Help design the new collaboration site, your suggestions please...

[Corey]

OK I've been planning this for ages and Protocol just gave me the impetus I need to get it going. A collaboration site where we can gang up on projects. Brilliant stuff Protocol! Ok so the decision is now made to provide a collaboration tool, the only issue becomes what and how. Please tell me what features you would like to see and I will see what I can do.

[Intrigued]

Abilities for such tool:

Voice Chat
Text Chat
Webcam Chat(?)
Whiteboard
File exchange
Real-Time Translation Mechanism
Link Exchange "Billboard"

That's a few to start with anyway,

[Corey]

Unfortunately I can't add anything which will require moderation... So we're going to have to stick to the bare bones basics. This is going to take some figuring out because we can't offer a file exchange on our server. I wonder if there's any web sites such as Source Forge which would be a better choice? I think I'll have a look around Source Forge.

If anyone has any good links to collaboration services let me know.

[Intrigued]

I understand Corey. I was under the assumption this was something you were "flying solo" on.

But, this is still very interesting nontheless!

[JimS]

I really like this idea, thanks Protocol and Corey.
I think that Source Forge is a good place to get ideas from. I do have one concern though. I understand Protocol’s use of the moniker Open Source, is as a metaphor, and that’s great, but when it actually comes down to it, I think we will be much better off to call it something else. From my understanding, the code sharing we are talking about doing, is quite similar, but is not in reality, true Open Source. It might just be semantics, and perhaps I’m getting all worked up for nothing, but I fear we could be heading for a negative backlash from the true Open Source community, if we try to label our efforts as such.

I do believe what you guys are suggesting is a great idea, I just want to help guard it against causing the AMS community a black eye.

I do hope that this post is seen in the positive light that it is meant as, and not seen as me being negative to the idea.

[Corey]

OK here's what we'll do. We'll start this here as a forum. If it grows over time into something which requires a larger system, then we'll come up with something.

The main thing about making this work here in the forum is going to be coming up with a simple yet workable system of "rules". I'll give it some thought. I also have to look around for a good free file host since we can't do a file exchange here at IR.com for security reasons. Should be able to figure something out.

[JimS]

Corey, I think you have an excellent idea in spending a day to think about setting up some ground rules to this. Rules aren’t all necessarily meant to be limiting, they can be empowering also.

I have been thinking about this, and have a couple thoughts that I’d like to share for consideration.
1) I think that it should be set up so as to make it easy to contribute to. I understand the limitations to using the company server for file exchange, but I do think this will be more successful if it is easy for the contributor to upload his/her work, someplace that is accessible to everyone. I fear that forcing the contributor to carry the complete bandwidth burden himself, could slow contributions, and at worse, be a inversely proportionate penalty on the contributor. The person who works the hardest, and contributes the most, or the most popular stuff, would also have to pay the largest bandwidth charges each month, just to give it away. So, I really like your idea Corey, to find a good fee file host, right from the beginning on this.

2) Reward. I do feel that this is an important topic that we should look at when we are considering the rules. Obviously since we are talking about sharing free code, we are not talking about financial reward, but rather recognition. If Protocol shares a cool project that he has spent a good deal of time and effort creating, then I come along and make, what I feel is, a slight improvement, my release should still recognize the fact that my contribution is a derivative of Protocol’s previous work.

I have noticed that many times in the source code of free HTML, JAVA, PERL, PHP, etc., scripts, there is a commented out heading, that allows free use of the script, as long as the header ‘recognition’ information stays in the source code. This isn’t something that is going to effect the end user of the program, but it is a way to pay homage were due, and maintain a level of integrity among programmers.

The down side of this idea, is that version 4.86.4 of a contribution may have ten commented out headers, that would need to be included in the source for fair distribution, but I think that this is probably a fair price. It has never caused me to skip using a free script.

I think that addressing this issue at the start, could help prevent somebody from getting their feelings hurt, somewhere down the line. Heck, I’ll bring this idea home with a personal example. Earlier this month I spent a day messing around, and created a little musical keyboard app, that I shared with the community. I am very pleased that two other developers here, Protocol, and Intrigued, have added on to it. I was hoping that might happen. They each, probably spent as much or more time as I did, working on this project. I certainly feel that they deserve lots of credit. At the same time, I think that it would be nice, even if it goes through several more transmutations, if my name were to appear somewhere in the source code. Now Protocol and Intrigued have given me much more recognition than that. They have even left my Acme-Tek nameplate on it. I appreciate it, but that is way more than is necessary. I don’t think that I can be faulted too much for putting my nametag on it initially, but I don’t have any problem with somebody taking it off either. If somebody is smart enough to figure out how to make money with it, I say “more power to them�. I’m not looking for a share of the money, but it would be nice to know that my name appeared somewhere in the source code.

I’m using my little keyboard contribution as an example. I released that one free, with no strings. I don’t mean to change it. I’m just trying to illustrate my point.

I hope that my comments haven’t made me sound too selfish. I would like to see this work, so I’m trying to identify some of the ‘worst case’ scenarios, and trying to think about how they might best be avoided.

[Corey]

Hi Jim. Yes I agree rules, will be good in this case.

1) The problem is that our collaboration system needs to be based upon our forum user database or you really have no way of knowing who you are interacting with. This would be no problem if I had time to script something but I don't.

2) Yes I agree. I don't see any reason why we can't just go:

-- Welcome to Key Buddy
-- This project is a collaboration : www.indigorose.com/forums?2304
-- Original creator : Jim S. 12/14/2004 www.jims.com
-- Images and keycodes by Protocol : 12/16/2004 www.protocol.com
-- Humor and samples by Tigger : 12/18/2004 www.geocaching.com
-- Wisdom by Worm : 12/22/2004 www.worm.com
-- Enjoy!!!

Nothing wrong with that. Remember, the comments are only in the source. S'cool. Now as to the project itself, Check out the about screen in Adobe Photoshop sometime. I don't see any problem with listing developers in an about screen, it's a common practice.

I think it's important not to restrict projects to non-commercial. Let's say for example 4 people collaborate on a photo sharing application, there's no reason that one couldn't market that from their site and share with the others on a quarterly basis via paypal transfer or whatever. This would work well on getting developers to collaborate on developing plug-ins. For example, if there's a group of 3 who are good at VB, they could collaborate on a family of plug-ins (such as MIDI!!!) and we would be happy to add them to our add-ons database, etc.

Obviously one has to take a very zen approach to collaborating just as in other aspects of life, i.e. you have to trust a stranger. But that's the whole benefit of not taking this outside the forums, at least you *know* who you are dealing with to some extent with regulars. I can think of a list of 40 people in here who I would trust to reimburse me accordingly from their marketing of a collaborative plug-in (if you VB wizards ever need killer graphics for a commercial plug-in, I'd probably be able to help) including yourself Jim.

I think there's risks here but I also think there's some potential for good things to happen. I for one would do *anything* to get some new AMS plug-ins out so I'm looking at that as the big picture, although obviously this whole idea is mostly aimed at non-commercial .apt and .apz collaborations...

[JimS]

OK, I have an idea for a co-op project that is bigger than I am. I think that it is possible, and if done correctly could be fairly popular. It would be designed to help make it easy to add tests and quizzes to an AMS project. It would have a basic skeleton, to which additional modules could be designed and added. One module might be for adding multiple choice questions that use a radio button. One module might add multiple choice with a checkbox so that more than one answer can be selected. Another module could be for fill in the blank style questions. A module would consist of some page code, and some functions.

The underlying logic, or skeleton, might use an INI file(s) to handle customization. An additional ‘wizard’ application might be built to help with creating the proper INI file.

In this way, a developer who wanted to add a quiz to their project would tell the wizard that the quiz should be 10 questions long, the first five multiple choice, and the remainder fill in the blank, it would then spit out the appropriate INI file. The developer would include the skeleton logic, and the necessary modules, and the quiz logic, would essentially be done for them. Of course, they will need to adjust the look and feel to tailor it for their project, but the lion’s share of the logic would be in place.

At the moment, I don’t really have any need for this type of thing, but it is something that seems to be asked for with some regularity. I had been thinking some about trying to create this on my own, but feel it might be a little too complex to create by myself, only to give away. If the work could be shared among a few of us, it would probably have a higher chance of getting finished. If anyone is interested in working on this, has any comments, or a better way to do it, post here at the forum, I’d like to discuss it with you.

[Corey]

It's a very good idea. Hey now I'm thinking, what about starting a Yahoo briefcase for this, or a Google group. They have built in tools for user based sharing, messaging, etc. Any thoughts?

WOW. I just did a search for "collaborate" at http://sourceforge.net. Tons of great stuff. I'm checking through it now...

[JimS]

Great idea about not limiting this to non-commercial projects. I hadn’t even thought of that. If this could be the impetus to create a collaboration between your artistic skills, Worm’s programming skills, and Protocol’s music skills that resulted in a commercial plug-in, better or quicker than what any of you could produce on your own, that would be a good thing, a very good thing.

I believe that we are all lifted by an increase in the number of add-ons that are available.

Yes, Source Forge is a gem. Your Google and Yahoo ideas are pretty good too.

I do have another thought on this. I think that it is important to differentiate this from Intrigue’s site www.amsuser.com
If this is just about sharing free code for AMS, I think the existing forums, and Intrigue’s site has that about covered.

I’m not sure how it should be worded to reflect the difference. If it is restricted to cooperative projects, my little ‘Key Buddy’ project couldn’t have been included until I talked someone into adding something to it. Maybe the Key Buddy project doesn’t really belong there?

Really Corey, I’m not trying to make this difficult, just passing on my 2 cents. It will be nice to hear the ideas and opinions from the other members. It shall be interesting to see where this leads.

[Corey]

I definitely appreciate everything you are adding. Yes it will be interesting. Let's see what gets added to this thread and I'll go through the stuff at Sourceforge (anyone else checking it out please let me know if you see anything good there) and then I'm sure we can come up with something cool. Don't get me wrong, I'm open to all ideas. I'm just speaking off the top of my head, but I'm not closing any doors. Just looking at it critically, as always.

[JimS]

If we can use this forum for trying to enlist others to help develop commercial applications, I’ll have a couple of different ideas to try to float.

I don’t want to convolute Protocol’s original idea. Maybe we are talking about two new areas. One for cooperative commercial projects, the other strictly for free exchange? I don’t know. It will be nice when other members chime in on this. It does sure seem to have possibilities.

What a great way to bring in the new year.

[JimS]

??? I apologize Protocol & Intrigued, I didn’t mean to highjack and morph your ideas. I guess it was a slow night, so I went a little overboard and gave a dime worth of my ideas. I had hoped that several members might add their ideas, and we’d see what stuck.

I’m interested in learning more about your vision, and the direction you would like this to move in.

[Corey]

I'll make it a combo. Once I get some time I'll look at getting this going, this week was too busy... Soon.