Ben,
When I first got the urge to write another script editor
(Constellation), I discussed it with Chipp Walters, Chris Bohnert,
and Dan Shafer. I also chatted with Richard Gaskin about it. The
first part of that conversation centered around doing Constellation
as an open source project.
I think you are right about the nature of team work in the Rev
environs, but also the nature of the Rev developer is part of the
reason that we don't have a "traditional" open source movement within
our community. Developers normally disagree on UI, but Rev developers
disagree on UI and workflow both. I think this is because we are Mac,
Windows and Linux users. This makes collaborating difficult. You have
to have a tall dog in the group to say: "This is the way we're going
to do it."
And then there's the part you highlighted: the technical nuts and
bolts of versioning, for which there are tools (Chipp's Magic Carpet,
for one). I think it may be the non-coding part of team work that
gums up the works IMHO. One way around that is for one person to take
a project to a certain point where a commitment has been made as to
direction and then the following becomes less like herding cats. The
"Burn the boats!" approach it's sometimes called.
That's kind of what I thought I'd do with Constellation. Get it going
and then call in reinforcements. My initial focus group didn't think
it was a realistic idea due to the size of the Rev developer customer
base and because the technology itself was not "mainstream" enough or
the "darling" of the right group of techies. I think they were right.
We do have our own way of doing things "openly" though, and it seems
to work. My code is not locked, for instance, and most other Rev
commercial products aren't either. I have bought product from Key Ray
and Chipp. Any time I have a project where I am getting paid, I'm
more than happy to allocate some of the project money to code,
libraries and products that make a specific contribution to the
project. As someone said before...we exchange money with each other a
lot.
Also, in open source environs, SOMEBODY puts up some money SOMEWHERE.
IBM, for example, pays a lot of people to contribute to the open
source community because it is in its best interests. Others donate
time because they know they will get speaker or consultant fees for
the knowledge they will accrue in the process of working for "free."
I think you get my drift here.
I think the way we're doing it is good, but at some point, the
idealogical, technical and market forces WILL converge or become
favorable enough to support a more traditional open source movement
that includes Transcript and/or Revolution.
SO...it's good you bring it up. Maybe that day of convergence is today.
Best,
Jerry
http://www.daniels-mara.com/products/constellation.htm
Scripts and properties in a tabbed editor! Video tutorials!
On Oct 20, 2005, at 7:43 PM, Ben Fisher wrote:
Well, I guess Constellation beat me to it... I had also been
working on a
similar script editing interface. It looks pretty nice though.
Just a few comments...
It seems like a lot of the plug-ins and tools for Revolution
lately are
being sold. There is nothing wrong with this, in fact most of the
time these
products look nicer and are easier to use.
However, I am always more attracted to free open-source projects,
not just
because of the price, but also because of the spirit. Developers
helping
each other, one of the reasons I subscribe to this list. If I download
open-source code, I can contribute to the project. All fellow
developers can
profit from my contributions, and not just the few who can afford
to buy.
Perhaps Revolution is partly at fault: that stacks (not being text
files)
are not as easy to be developed by a team. Or maybe I just belong to a
different generation of coders?
After thriving off of free software for so long, it felt kind of
awkward
for me to spend the money to even upgrade my version of Revolution.
Paying
money just to get the language? I'm sure many other potential Rev
developers
are discouraged by the same type of feelings.
I propose that a central website be created, full of code from the
Rev
universe. More structured than a wiki, files would be uploaded into
categories and directories, but the whole database could be quickly
searched. Most importantly, there would be a section composed of
tools and
utilities all completely free and open source. I know websites like
this
already exist, but it would be so much cooler if there were one
authoritative Rev Source.
-Ben Fisher
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