Open Source (was Don't you just wish Rev would do this?)

[Randy Will]

What I see as an optimal model for RR isn't far at all from what we have now.  I believe that the engine should stay closed as the core team seems pretty well able to handle that.  I think the plugin structure and SDK needs to be developed into more of a FOSS community (by this, I mean that Rev should put some resources behind source hosting and versioning, something like freshmeat or wxcode, forums with effective moderation, etc..).  I've seen many projects go both ways (buy 3rd party plugins, FOSS 3rd party plugins) and I can't really say that one approach is better than the other, but my personal druther is FOSS plugins.  It leads to the FOSS model of release-early-release-often giving nice feature enhancements quickly as technology and market forces make them reasonable; but on the other hand, it keeps the core engine solid and free from Open Source Politics:  you will always have a default setup that you know Just Works.

>>> andre at andregarzia.com 6/6/2007 10:44 AM >>>
I see many threads on the list about open source but no one is talking
what this move would bring to RunRev...

I don't want to talk about the philosophy of the thing, I like sharing
stuff, everyone here knows that, I just want to make this thread
productive and not some eternal thread about opinions, the blogosphere
is there just for that.

We know there will be no OSS rev now, and even if the guys at Scotland
decide to open it now, it would take months if not years till a
workflow and community start working like they do there. It is not as
if everyone would to a SVN checkout and start patching the engine.

So now that we know that this will not happen and that if it did it
would take a lot of time and organization to make it work on the same
level as we have it working now, can someone please tell me what would
we gain? I am not talking about OpenGL and adding features to the
language, this can be done with a new external SDK and I know no
language that has things as 3D implemented on their core level, they
are always libraries, they might be bundled with the standard
distributions.

So let us talk about benefits, what benefits can we gain from an OSS
approach, and then think do we really need OSS approach to get those
benefits? Can't we create new hybrid or brand new original approaches
that would grant us the same benefits?

For example:

Adding features - We don't need OSS for that, we need a better FFI.
Porting to new platforms - We don't need full OSS for that, we need an
abstraction layer, like a simple engine that would bootstrap the rest,
this simple engine could be OSS while the rest is closed, like Darwin
and MacOS X.
Attract users - We don't need OSS to attract users, we need a better
Starter Kit, demos and marketing, specially with new marketing toys
such as blogs, podcasts, videos.

So again, except for the fact that there might be a tsunami that sinks
Scotland and RunRev with it, why do we need open source? We have
engineers and developers working full time in the product. They are
paying their bills and we're paying ours.

I just want to make a theoretical conversation about open source
become an useful conversation about goals and ways to reach such
goals.

andre
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