Open source collaboration [WAS: Re: Rev vs. AJAX... Ajax vs TAOO]

[Richard Gaskin]

Alex Tweedly wrote:
> I think it's an interesting characteristic of Rev - there is a huge 
> amount freely given "open source" Rev stacks.
> 
> But, as far as I know, there have been few examples of successful, 
> completed *collaborative* open source developments in Rev.

The MetaCard IDE has been maintained and enhanced for a few years with 
the contributions of more than half a dozen people.

Our "collaboration technology" is pretty simple: email.

We use the MC discussion list to discuss what features to add, find a 
person to add them, while that person's working we know not to bother 
making changes to that stack, and then the stack is done it's cloned 
out, emailed to me, and I clone it back in to the master.

We don't advocate that this is any sort of ultimate solution, even for a 
project as small as the MC IDE.

But it may help others considering collaborative projects to remember 
that getting work done is not dependent on first setting up some 
complicated system to keep track of it all.  It's too easy to let 
initial enthusiasm get dissipated in that sort of "analysis paralysis".

In many cases it can be more productive to just gather up your 
collaborators, look at what needs to be done, and decide who'll do it.

You can solve little things like moving around files and integrating 
them into the master build as you go.

That stuff is easy.

The hard part is retaining and utilizing human energy.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Managing Editor, revJournal
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