Open Source (as in, free as in speech)

Hi everybody!

I've noticed that SL doesn't have any kind of centralized indexing and version management for open source projects, like sourceforge. There is however various items that have public licenses, such as the IKON animation overrider and the Freeview TV. I was interested in trying to start such an index, but I'm not a lawyer and so I'm not sure of if it's even possible or not with all the different licenses being used for everything.

This kind of project is such a pain to explain, because it doesn't seem like many understand it's purpose. SL doesn't have anything like sourceforge. Yes, I know there's a wiki, and these forums with all kinds of scripts posted in it, as well as all kinds of other places. I know there's freebies all over the place too. That's not what I'm looking for to index. What I'm looking for are completed projects that are licensed to the public, like with a GPL license. I'm trying to create an index of open source items so that there's a place to distribute open source objects as well as a place to submit patches or bugs for those objects. As of now, such projects can only be managed by the original author, there's no/little group collaboration on the few items that are publicly licensed.

My questions are:

Is it likely that anybody would use such an index?

Being that different things have different licenses, (like textures having CC license, scripts having GPL license, etc) is such a thing is even possible?

There's been some discussion about this on the mailing lists, but from what I can tell it didn't get anywhere. From the discussion in that thread, it would seem as though there is at least -some- interest somewhere on the developer side. But, that could just as easily be a very small minority. For now, I'm just wanting any information I can get on this subject. Anything is greatly appreciated. I'd hate to spend a lot of effort on this project only to find that there's not actually any interest or use.

Thanks, in advance.

I would just start a scripting repository wiki. It's easy to setup so it's not a huge loss if it doesn't take off, and it has version tracking and an account management system built right in. Create a page for each script, or maybe one page for the description/usage and one page for the code, then link to all the individual scripts from the main page. Oh, and it also has searching built right in too, what more could you ask for? We host a few scripts on the slprotocol wiki right now, but it's more geared towards documenting the protocol and SL internals than being a script repository. If you get something setup let me know and we can migrate the scripts over to you.

I would use said index for my opensourced projects. A wiki (and/or full SF-type system) wouldn't be bad, but I'd like to see something inworld as well, like GUNbies.
I'd also be interested in helping out with the coding necesary for said project.

An inworld system is exactly what I believe is needed for such an index. You can't exactly post textures, or sounds, or prims to a wiki. Those are only useful for scripts exclusively.

Any help you're willing to offer would be much appreciated. Feel free to contact me in-game and maybe we can come up with some ideas. I'm not looking to take any credit if this works, I just want an open source community to work in because it's weird without one >.<

Also, I've looked into making a wiki already, and I came across SLDevelopers.com which is exactly that. Unfortunately, that site gets like no activity, so that confirmed my belief that a wiki is not the solution.

I've collected a few items that are complet objects (as in, textures, sounds, prims, scripts, etc).

It's not much but it's at least a start. I have a ton of scripts, and especially boilerplate scripts.

I'm thinking maybe that I'll index the pieces, like the scripts, seperate from the more complete items.

If anybody else is interested in this project, please let me know?

For those who are interested in various opensource liscenses here's a link:

http://www.opensource.org

We've started a group, and started the project, which is now known as SecondForge.
I ama availible for contact about the project in-world (go on, don't be shy^_^)

Well, Xavior Nicholas, Jesse Malthus, and I have formed SecondForge. Our hopes are to develope an archive/development system that will network people that are passionate about open source.

This project aspires to bring people together in SL much like SourceForge has done in RL. If you share our vision and would like to be part of this movement, contact any of us in game. We are just getting started and the support and participation that you could provide would help out greatly.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts.

Are you planning to have an entirely in-world system, like InfoNet/R5? Or a hybrid system, more like SLExchange? In-world is really the only way to pass objects like this back and forth, but it seems to be an entirely crappy way of organizing large amounts of information...

I agree that there seems to be no good way to do it. We want to keep it entirely in game, with no outside server help, but we are still in development. We have some ideas. If you are interested in the project, even just for info and updates, drop me, Dustin Widget, a line in-game.

Our goal is to try to do everything in world, and then see about website integration, although that's something I'd very much like to do.
Not to spoil our plans, but we wish to provide 3 (semi-)seperate systems/branches: beta/testing, stable/release, archive. I've taken up the technical end of things, and I'm planning on implementing a "magic box" system whereby OS developers can drop in their wares and have them updated on the vendors.
Excuse the incoherency, it's late here.
--Jesse

Yeah, these are still details to be worked out. As much as I'd like to stay in-game with this, we'll probably end up with something like a web based user interface for the SL based items. Sort of like how the Freeview TV works; Data is stored on the webserver, and the items are manipulated in SL based on user interaction. A database is much better for storing data than anything SL has to offer so far. But, nothing is in stone yet though or anything.