[computer-go] Open Source project

[Mark Boon]

I'm almost done reading the open-source book Darren recommended here.  
Hopefully the sudden silence around this subject means there are more  
who are busy reading it. I can definitely recommend this book to  
anyone who wants to get involved in open-source software, either as a  
contributor or as a project starter/manager.

The book is full of common-sense. And has lots of useful little tips.  
This is a book I'll probably come back to several times to reset my  
mind back to the common-sense mode and to look up some tips I'll  
probably forget later.

One thing is clear from this book, what I have in mind is an 'open- 
source' project as opposed to a 'free' project like GNU Go (at least  
according to the defintions used in the book).

Another thing that became clear to me quickly is that I had thought  
about this project almost entirely in computer-Go technical terms,  
whereas there are a large number of organisational and project- 
management issues to address as well. To do this well, I'll need to  
do quite some organisational work first.

Originally I had planned to build forth on my already public library.  
According to the book this is an entirely normal way to 'seed' an  
open-source project. But it also gives some compelling arguments in  
favour of starting from scratch. My public library is already part of  
a bigger framework. It would seem wasteful to throw this work out.  
But if starting from scratch means it's easier to get others involved  
or interested in the project then that's definitely something worth  
considering. But that depends on a large part on the amount of  
interest. One way to gauge interest is maybe see how many people  
actually use that library, either 'as is' or in part. I hadn't looked  
at SourceForge for a long time, but a few days ago somebody had a  
question related to it and I had to go and check it. Since the  
inception of version 2, about a year and a half ago, there have  
apparently been over 700 downloads of it, which is a number that  
surprised me. I would be really interested to know how many of those  
downloads were actually 'real' and unique. Real in the sense that  
someone actually looked at the code and/or did something with it.

Another reason to start from scratch is that my library is call  
Tesuji Software Go Library. And the package structure starts with  
'tesuji' and uses another core library that is owned (but open) by my  
company Tesuji Software. Since Tesuji Software is my private company  
this may not be appropriate for an open-source project.

In that case I'd also need to think of a new name! And see what would  
be the best place to 'host' this project. At some point it will  
probably also need its own mailing list(s), but for now I hope nobdy  
objects to hi-jacking this one for this purpose.

That's it for now, I'm going to finish the book. More after the weekend.

	Mark