I come across a *TON* of really useful open source software each and every day of my life, much of which I never tell anybody about (at least from a more widespread blog entry perspective) because — well, to be honest, if I took the time to blog about each and every one, http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/, which will usually look like,
Yet another blog entry from M. David Peterson
Hey look, it’s Kurt Cagle!
Hey look, it’s Dan Zambonini
Hey look, it’s Rick Jelliffe
Would instead look like,
Okay, so maybe the last couple of days have been an exception,
Hey look, it’s Simon St. Laurent (I heard he eat’s babies, too!)
But we all know that ain’t the norm!
So, to my point: In a recent discussion with Simon St. Laurent, we came to the conclusion that there’s a lot of really great Open Source XML (or related <- which isn't every OSS project related to XML in one way or another these days? Pretty close!) software out there, and one way of promoting this software would be to pull together a weekly post (similar to Todd Ogasawara’s fantastic OSS Windows Weekly Roundup series, summarizing all that in which myself, or someone in whom has pricked my ears as to a projects existence, has stumbled across.
I already have a solid five projects that I am close to being ready to make a post about. But there’s a problem: One thing I am coming to discover is that while there are a lot of great projects out there, not all of them are really all that well documented with usage, code samples, and when it comes to finding out whether or not a project is something that you might find useful to your needs, there isn’t really a neutral place in which one can find out more about this project from others who have used it before.
Actually, to that last point, that’s not true: Alex Bosworth’s SWiK.net is a FANTASTIC wiki-based OSS project index, in which anyone can contribute to in regards to code samples, documentation, feelings as to whether or not the project is useful to the needs in which it attempts to serve, etc… In this regard, the best way to ensure that a project that I promote as part of this weekly series has at very least, a place in which developers can post reviews, code samples, etc… as well as keep the details of any particular project they have interest in, up-to-date, I am laying down one primary ground rule,
To be listed and promoted as part of this weekly series, a project *MUST* have a SWiK.net project page.
With this simple rule in mind, if you have a project that you feel deserves promotion as part of this weekly series, please first make sure there is a SWiK.net project page, and then please email me to let me know. Deadline is by Midnight, Thursday (or Friday morning, depending upon how you look at it) GMT, of each week to make it into Friday’s weekly roundup.
The first post will be next Friday, February 2nd, 2007.
Thanks in advance for your contributions!
Update,
PLEASE-NOTE: For those of you in whom worry that this smells like the potential of another Wikigate scandal in the making, while there are more reasons as to why I believe this kind of thing won’t happen on SWiK (e.g. someone decides to pounce on a competitors OSS project on SWiK.net), there are some important differences between SWiK.net, and Wikipedia —
– Alex Bosworth, I’ve noticed, doesn’t put up with peoples crap.
– This is an action-oriented wiki more than anything else — e.g. the information you gain (e.g. code samples) is something you immediately put to the test — In other words, the objective of the site is less about general knowledge, and more about hands on interaction, so the drive to propagate mis-information is limited, at best!
– Any particular project can have an unlimited (at least, I believe there are no limits — should probably check up on that to make sure) number of pages that relate to any particular project, so there is no single content page in which all things related to a project must co-exist, therefore propagating little twists to the content to a wider spread audience.
In short — We’re talking about two completely different types of animals here. That’s not to say it can’t be abused, but it’s a lot less likely than with what you will find on Wikipedia.
