monkinetic weblog

Steve Ivy's Weblog - Since 1999 - XII Ed.

Open Source v. Open Services

New App & Open Source Software

In my limited spare time, I've recently been hacking on a new web application in Rails. It's a lifestream app, based on the ideas largely introduced by Jeremy Keith. This app is a basic web app that allows for online source feed management and soon, multiple users.

Through the short development process, I've had loads of help from a small group of rails developers on IRC. They've been extremely helpful, patient, and willing to dish out a boot-to-the-head from time to time when necessary.

Last week, I had a conversation with one of guys on whose advice and helpful tips I've depended on while finding my way around Ruby and Rails. In this conversation he communicated that he was assuming this was an open source project, and wondered if I had a public source control setup somewhere. Now, I do have a public SVN repo setup, for my own use and for the convenience of showing bits of code to folks, but I had not thought about whether this application would be open source or not, so I wasn't sure how to respond.

My name is Steve Ivy and I write about technology, the open web, social software, and general nerdity on monkinetic.com. You should follow me on Twitter or subscribe to this blog if you like what you're reading. I spend my days hacking Movable Type, python, Django, and various other efforts at Wallrazer. This is my personal site.