What Rev Needs -- Again (was "Why is Konfabulator "Pretty?")

[David Bovill]

On 8 Dec 2005, at 18:18, Richard Gaskin wrote:

>> My experience too - it has been the only way I have ever  
>> succeeded  interesting any truly bright under 25 year olds - the  
>> main thing that  puts them off is the lack of an open source  
>> strategy. They go yeah  this is great - but is it open source? Now  
>> it does not need to be  open source to convince them - they just  
>> need to see how it can not  just fit in, but be a Revolutionary  
>> part of all those cool open  source projects they are dying to get  
>> their teeth into.
>>
>
> Okay, I'll bite: what exactly is an "open source strategy" for an  
> engine which is, and will likely remain, closed-source?


Nothing that dramatic. Open sourcing the engine is a clear no-no  -   
but some simple stuff would help. You have the beginnings of one with  
the MetaCard IDE. Stuff like:

     1) Clearly licensing code and stacks with an OSI compliant  
license - and supporting a developer community around these with  
suitable tools.

     2) Hosting and therefore promoting these "geek style" -  to key  
open source communities.

     3) Releasing the documentation and some or all of the graphical  
content under a Creative Commons or similar license.

     4) Marketing - use the words "agile development" a lot.

     5) Sell, sponsor, and further develop the fact that Rev is  
bundled with "open source" externals (openSSL etc).

     6) Have an example - point to the productive use of Rev within a  
large open source project.

     7) Market some more - what's this about Rev and Red Hat?

     8) Give some free licenses away to some cool kids in open source  
projects.

     9) Get the engine out there and installed on every Linux box  
(apart from Debian) - team up with the right projects.

     10) And just to be a little controversial - "open source escrow"  
so that big projects can have confidence in small companies.

That I'd call Phase 1 - most of it is marketing a message directly to  
key open source projects. Some serious things can be built upon this  
- some of which could involve specific licenses, but mostly I'd think  
of doing a project in the area of 8) & 9) - Dan's suggestion of  
something in the AJAX community hits the right sort of bells. But hey  
- why don't I come over and visit so we can talk about this over coffee?