Virtual Projects - “Projects to be done“.

What is just a small feature for openversion we hope to be a big step for open source community. Until today you could add not only existing projects you’re working on. Now you can add also those you intend to develop. You can create a virtual project and see what potential users think about it. They can vote, propose new features or even sponsor certain features.

The interesting part is that even users without a development background can add virtual projects. The projects they desperately need but are not created. Yet. Have you ever seen someone complaining and saying “if I could have such a program/plugin/add-on/framework…?” Now openversion is the place where they can add what projects they need and the community will vote/propose/sponsor features. We called them Virtual Projects, but you can call them Projects Requests as well.

A lot of questions are emerging from here an still we don’t have answers for all of them. If a developer add a Virtual Project, he will be in touch with potential users and will be able to gather the features requested by the users, and then will implement the project. What will happen with a Virtual Project added by someone who does not intend to develop it? He will transfer the project to the developer of choice? More developers will create several implementations independently? Soon we’ll have answers for that, until that moment enjoy the Virtual Projects…

Email notifications - “Keep me in CC”
We decided RSS was not enough, so we added email notifications. If you are a project developer, you’ll get an email when a new feature is proposed. If you proposed a feature, voted it or commented on it, we’ll keep you in the loop.

Better widgets - “The word widget (pronounced wih-jit) is one of those words that now has far too many definitions”
They’re not perfect, but at least now you get less css problems, plus you can get a no-css version too.
Feedback is badly wanted on how to improve the widgets.
If you are using a widget right now, please upgrade the HTML code to the new one!

Anonymous voting - “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter”
We like to be user-friendly. So if the user doesn’t want to spend time registering, we’re going to be friendly enough to allow him to vote.

A new layout - “1998 called and it wants its web sites back”
We now fully support IE7, Safari and Firefox.
We’re fixed-width and we have a prettier cleaner homepage.

So? Do you like it?

Architecture Rules (OV project page) is a Java open source framework licensed under Apache 2.0 that can be used to analyze your code. For the moment it can identify cyclic dependencies among project’s packages and classes.

Usually developers are concerned about the design principles at class level, but are not fully aware of packaging design principles. Robert Martin defined a couple of years ago, when OO was a buzzword, some packaging design principles. One of them is called “The Acyclic Dependencies Principle (ADP)” and states the following:

The dependencies between packages must not form cycles.

Usually in big projects cyclic dependencies are a common mistake. Just imagine that one developer defines a class structure, having in mind the package dependencies. Then another developer adds new classes, but just focuses on class design. After a few cycles/developers the project will reach a big messy macaroni package style with cycle dependencies.

I don’t know any mechanism to define package relation rules and I’ve never seen developers describing it in technical documents.

I think package coupling is as dangerous as code coupling. The end result is the same, reusing class modules becomes practically impossible. The bigger the project, more serious the threat of cyclic dependencies occurring.

Conclusion: Architecture Rules is a Java open source code analyzer able to assert that specific packages do not depend on others, able to find and report cyclic dependencies among a project’s packages and classes. On the next features list there are other rules to validate the code against, like “Separation of Concerns“. If more rules will be added to assert other design and architecture principles, ArchitectureRules can become as popular as FindBugs or PMD.

You can vote and sponsor the next features in the Architecture rules project, or propose your idea of a new feature:

If you want to find out more about Architecture Rules check the following links:

• Short Introduction
• Getting Started
• A Sample Configuration
• Architecture Rules 2.1 On the Horizon

We all know that open source rules. The open source grows exponentially. Many people simply refuse to use software which is not open sourced. Companies want to have full control of what they use and many of them discover that open source is what they need.

The idea

Ok, you’ll ask, so what, what is OpenVersion? And what OpenVersion has to do to with that? First of all I’ll try to explain how OpenVersion started and what it is. It all started during a coffee break when talking to my colleague about the increasing quality of the open source projects and how the user base is growing rapidly, we started thinking that there should be an “open market” where users could pay for the free software, if they want to. We were including in this market the “average Joe” open source user too, not only those that choose a commercial license for an open source project.

And the idea we had, in simple words, is this:
I am an open source user. I use Ubuntu as my primary OS, and I love the note-taking application Tomboy. I see the improvements and the new features from version to version.
And there is a small feature that I wish my favorite program would have, which is currently missing. I would definitely pay a small amount, like 10$ to have it implemented. But 10$ from me is not such a big incentive for the developers behind the project.
Our bet is that I am not the only one wishing that feature X existed, and more, I am not the only one willing to pay for it. If we take this idea and apply it to a community, probably one feature might get 10 or 20 or 30 times 10$ sponsorships, which slowly takes the developer towards a real paycheck.

How it works

In a few words that is the idea behind OpenVersion. How it works? It’s simple:

Developer - You have a project, hosted somewhere, and maybe a forum where to get user feedback. You can add the project to OpenVersion and let the users know that they can add their requests.

User - You are a user of some open source software added to OpenVersion. You propose new features, vote the ones you like and agree to pay 5$ when the feature you really need will be ready.

Developer - As a developer, you choose a few features you can implement and you start implementing them. The users get notified about it.

Developer - You finish implementing them. The users get notified.

User - Get the latest version. Be happy. You like the implemented features and pay 5$ for the feature you agreed to.

Developer - Now you have a better piece of code, more user friendly and you got about 5$ from 100 users. You are rich :D.

The Concept

• User Driven

Those days successful open source projects needs to rely on a highly active communities and must find the best ways to fulfill their needs.

• Voting Future Features.

We believe user voting is the best way to find the most wanted features.

• A paycheck Creating Free Software

This is the model we consider is the missing link in the open source software. People who really need certain features can pay for having them implemented and the programmer can get a paycheck for his work.

And finally if you still don’t have a “clear” picture, here it is:

Of course all the characters in this picture are pure fictional, except that guy in a suit who reminds me of some of my ex-bosses, except the geeky guy with the snowboard and many ideas and except the other two guys. If you don’t identify with none of the characters above, send us your picture, we can add you somewhere in the flow.

Girls, don’t be worried there are only guys in the flow, it’s just because I couldn’t find a suitable girl character.

You can take a look on www.openversion.com.

Project settings

These new settings add more flexibility, so that any open-source project, no matter what philosophy, can use OpenVersion.

Allow sponsorship on project?

You can accept sponsorships or just allow voting. If you choose not to receive sponsorships, all the “Sponsor” buttons disappear, and you get only the voting functionality.

Allow users to propose new features?

Choose if you want users to propose ideas or just vote and discuss ideas already defined by the project owner.

Embeddable widgets

Add a widget with the most popular features proposed for a project, so visitors can vote for the features they want in the next version.

2 new development statuses: ‘Planned’ and ‘Rejected’

We hope these new statuses will come very handy.

The looks

We made a lot of changes to the layout of the website. It should be easier to click around and understand where you are. Plus, things like search should be more handy now.

Any ideas for the next version?

Tip: Tweets will be signed, so you can see who wrote them. (edi) or (adi)

In the upcoming posts we will try to explain what OpenVersion is all about and keep you updated with all the new features and ideas we are adding.

Stay around, we have a few ideas about to hatch.