[OT] Wireless remote events? - resolved

[Richard Gaskin]

Mark Talluto wrote:
> I don't know anything about open sourcing a project.  I suppose a 
> license needs to be selected.  Any suggestions?  How do we manage each 
> other's contributions without overwriting other's work?

The technical aspects are simple.  The hard part is the sociological
side of the workflow.  :)

Managing teamwork can be simple or complex depending on team size.  With 
the MC IDE project we have fewer than a dozen contributors, and find 
that simply communicating via the MC discussion list works fine. 
Feature requests are posted there, and when approved an owner for that 
task is identified and we all know not to monkey with those parts until 
the next build.

Changes are sent to the project manager (currently me), preferably as
cloned out stack files.  It's easy to delete the originals from the
master copy and clone the stack files in as substacks, and then it gets
posted for testing.

Because of the simplicity of the workflow, the MC IDE project (and other
open source Rev projects like libIPC) can be hosted at Yahoo Groups,
since all we really need is a simple place for folks to download builds.

If there's a lot of activity and a larger number of contributors, you
could consider making your own check-in/check-out system to handle such
things.  Ken made one in an afternoon for a project he's working on, and
I've been tempted to make one for the MC IDE project but just haven't
needed it (it would take more time than simply managing it by hand does 
now).

If you're interested in a more complete implementation, Chipp's made a
great one with MagicCarpet:
<http://www.altuit.com/webs/altuit2/MagicCarpetCover/default.htm>

Some folks like CVS, and while it's great at what it does it's really
designed for old-school development workflows involving hundreds of tiny
text files.  IMHO, with Rev's object model teamwork is best factored 
along stacks and substacks, and anything more granular just opens up a 
lot of opportunities for poor factoring and less productive team 
management.  With Rev's built-in FTP and HTTP and the clone command it's 
not hard to automate stack management if needed.

That's the simple stuff; it's the social stuff is where it
gets complex.  But that's a whole other discussion.... :)

PS - About licenses:  I really like the X11 license for a great many 
reasons that would only take this thread further OT if explored here. 
Feel free to give me a call or we can discuss it at the next SoCal RUG 
meeting.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
  ___________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com