smithproject.org

Press release this morning:

http://www.newatlanta.com/corporate/news/bluedragon_opensource_announce.jsp

So how will this affect the direction of the smith project, if at all?

Matthew

Wow.

I would have NEVER guessed that New Atlanta would do that. I might have expected Adobe to do it some day, but never New Atlanta.

Holy smokes... so... orcas -- what do we do now?

Well, it's hard to say at the moment how it is going to affect Smith, if at all. It's more of a company policy, I guess.

I like to think that appearance of Smith open-source and the interest of people in it, helped New Atlanta come to this decision faster.

It is true that, at the moment, BlueDragon is a more complete engine than Smith is, but once they're both open-source, developers will be able to decide which internal project architecture better suits them, and which one they would like to join in further development/maintenance. In my opinion, Smith is well designed, and should be fairly easy to join by experienced developers.

In the end, I think it will be up to community to decide. One thing is for sure - whatever happens, cfml developers will benefit from open-source.

Best regards,
orcus

Hi all,

I'm agree with orcus, this announce is not so bad for the community. Like he said: "it will be up to community to decide".

In this case, I would like to share some personal suggestions and ideas that may help Smith Project.

First you have to know that I think you do a really great jobs, that I believe in his success, that I'm already installed Smith Project on a FreeBSD server and that I'm using CF everyday. Thanks guys! Let's the adventure continue!

Many of Open Sources projects die because they don't have enough promoted her existences and have not created real community platform.

I know a lot of CF developers but they don't know about Smith Project today.

I think that to have a real success in Open Source community's world, it's very important to develop a real, fast and easy Community Platform.

Actually the only active community part of Smith Project is this forum.
And to be honest it is not a very active and reactive one.
I have tried to contribute with this post http://www.smithproject.org/forum/posts/list/152.page but never see reactions...
With this other one http://www.smithproject.org/forum/posts/list/151.page it's better but very slow reaction and uneasy for tester and developer.

"Community Platform is the best way to grow quickly"

Personally I'm not a Source Forge interface's fan because I think it's not enough user-friendly.

It's why you I suggest you to:

Install a wiki.

With it, it will better to communicate and share: road-maps, available tags, test codes, install instructions, helps, faq, bugs and others.
Wiki is open for contributors and incite to do it. It's better than a forum.
I don't need to suggest you to use MediaWiki (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki) even it's in PHP ;-). I can help about that.
And I suggest that wiki is direct the main site and homepage.

Add SVN links into the download section.

It'll offer opportunity to invite others developers into the project.
They can contribute with adding patches and at end being a devteam's member.

Restructure the SVN repository with a /trunk and /tags/releases-X-XX folders
Plan to create tags alpha/beta-releases every 2 weeks and stable releases every 2 months.
Off course in a dream world. But it's important to have time target ;-)
« C'est bon pour le morale »

Invite everybody to use the Tracker

Actually the bug section is empty on sourceforge

Users only use forums for that and it's uneasy for developers and contributors.
Tracker contribution is very important for contributors, users and developers in Open Source project. It's one of the success key!

Like I said before, personally I think that the Source Forge tracker is not user friendly.
I suggest you to use Mantis (http://www.mantisbt.org/) it's really powerful solution.

Reflect about the license.

Actually Smith Project is under "GPL license, version 3", or later. That's really nice!
For information Bluedragon is under GPL licence v2 who is not compatible with GPL v3.
That's the first difference. ;-)

GPL v3 is better for many reasons that I'll not explain here...

But personally I prefer and I suggest to migrate in BSD Licence v2.
There is less restriction than other licenses. And it can make the difference in the developer contribution choose.

But it's only my personal opinion in this big Open Sources licence's debate. And I don't want to disturb your choose.

In conclusion I invite you to consult these two Opensource projects:
They are directly under Wiki and they have a very nice active community.

* http://www.mono-project.com/ (.Net on Linux etc...)
- You can see in top of page 3 masters links: Start, Contribute, Need Help (it's perfect!)
- Under Wiki

* http://www.opensimulator.org/ (Virtual Worlds Server)
- Under Wiki
- In developer section you can see SVN updates and history (Thanks RSS).
- In bugs and testing section they use Mantis (who is changing every hour...)
- A really big IRC channel (+/- 200 peoples).

Of course these projects are not small but I thing that Smith Project can become one of them.

Voila, well it's a big post but I hope that it'll contribute Smith Project's success and open a new way.

Best regards,
Maxime

Hi Maxime,

thanks for the post, you have provided a lot of useful hints!

Best regards,
orcus

You welcome.

One more thing that I forgot, register the project on http://www.ohloh.net/

;-)

Max

Team,

I've created a tag comparison chart on the Sourceforge wiki. I'll do the same thing for functions later.

Basically, I think the strategy we ought to follow to keep Smith viable in light of BlueDragon's recent announcement to Open Source the J2EE version of their product is this: we need to implement all the tags that BD doesn't support but CF8 does. We can go back and fill in the other gaps later, but our first priority needs to be to differentiate Smith from BD by making BD have a significant gap compared to CF8.

--Calphool

Thanks Calphool! I agree with that.

I have registered see : http://www.ohloh.net/projects/12768

A+,
Max

Looks good to me!