code.

    I had also thought that it would be good for a sample app; something that is sorely missing regarding fusebox 5.5 noxml are examples. I'm not sure if I would end up using it, but would love to see another person's interpretation of noxml 5.5

    not that Sean's cat club isn't helpful, but there are obviously more than one ways to skin it :)

    Comment by Matt – May 07, 2008
  4. Hi Matt,
    I've filled in the form on the Fusebox website, just waiting to hear back. In the meantime I'll send you the source code if you want.
    I was looking at the cat club demo on Monday and was interested to look at how Sean's style varies from mine - which is a bit worrying as Sean is a bit of an expert!

    Comment by John Whish – May 07, 2008
  5. I want to see a CF version of the FaceBook photoTag features.

    Comment by Mark – May 26, 2008
  6. I too would be interested in the source code for your blog. I haven't seen it up on the FB website yet, so don't know what the holdup is. I'm still learning FB and ANY 5.5 code would be greatly appreciated.

    If you could send it via email to my address it would be greatly appreciated.

    Thanks,
    Doug Smith

    Comment by Doug – June 25, 2008

Leave a comment

If you found this post useful, interesting or just plain wrong, let me know - I like feedback :)

Please note: If you haven't commented before, then your comments will be moderated before they are displayed.