New Open Source Project

Posted by Matt Polito in Programming on 07 24th, 2008 | 3 responses


So I’ve finally decided to take on a project and make it open source.  The project will become a ‘Basecamp’-esque clone.  After being a Basecamp user for a long time, I have decided that there a couple things I would like to see and the best way to make that happen was to build it myself.

I know what you’re all saying… it’s been done before.  There have a been a few, ActiveCollab being one promising version until they went to a pay app.  The Railscollab project took what ActiveCollab had and made recoded using Rails, which is way cool.  I would love to contribute to that project but it’s really a clone of a clone (which originally was a php app).

The decision was finally made to start from scratch using rails to create a Basecamp clone that would be completely RESTful with some extra added functionality.  This would be a huge learning experience for myself and also I would love it if other contributed as well.  You can find the project at Github.  Please fork the repo and let me know what you would like to see or what changes you have made!

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3 Responses to “New Open Source Project”

  1. James Urquhart says:
    July 25, 2008 at 12:54 pm

    Hey matt!

    Thanks for your interest in RailsCollab. It’s felt like a long running project, and i’ve learned a lot from it. But as you say, it’s really just a clone of a clone, so there is limited room for innovation there - unless i do a complete re-write, which would be a nightmare to say the least. Of course with practically no community, there wouldn’t be much point in doing it anyway.

    In any case, i think i’ve pretty much done what i set out to do with RailsCollab. Fork ActiveCollab, learn Rails, and run an Open Source project. To be honest, i feel that i am pretty much finished with developing it. I’m now looking towards other ideas for Open Projects.

    In any case, i look forward to seeing how well your new project develops. I hope at least that it fares better than RailsCollab. :)

  2. Matt Polito says:
    July 25, 2008 at 2:56 pm

    @James Thanks for the comment and I hope to accomplish the very same with my project. I would love to hear any tips you may have from your experience and if you’re ever interested… please contribute.

    Also, let me know if you’re going to work on any other open-source projects… I’ll be keeping an eye out.

  3. James Urquhart says:
    July 25, 2008 at 5:45 pm

    Matt,

    A few notable tips gathered from experience:

    - Don’t assume people will be interested in your project because it is free or open source.
    - You’ll probably have contributors who express an interest in joining your project, but with nothing to show. Most of the time these are just time wasters and you should avoid them.
    - If you want to promote your project, by far the best way is to post about it on your blog (with lots of screen shots!), and link to it from other blogs, forums, etc.

    And a few observations:
    - People like stuff which is simple, easy to install, and usable. And of course, reliable.
    - PHP solutions tend to be more insanely popular compared to Rails solutions

    p.s. rucksack.

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