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I have already built a site from scratch. It has banning, PM, comments, etc. The PMs and comments are done using markdown (like SO).
There are pros and cons for writing my own or using another software. But some cons keeping me from using another forum software is
Multiple Logins: One for the site, one for separate forums.
Need to Customization code: I'll need to change the toolbar in the forum software so I can access pages on the regular site.
Look consistency: It may look drastically different from my site even after applying lots of css changes.
Banning and User consistency. Users may be ban on site or on forums but not the other. users may select a different or multiple usernames on the forum instead of being forced to use the same username on both site and forum.
Should I write my own forum code or should I use something already written? What are some reasons for or against writing my own and using forum software?
The heuristic I tend to use is that if at least two or three of these are true, it's probably worth writing yourself:
It's one of your core business offerings.
You have the time, money and resource to specify, design, build, test and support it.
The amount of time you would need to spend evaluating, prototyping with, integrating and customising off-the-shelf packages is near to or greater than the amount of time you estimate that it would take you to build your own.
The off-the-shelf packages do not have good support. By 'good support' I mean that you can raise an issue, and be assured that somebody will look into your specific issue and provide a fix if it is found to be a bug.
None of the off-the-shelf packages meet your quality bar for security, performance, quality, etc.
You are not writing open-source software, and the off-the-shelf packages have a viral open-source license; be particularly wary of AGPL and other similar licenses.
One of the oft-quoted articles about this is from Joel Spolsky. Lately he seems to have just been writing flame-bait, but this was one of his worthwhile early posts.
Note that you can also take a combination approach, and use some pre-built things such as recaptcha and gravatar even from within a bespoke solution.
Writing your own forum software is nowadays in almost no case useful. The available software is highly customizable. For example, you can create your own skin to fit with the layout of your website. You can integrate the login with that of your website.
Writing your own forum is so complicated that the quality of your own software will be much lower than of something like phpBB or vBulletin. And dont forget the security bugs, the mentioned software has been reviewed by a huge amount of people. Until you reach the same quality (functionality, stability, security, etc), your website will be outdated and your forum software with it.
Once again, the current forum software is so adaptable and extensible, that it doesnt make sense to make your own.
I think it highly depends on your needs for the forum.
First off, is the forum itself an essential part of your website's function? Or is it more of a 'support' style forum?
If it's essential to your daily business, then it makes more sense to write your own - or at least highly customize an existing package.
If what you need instead, however, is a vehicle for customer support, or some sort of generic community revolving around your site, I might recommend looking at a completely different vehicle: something like http://getsatisfaction.com, or a Google Group, or some such.
(I'm in no way affiliated with either of those sites).
Regardless of the solution you choose, I'd recommend you give some serious thought to how essential the forum is. If it's not, then I wouldn't waste too much time configuring/setting one up. Instead, focus on what your site's main draw is, and spend the bulk of your time on improving that. You and your userbase will be much happier with that, IMO.
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I have a program I wrote and I have been encouraged by folks to release it into public.
What would be the best way to go about it? Just dump it on a public site and hope for the best?
How much criticism will come (on the standards, decisions made etc...) and how best to prepare for that. I have been the sole developer for this app for about two years.
And how much difference does the license (GPL, MIT etc...) practically make?
Any experiences?
A license is a good idea, even if you don't care what people do with the code - most of the time people will happily take code "as is" and if it doesn't do what they want they will just throw it away - but you never know when some idiot might try to sue you because they burned their mouth drinking a hot coffee while reading your code. You may also wish to restrict usage (derivative works etc) where someone else makes profit out of your hard work. Fron the other side of the fence, people who might take and use your product/code like to know where they stand with regard to use/copying/distribution. By asking that your name stays on the code, you can also ensure that you get vcredit for the work, and that any improvements/suggestions that happen in the wild can make their way back to you.
If you just want to give away the code wihtout much ongoing development, then a great place is CodeProject - you can release the application and write a small article describing it, and then it's up to you to decide if/when you will post updates.
If you want other people to collaborate then there are plenty of open-source websites that will support this approach.
As for criticism, you are likely to get a few mails from people who need tech support, or who want to suggest extra features. Most people are very polite though. If you wrote the program for yourself, there is a good chance that when it gets into the wild you will discover all the bits that have to be used in a particular way to work well, and all the additional options that you don't care about but which the product needs to make it applicable to a wider audience - you can get sucked into a lot of support work if you're not careful. Ultimately don't be afraid to say "no" to someone if they ask for something you don't want to support - it's your program and your time after all.
The main thing is to have fun :-)
Using a well-known, well-tested open-source license will make it easier for your users to know where they stand with regard to your code. The worst thing you can do is release your code without a license. No license means no use, since in most jurisdictions software is automatically copyrighted with no right of use or reuse.
If you don't want the project to wither away from lack of interest, you'll need to get it in front of developers. Releasing it at a large open source project site (such as SourceForge, GitHub, or Google Code) will help you get that visibility, and will provide a lot of infrastructure for managing your project. The more you do, the better the chances that others will find it, try it, and use it.
CodeProject is a good suggestion- but it really depends on the platform. Typically users of each major development platform flock to other sites for their Open Source extensions or apps. For example, lots of developers on the Microsoft stack look for things in the Visual Studio Gallery or on CodePlex. SourgeForge obviously has its own religious following as well. I would suggest promoting your new app on a site where you would go to find something like it. The Google page rank of whatever public site you use to host it will also impact how many people find it and ultimately how much criticism (constructive or otherwise) you get on the project. Licensing is always a good plan. It has been my experience that each major open source collaboration site tends to learn towards a specific licensing mechanism, so I would just do what seems to be the most popular if you don't have any specific requirements.
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Is there a reason not to use wordpress and develop your own blogging system?
Same goes with Durpal and our own CMS.
I am wondering since my marketing women disagrees with me that we should develop our own in house solutions because there are better solutions. She also says that we might even loose time and money on it since it is our responsibility to maintain it and solve bugs and we can't throw it on wordpress' dev team for example.
I don't want to invest time in something that might not worth it but I would really like to make more money.
Does it depend on the site's scale and visitors?
What are the factors of choosing one over anohter?
There's rarely a right answer to this fight. It's a question that has raged on since software was sold "off the shelf". Many pros are also cons.
Pro 3rd-party:
They cover a vast number of features
They (hopefully) look after security
Open source means other people can fix your platform.
You get improvements without having to work on your own platform
They have existed a lot longer than your newly conceived project. A lot bugs have been driven out.
Anti 3rd-party:
They don't have all the answers for every project
By extension, it may take you longer to hack in what you need than it would take to just start afresh
Unless you're using it exactly as intended, performance isn't going to be as good as it could be with a custom-built
Larger target for hackers and script kiddies
As they're older, they can be locked (via legacy support) into some bad habits (Drupal and Wordpress certainly have enough)
So if you're doing a blog, unless there are features or platform issues, I'd seriously consider WordPress. If you only needed a very simple blog attached to a much larger system that was completely non-blog, I'd probably write my own as part of that system.
Just to blur the lines, the modern frameworks (Cake, Symphony, Django, Ruby, etc) handle lots of the security, database, usability and let you develop the application without having to worry too much about anything. You get exactly what you want and you get it fast but it probably won't be as polished (eg for blogging) as WordPress.
Good question, +1 :)
My Opinion:
Whatever the scenario, if there is a solution out there that meets your needs, it's open source and your team as the knowledge to make any specific change it might need to meet your purpose, it is probably a good choice to use it. It will save you time(time is money) that you could use to other tasks.
From a developer perspective, it is way more appealing to create something from scratch.
You just have to keep in mind that this is not something you are doing as hobbie, you need to have a product out there as fast as possible, with as few errors as possible, with all the features that the users would expect.
Really it comes down to this:
How much time/money would it require to roll your own?
Does the open source solution you're considering have the features you need (and do they work*)?
How would maintenance of the two solutions compare?
Some "common" answers:
A lot, particularly if you need (or want) a lot of features.
Most of the mature systems have some kind of plugin system and heaps of functionality. Generally if you want it they got it, perhaps some minor tweaks would be necessary.
In-house code may need some time to mature, after this they will probably be about the same. If in-house code is low on features then it may be easier to maintain.
She also says that we might even loose time and money on it since it is our responsibility to maintain it and solve bugs
How is that worse than an in-house solution exactly?
This really depends on your business model.
If you are selling services using an existing open source product can make a lot of sense. (And by the way, you probably can get the wordpress people to work for you - you'll have to pay of course, but you also have to pay your in-house team)
If this blogging system is only for your own usage it makes even more sense to use an existing solution, and the open source solutions stand out in that area because there are a lot of people available that could code some custom solutions for you.
Only if you are actually selling the software the situation with open source becomes a bit harder to get a grip on money-wise.
Our host Joel Spolsky has written an interesting article on this subject.
Yes, there are a lot of reasons. Being open-source doesn't mean it'll automatically be well written.
However, sometimes it really fits your business model because you need to ship something fast, usable, not too specific in requirements and already tested by millions of people. In this case, doesn't make sense to produce something in house.
If you want to convince her of using Wordpress instead of building one, show the arguments on time and money that would be spent in trying to write from scratch instead of using an open source solution. Don't forget to show some live examples from big companies that are using Wordpress (check the official website).
For most companies, developing your own blogging solution is the equivalent of developing your own version of the machine that mixes the tarmac to make the road that leads to your office.
The only exception is if you want to get into the road-building business. But that's a hard and competitive business, an established stable market with a lot of capital requirements, not something to wander into.
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For an university project on usability I'm looking for an open source project that is useful but hardly usable. My group would do a complete usability review and give recommendations over a period of approximately 3 months.
Of course this is no purely altruistic idea and the best-case-scenario would be:
Our recommendations get implemented thus we can include an review of the improved version in our paper.
Are such one-shot usability reviews useful for (and wanted by) the average developer or are they just "better than nothing".
Do you know (actively developed) projects with poor usability that we could contribute to?
Besides sourceforge's "Help Wanted" and openusability.org do you know where to turn to?
Regards,
FGK
Update:
We are looking primarily for an end-user application because we want to include things like hallway testing with potential users.
(Thanks to Pekka Gaiser for raising the question)
2nd update: accepted answer:
Thank you all for your help. I think we'll go for libpurple and its graphical incarnations. The Linux and Windows versions of pidgin are truly a mess... :-)
I would suggest the GIMP - it's a very functional photoshop alternative, but it's not without its confusions...
Instead of choosing to help a project that is already bad, why not look at something heavily used?
There are many web based applications that may (or may not) benefit from a usability review - I'm thinking of things like Wordpress (in fact that's pretty much what I'm thinking of purely because I use it a lot).
It would be interesting to see what a group of "experts" think about Wordpress and how they would improve the UI - purely because any improvements made have the potential of helping/improving the experience for vast numbers of people.
Whether or not the Wordpress team specifically would implement any of your suggestions or changes is an unknown but even having a discussion and recommendations is most likely beneficial to the community.
Perhaps take a selection of projects (again I'm thinking web based because web usability is more defined [in my mind] - CMS/Blogging Software: Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress? Or E-Commerce applications? Forums?
Send out some "feeler" messages to the projects mailing lists to try and get an idea of whether or not they'd be open to the idea of help. I can't imagine many projects would be against the idea? Actually implementing changes may well be more difficult.
If you don't want to look at web applications maybe look at some of the "media" apps. Boxee or XBMC generally or Miro.
None of the projects I've mentioned are neccesarily bad (usability wise) but they're things I'm interested in so, from a slightly selfish point of view, it'd be beneficial to me (and I think a chunk of others) if you looked at something with a large user base.
Anyway, good luck.
Please, please, choose Audacity! That UI could be improved so much it's not funny...
How about Pidgin? It's a relatively popular open source project (I use it all the time) that is fraught with (in my opinion anyway) lots of usability mistakes, both minor and significant.
Usability reviews are ALWAYS useful, as well as being better than nothing.
Do I know actively developed open source projects with poor usability? can fish be shot in a barrel? :D look at the big projects. there's always lots of controversy about them (especially their versions for osx, since osx users tend to have a higher standard). I'd suggest gimp as the prodigal one, but I hear they're making great strides there. or maybe pidgin? I use the os x version (Adium) and the windows one and the contrast is brutal.
that said, the big projects probably won't really care about your input. some of the devs might pay attention, but as a whole, you probably wont steer that titanic unless they've already been spending a lot of time talking about this.
my advice? go on an ubuntu forum and ask the users there what they hate the most about their software. that'll give you good feedback because ubuntu is heavily used, which generally means there's going to be a conversation about this.
either way, if you want to see your recommendations implemented, you'll have to open up a dialog with the devs. you'll need at least one that believes in your cause to implement your thoughts (it may not be merged into the main trunk, but it'll at least be implemented in his branch)
good luck!
I have no idea whether they'd accept your input, but I think it would be interesting to compare KDE version 3 and 4. As a developer, I find version 4 all but unusable (and am switching to Gnome as a result). However, for the vast majority of users, their "award-winning" changes may have been an actual improvement.
If you want to see your changes implemented, be really sure to approach only projects with a high activity rate and people prepared to invest some serious time - you will need very motivated developers if you want to see (possibly fundamental) changes implemented. No matter which project you choose, be prepared for a lot of sometimes tooth-grinding work.
When thinking about web apps, Wordpress comes to mind. The back-end is crap (even though a lot of effort is being put in it), I hear people everywhere complaining about it. It is a very big name which is good for you and the probability to see suggestions actually implemented.
I recommend RIDE -- and IDE for developing robot framework tests. This tool is fairly young and has many classic mistakes, a few good features, and some good ideas with weak implementations. I think it would make an excellent candidate for a usability review.
I make this suggestion not because I want to point out the flaws in RIDE (after all, I was a developer on that project for a short period of time so it might show off some of my flaws), but because I think a) it has the potential for the study to help improve the product, and b) I think the tool makes some common mistakes you and your group could learn from.
It also has the advantage of being cross platform, so it should be suitable no matter what platform you're interested in.
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I've got a framework for PHP that I've developed for about 3 weeks total, but it's quite ready to be released ... if I choose to do so. In this economy I cannot just take what I have done and release it for free and feel just (because I need the money it could garner), and yet I am torn by my appreciation for open source projects. I want to eat and I want to share as open source. I'm sure some understand my conundrum right off the bat.
As an example of the pros and cons of my project, here's a very quick comparison against CodeIgniter. My framework is 10x faster at the base speed (blank CI versus the basic demo of mine) and gets upto 20-30x faster elsewhere. Yet, my framework lacks many things that CI has like advanced routing (with regex, or named parameters) and ORM. If I was to compare it to a similar framework in another language, I'd call my work the Sinatra, or Ramaze, of PHP.
I need some extra income. This is a flat-out fact, and yet I don't want it to be a strictly commercial project.
I like open source, and I want to contribute my own work. Yes, I know frameworks for PHP are a dime a dozen, but I think I might have something here. So, I don't want to let my work go entirely.
So I remain torn. Licensing can help, but only when people are honest. I don't believe in putting "DRM" into my software. Yet, I don't have enough features to say, "If you donate/pay you'll get X other features!" and make a benefit to this.
How do I (can I) sell this? How do I promote it and release it as open-source for free uses? How do I license my work adequately for these purposes?
What is your general policy or tips for projects like this? Especially when you want a cut of the profit someone would get using your project commercially. What licenses, restrictions, etc, do you think would work in this model?
I appreciate any answers which might help me to figure out what to do.
Edit:
To clarify on what I'm thinking, let me add this: this is my pet project. It's something that I made because I felt its lack in the market of PHP frameworks, and have been maintaining it for my own works. But, unlike most my work, I would really like to make this public. I want people to see it, try it, use it, and work with it.
However, I've put in enough off-hours time into this for it to be just given away. I appreciate the open source model, but I don't see how I can just donate some 80+ hours of work for free for a speculative increase in my "reputation" within the software world. PHP frameworks are a dime a dozen and I think I've made a good one, but I'm sure there are just as many others who've done the same. Mine may be better, but it's got an equal or greater chance of being average to poor.
I'd love to release my pet project to the world under an open source license. But, I'd rather someone not take my work and make software that nets some $30k in profits, and not give me a small slice of it. I'm not being greedy--I wouldn't care if it were only $100 for a profit that large.
I am simply trying to figure out how, when, or if I even should, monetize the work that I've done for myself.
I feel that if you actually believe you have started something big, release it to the open source world. If it get's adopted and becomes a standard for many, this in itself will open many more profit making opportunities for you as the creator/inventor. The biggest potential for you to make big money (in my opinion) is to be a major player/founder of a big initiative.
To be absolutely frank, you probably have an overinflated idea of how good your framework is and how ready it is to be released (in any form).
Firstly, you said it took you three weeks to develop. Well if you can do it in three weeks, so can a bunch of other people and that's a fact.
Secondly, release of a commercial product would require having a license (count on a lawyer for this one), writing documentation, building a Website to promote the product, having some means of payment, getting a suitable legal structure to sell software, insurances (generally speaking you'd need some sort of professional indemnity--open source is generally provided without indemnity; commercial software is different), bookkeeping, accounting and so on.
Third, it's PHP so source code protection will be an issue. My advice would be to treat this as a social rather than technical problem, meaning if someone is going to steal your software, there's not a whole lot you can do. More to the point, don't hurt (or even inconvenience) your legitimate users for fear of pirates and thieves.
Lastly, one of the advantages of open source is that you can get community effort in development. You lose that as soon as you go commercial. Even if you go dual license, you can't take someone's GPLed (for example) code contribution and release it under a commercial license.
You may need money but selling software is generally a terrible way of doing it. A longer term view would be to have you build a profile and a name for yourself by people adopting your framework and the best way to make that happen is for it to be open source. Linux may be free but I can guarantee you Linus Torvalds earns a healthy income from his efforts.
If the framework is indeed good, and sees a minimum adoption after it is released, you might be able to land some PHP consulting work.
For me the main problem with new software is credibility - it might be the best software yet, but if no one is using it and if reviews are nowhere to be found, I don't want to be a guinea pig. Making money from commercial software can be very hard if you don't find customers early on...
You could try the QT model: Dual-license you framework with a free copyleft license (you'll have to check which one is appropriate) and a paid-for commercial license.
You better choose dual licence.
Its similer to MySQL.
The best way may be to ask for donations. I would definitely donate if I liked your framework.
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I want to build a web-based knowledge base system for our call center. To save some development time, I am looking for a open source. Does anybody know any good one out there?
How about one of the many wikis?
Kenny: I've used FlexWiki & ScrewTurn (abandoned).
someone else with RepPower to edit my post added this.
Wikipedia is powered by MediaWiki.
I have used phpMyFAQ and found it to be very good.
In addition to MediaWiki that was mentioned by Kenny, you might also look at MoinMoin.
Choosing between MediaWiki and MoinMoin can be a bit tough. Here are some points to consider:
MediaWiki
Pros:
Made for wikipedia, thus is very mature and scalable.
Fairly easy to set up.
Cons:
Made soley for wikipedia. Thus it can be a bit of a pain to customize how you like it.
MoinMoin
Pros:
Very mature software.
Huge amount of plugins and third party modules available.
Cons:
Can be a pain to install.
There are a huge amount of other wikis available, but those are the main two I would consider.
Since I don't have enough reputation points to comment on Bruno Shine's answer, I'll add this note as a new answer.
KBPublisher 2.0 is still available on Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/kbpublisher/
The project hasn't been updated for years. I've been running it since v1.9 or something, and it works fine.
I believe that phpMyFAQ is the most useful KB I have seen so far ( from open-source ).
It is simple, straight-forward KB software, is it PHP => can be easily installed on any server and can be customized if you know a bit of php. In addition it is made simple enough but with correct priorities and logic. I suggest to install it and play with it, I did and I decided to stay with this KB.
Also, consider GForge.
Based on my personal experience with this knowledge base software, I would also like to join 'Julien H.' in suggesting PHPKB from http://www.knowledgebase-script.com
Personally I believe its one of the best. Many features, continously developed, excellent support & the GUI is just simple & great.
Here comes another vote in favor of PHPKB knowledge base software. We came to know about PHPKB from this post on StackOverflow and bought it as recommended by Julien and Ricardo. I am glad to inform that it was a right decision. Although we had to get certain features customized according to our needs but their support team exceeded our expectations. So, I just thought of sharing the news here. We are fully satisfied with PHPKB knowledge base software.
I heard of RTM (The RT FAQ Manager). Never used it, however.