aburt@isis.UUCP (Andrew Burt) (08/09/85)
Being a software developer like so many of us, it strikes me that one of
the golden opportunities of having the net is going unnoticed -- distributed
projects.
In other words, many people around the net might
o be working on the same or similar project; or
o be willing to work on it but can't do it alone; or
o have worked on it but ran into problem X and didn't
know how to solve it; or
o can't do it themselves but are willing to port it to
system X
and so on. For instance, note the relatively high number of 'grep'
postings to net.sources and mod.sources over the past year or so.
Rather than having lots of individualized efforts going on, why not
create a newsgroup, say, net.software.projects, whose sole purpose is to
post ideas on software you're planning to write / are writing / would
like to see written.
Then, anyone interested in a given idea could respond to the author
with information on how s/he could help. That is, create a project
effort where the participants aren't in the same room but communicate
via e-mail.
Now, before anyone says "Yeah, great idea, but let's only make it for
postings that require multiple people involved," or "not for novices,"
or "only for volunteer efforts," or any other restrictions, I would like
to clarify my intent. I would want such a group to exist for anyone who
felt the need to post to it. So if a novice posts saying he wants help
writing a checkbook balancer, fine. If some kernel hacker wants to
do terminal paging at the driver level, fine.
I further think it shouldn't be restricted to public domain or volunteer
efforts, but should include efforts put into software for profit (at
either the individual or big business level). Perhaps there might be
some crossover from net.jobs, since it would be paid for, but when was
the last time you saw anything in net.jobs asking for someone just to
help write a new grep? Net.jobs appears to have only full time
positions advertised in it. This group would work equally well for full
time positions with specific duties or just for small contract type work.
In an effort to keep it as free of restrictions as possible, basically
any project idea should be postable, even things as banal as "A friend
of mine wants someone to help bring up news software on an Xenix
system". For that person, this is a software project (maybe not at the
development end, but still a software project).
The only groundrules should be that
o no followups are posted -- all replies should go directly to
the author who would be responsible for coordinating the
project. Even if this isn't enforced in current news
software, the charter of the group should include "no followups".
o the problem and the environment are clearly stated: e.g.,
what flavor of Unix it will be for, any hardware
dependencies, volunteer or not, deadlines if any, ...
Perhaps a standard form should be created a la
Synopsis:
Version(s) of Unix targeted for: (e.g., "all", "4.2")
Hardware targeted for: (e.g., "all", "Vaxen")
Special hardware or software needed:
Deadline:
Remuneration: (e.g., "warm fuzzies", "hourly rate")
Granted, the net.software.projects sort of idea doesn't apply only to
software projects, but equally well to hardware, mathematics, fiction
writing, or anthropological studies, ... ad infinitum. If it turns out
that there's a desire for more groups (net.math.projects...) so be it
and long live the net.
It's possible the whole idea of cooperative ventures like this will flop,
and I suspect it will (pessimist, me?), but it might be worth a try.
Andrew
[A final note on my choice of newsgroups for this posting (people seem
so touchy on these matters): I included net.sources since that's where
the people most likely to use this group will be found, and there's no
net.sources.d; net.jobs since employers might want to know about it;
and of course net.news.group, to which all followups should go.]
--
Andrew Burt
University of Denver
Department of Math and Computer Science
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