Open sourcing pouet.net ?
category: offtopic [glöplog]
after reading back and forth. i think opensourcing the v1 isn't a bad idea. people can contribute. somebody gotta manage the ideas and merge all work. this is the coders task. i don't think there's any other problem. but hey...
let gargaj finish the v2 first, so there's still a nice working copy beside the "playground" then.
let gargaj finish the v2 first, so there's still a nice working copy beside the "playground" then.
The weird thing is: Pouet is not that complicated. A bone fide hardcore web guy should be able to recreate most of its features in a week or two (too bold? fine: make it a month), including the translation process to a less-than-insane db schema.
Instead people spend many years laboring and in-fighting over barely maintainable legacy code that should not matter in the first place. Yes, it's only a hobby and things can (and always do) take more time than anticipated, but what's happened so far is just baffling and keeps getting worse because now it's not only about an ordinary development hell situation, but also about ego-shit and my-doing-is-beter-than-your-doing fights.
I'm mostly fine with pouet being an old, odd and cranky website for an old, odd and mostly cranky scene. I would only change 2 important things: the admin stuff and the prod page layout/features (which is really the heart of it all) and then twiddle my thumbs and wait for Demozoo Jesus to take me to the promised land. :]
Instead people spend many years laboring and in-fighting over barely maintainable legacy code that should not matter in the first place. Yes, it's only a hobby and things can (and always do) take more time than anticipated, but what's happened so far is just baffling and keeps getting worse because now it's not only about an ordinary development hell situation, but also about ego-shit and my-doing-is-beter-than-your-doing fights.
I'm mostly fine with pouet being an old, odd and cranky website for an old, odd and mostly cranky scene. I would only change 2 important things: the admin stuff and the prod page layout/features (which is really the heart of it all) and then twiddle my thumbs and wait for Demozoo Jesus to take me to the promised land. :]
i think nobody would really be all with Gargaj or Analogue. the only reason people is binarized is because of awful sentences like this:
for one hand because (and this is a brutal truth), in most people's opinion what Analogue want is pretty much irrelevant. see Charlie's post right above to see why)
in the other, because you cannot behave unilaterally and not expect to be called nazi.
it's that simple really as that. analogue's ideas and intentions might be good. but obviously that is not enough when dealing with things than involve thousands of people.
things are being discussed now more calmly behind the curtains, seems? glad to hear so
Quote:
That's exactly my goal, I cleaned up the credentials mess yesterday, I want the code to be on a neutral repo, with a bunch of maintainers (Gargaj included) that will work on it.
for one hand because (and this is a brutal truth), in most people's opinion what Analogue want is pretty much irrelevant. see Charlie's post right above to see why)
in the other, because you cannot behave unilaterally and not expect to be called nazi.
it's that simple really as that. analogue's ideas and intentions might be good. but obviously that is not enough when dealing with things than involve thousands of people.
things are being discussed now more calmly behind the curtains, seems? glad to hear so
(daaaaaaamn i want to be able to edit posts, i fucking fail to write in english correctly every single time i try it. edit button please - and i don't give a fuck it its development was open source or not, man)
on the bright side. the website is still up. :P
Reading this thread superficially confirms my (bad) impression of some of the posters. You really ought to learn a bit about politeness, keeping calm, not insulting people and respecting human rights.
.. Human rights?
The Danish Underpants Brigade is working on an alternative solution to the current proposals, stay tuned!
I always knew pouet had too much pants on.
Quote:
Instead people spend many years laboring and in-fighting over barely maintainable legacy code that should not matter in the first place. Yes, it's only a hobby and things can (and always do) take more time than anticipated, but what's happened so far is just baffling and keeps getting worse because now it's not only about an ordinary development hell situation, but also about ego-shit and my-doing-is-beter-than-your-doing fights.
And then some people get fed up, and pick a similar project (demozoo) instead of contributing to / creating the "supawesomedemopouetzoo v3.0" pouet could have been, had people only joined forces...
I also agree that open-sourcing pouet 2.0, or even 0.9 wouldn't help immediately, but hell, in regular development you do code reviews and more pairs of eyes see more, so the chance some design flaw or error gets noticed rises significantly... Plus what Bombe said.
Oh. And ponies ;)
iq: You can always use mog's Preflight script to get a live preview of your posts until "someone" implements a proper Edit/preview.
step 1) THE POUET FOUNDATION
step 2) ROADMAP
step 3) OPENSOURCE
step 4) ????
step 5) PROFIT!
step 2) ROADMAP
step 3) OPENSOURCE
step 4) ????
step 5) PROFIT!
Pouebuntu?
Pouezilla?
Pouezilla?
i think it'll kill the site to start a clean version 3 - just see where version 2 ended.
instead i'd propose something like this:
- let version 1 stay as it is
- build some kind of api (some of it is there in terms of xml-output and scene.org logon)
- let people build widgets, facebook integration or whatever they want on top of the pouet.net db
as a person who has initiated a lot of community sites, i'd say - stay away from migrating the database. it'll kill your enthusiasm in short time (unless you're into migrating stuff :-). instead build on top of what-ever infrastructure you may have. looking at pouet, the infrastructure is working. people can add stuff and view stuff. what's more to want?
instead i'd propose something like this:
- let version 1 stay as it is
- build some kind of api (some of it is there in terms of xml-output and scene.org logon)
- let people build widgets, facebook integration or whatever they want on top of the pouet.net db
as a person who has initiated a lot of community sites, i'd say - stay away from migrating the database. it'll kill your enthusiasm in short time (unless you're into migrating stuff :-). instead build on top of what-ever infrastructure you may have. looking at pouet, the infrastructure is working. people can add stuff and view stuff. what's more to want?
My bad - it's still working.
slow clap gloom...
you're not helping
you're not helping
the top submitters thingy is really awesome
Few short things:
Rasmus: I tested migration and it works (fully automated). Compared to the clusterfuck of migrating E107 to Wordpress, this is a breeze, although a very intricate breeze.
Dubmood: if you want to discuss moderation principles, I'm all for it as long as we can do it in a civilized manner, and yes, I know it's a touchy subject, but I stand by any decision I made as an admin.
And the big one:
Okay so about that:
I didn't want to discuss opensourcing, but not because I'm against it: I didn't want it because I think it's the wrong thing to spend time on right now, instead of just sitting down and working on the actual code of the site. Everyone knows: any opensource project is only as good as the first revision it has, because otherwise it gets sidetracked into petty self-serving upgrades before it gets robust enough to have e.g. a plugin API or enough dox that allow people to add things without breaking it. So I think without that sort of important baseline, an empty github repo is just a waste of everyone's time. Again, this is a principle thing that I was willing to shrug off as my stubbornness, given a well rounded discussion, which DIDN'T HAPPEN.
And yes, as KB said, yes, code review is very important. But I don't think opensource was the only way to do it - I talked e.g. to both dfox and Ziphoid about it, they've seen respective parts of the code I didn't feel strongly or confident about, they gave their input, and I took steps accordingly - and yes, sometimes we disagreed on a more fundamental level. Of course when ready for launching, I probably would've asked a few more people to take a look at it (and yes ps you were on the list, you know I <3 you even though I still occasionally feel like punching you in the dick for the mess you left <3). And yes, that's a subjective pick of people, but it's because I prefer showing it to people who have a context, who have an insight of what am I trying to do, and so on.
But you know what? Here. That's how much "against opensource" I am.
Feel free to do what the fuck ever you want with it, because it seems I won't. See, I realized that I would have a hard time working with someone who shoves me out the door at the first disagreement over something IRRELEVANT. I'm sorry, I know it's prolly just me, but I think enough of us spend time doing dayjobs under triggerhappy management who take things into wrong directions and we have no chance to follow, but at least there's a salary at the end of the road somewhere, and I don't need this shit in my free time.
Analogue, you stormed back and failed basic project management in less than 48 hours.
Rasmus: I tested migration and it works (fully automated). Compared to the clusterfuck of migrating E107 to Wordpress, this is a breeze, although a very intricate breeze.
Dubmood: if you want to discuss moderation principles, I'm all for it as long as we can do it in a civilized manner, and yes, I know it's a touchy subject, but I stand by any decision I made as an admin.
And the big one:
Quote:
BoyC: Gargaj let the doubt float around, really.
Quote:we can come back to talk about whether opensource 2.0 is a good idea.
Okay so about that:
I didn't want to discuss opensourcing, but not because I'm against it: I didn't want it because I think it's the wrong thing to spend time on right now, instead of just sitting down and working on the actual code of the site. Everyone knows: any opensource project is only as good as the first revision it has, because otherwise it gets sidetracked into petty self-serving upgrades before it gets robust enough to have e.g. a plugin API or enough dox that allow people to add things without breaking it. So I think without that sort of important baseline, an empty github repo is just a waste of everyone's time. Again, this is a principle thing that I was willing to shrug off as my stubbornness, given a well rounded discussion, which DIDN'T HAPPEN.
And yes, as KB said, yes, code review is very important. But I don't think opensource was the only way to do it - I talked e.g. to both dfox and Ziphoid about it, they've seen respective parts of the code I didn't feel strongly or confident about, they gave their input, and I took steps accordingly - and yes, sometimes we disagreed on a more fundamental level. Of course when ready for launching, I probably would've asked a few more people to take a look at it (and yes ps you were on the list, you know I <3 you even though I still occasionally feel like punching you in the dick for the mess you left <3). And yes, that's a subjective pick of people, but it's because I prefer showing it to people who have a context, who have an insight of what am I trying to do, and so on.
But you know what? Here. That's how much "against opensource" I am.
Feel free to do what the fuck ever you want with it, because it seems I won't. See, I realized that I would have a hard time working with someone who shoves me out the door at the first disagreement over something IRRELEVANT. I'm sorry, I know it's prolly just me, but I think enough of us spend time doing dayjobs under triggerhappy management who take things into wrong directions and we have no chance to follow, but at least there's a salary at the end of the road somewhere, and I don't need this shit in my free time.
Analogue, you stormed back and failed basic project management in less than 48 hours.
*no chance to argue
regardless of who is right or wrong,
<- that pretty much summed up what i was going to say.
analogue: i hope you're going to be sticking around and doing all the work on pouet yourself for the next 5-10 years.
after witnessing your approach to running a hobbyist project worked on by people donating their free time and skills to work on it for the good of the community - when its probably one of the more boring, less creative and interesting uses of that time that they could find, with the least personal gain possible - i cant imagine many people are going to be wanting to help you out.
Quote:
Analogue, you stormed back and failed basic project management in less than 48 hours.
<- that pretty much summed up what i was going to say.
analogue: i hope you're going to be sticking around and doing all the work on pouet yourself for the next 5-10 years.
after witnessing your approach to running a hobbyist project worked on by people donating their free time and skills to work on it for the good of the community - when its probably one of the more boring, less creative and interesting uses of that time that they could find, with the least personal gain possible - i cant imagine many people are going to be wanting to help you out.
not to mention many of those people have seen what a total dickwad you are when it comes to being openminded for alternative routes. which kind of is the point of opensource too :)
Quote:
Everyone knows: any opensource project is only as good as the first revision it has, because otherwise it gets sidetracked into petty self-serving upgrades before it gets robust enough to have e.g. a plugin API or enough dox that allow people to add things without breaking it.
No. That's just wrong.
What kusma said. An open source project is only as good as the people working actively on it. The state of the first release doesn't matter much.
That aside I must say this got out of hand quickly.
That aside I must say this got out of hand quickly.
