[FOSS] On the creation of Rev to Web tools

[Malte Pfaff-Brill]

Andre, sorry for hijacking this thread a bit...

I would be interested in how many people would really think they would be willing to invest some effort into various open source projects. I know David is a huge advocate of all things OSS. However, as Richmond pointed out pretty well, over the last 8 years I´ve spend in this community I have rarely seen OSS projects that took up momentum. I have been wondering why that is for quite a while now. My main thought is that it is not exactly easy to collaborate on rev Projects. This is partly due to the binary nature of stacks which makes it hard to use a version control system on rev projects, partly due to the lack of a place where projects like this could be hosted.

Current state: Everyone that tries to release stuff to the community is cooking her own soup. Though most people are very generous with sharing code on the lists and forums, there is no central repository where people can go to and collaborate on projects. We do have many sites spread all over the world with too many gems to dig out. 
Additionally we have revOnline. revOnline is a good place for consumers / prosumers though, not suitable for starting a collaborative effort to work on code. Especially libraries. Most of the stuff on revOnline is there for the visual stuff the stack does, or in a state where the lib is basically finished.

So the only things an author that uploads to revOnline can gain is 
- giving examples what can be done 
- help someone solve a problem with a complex stuff (requires a lot of coordination and is usually easier done by mail)
- show off what he has done. 

What an author usually can not hope for is to benefit from changes other coders have made once a stack is released into the wild. I have no idea how many people here would really willing to dedicate time into OSS projects (my last try was rather frustrating, though it has been a few years since I last tried.) I might be willing to test the waters again in a couple of weeks. More on that later.

All the best,

Malte