It was just 5 days back that I floated the idea of building a free/libre & open source clone of slideshare.net so that it can be used within enterprises or academic or other organisations behind their firewalls for various reasons. I had passed on the information to a couple of LUGs & also shared it on Twitter and with some of my friends over mails.
And then there has been no looking back since then! I have managed to surprise myself with the speed at which things have gone ahead since then. :)
In just two days I had started the process of moving from idea to implementation after validation. [Seems going to the barber and getting an oil massage made my brain to work super-efficiently to cough up that idea as a readable post. ;) ]
My conversations on Twitter regarding the idea promoted it & the idea was welcomed by many; Sanjeev Sarma in particular. When he wanted his student interns to take it up, it prompted me to create the project on sourceforge.net. I had registered for a new project called openslide (thanks to the suggestion from Atul Mehra, my ex-team mate) at around 6:15 PM on 9th Feb '09. By next morning, the sf.net admins had approved my project request!
Since I am also the convener of Prajna, it does bode me pretty well that I create this all new FLOSS project with no other parallel in the FLOSS world (at least I haven't been able to find it out).
I now plan to use this project to mentor students (ideally from underprivileged colleges) in FLOSS projects. Sanjeeev Sarma has promised to get me many students and Atul & Khaleel have shown interest to mentor these students.
I started setting up the project space for openslide on sourceforge.net and had to try out so many tools before I settled on MantisBT for tracking feature requests & bugs and phpBB for forums. In this I guess am going away from the frugal management of software development in FLOSS projects.
People suggested that I use Trac and I tried it out. It was very easy to understand simplistic tool. But it was not enough for retrospection & process improvement. MantisBT allows me to add custom fields, which I have utilised to add two fields like Stage [bug found in] and Source [of defect].
So if you want to help openslide or Prajna, please do spread the word about the project & that it needs developers, mentors & students. :)
The sourceforge.net space for openslide is at https://sourceforge.net/projects/openslide/
And then there has been no looking back since then! I have managed to surprise myself with the speed at which things have gone ahead since then. :)
In just two days I had started the process of moving from idea to implementation after validation. [Seems going to the barber and getting an oil massage made my brain to work super-efficiently to cough up that idea as a readable post. ;) ]
My conversations on Twitter regarding the idea promoted it & the idea was welcomed by many; Sanjeev Sarma in particular. When he wanted his student interns to take it up, it prompted me to create the project on sourceforge.net. I had registered for a new project called openslide (thanks to the suggestion from Atul Mehra, my ex-team mate) at around 6:15 PM on 9th Feb '09. By next morning, the sf.net admins had approved my project request!
Since I am also the convener of Prajna, it does bode me pretty well that I create this all new FLOSS project with no other parallel in the FLOSS world (at least I haven't been able to find it out).
I now plan to use this project to mentor students (ideally from underprivileged colleges) in FLOSS projects. Sanjeeev Sarma has promised to get me many students and Atul & Khaleel have shown interest to mentor these students.
I started setting up the project space for openslide on sourceforge.net and had to try out so many tools before I settled on MantisBT for tracking feature requests & bugs and phpBB for forums. In this I guess am going away from the frugal management of software development in FLOSS projects.
People suggested that I use Trac and I tried it out. It was very easy to understand simplistic tool. But it was not enough for retrospection & process improvement. MantisBT allows me to add custom fields, which I have utilised to add two fields like Stage [bug found in] and Source [of defect].
So if you want to help openslide or Prajna, please do spread the word about the project & that it needs developers, mentors & students. :)
The sourceforge.net space for openslide is at https://sourceforge.net/projects/openslide/
Prem.. your odiogo podcast was superb.. initially i thought you were speaking.. then later on i found out its a automated system converting your text in to speech..
ReplyDeleteany way.. wonderful one..
Thanks a lot Senthil! :) Isn't odiogo neat? :D
ReplyDeleteI have been trying to reach out to you ever since I setup openslide! This could be the project you have been asking me for enrolling your student contacts into open source projects! :)
Do let me know if you are interested and/or can help :)
Hey neat idea. Any idea when the script will be released? I am a UX guy if you want help let me know. Also, I can help with end-user documentation.
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot Suman :)
ReplyDeleteNo idea when we will be in a position to release code. :( Currently the slideplayer is under development by @mudittuli.
But you can still try out the WIP code for the player. A peer review & refactoring will do us a lot of good! :) Unfortunately am not a dev any more & my skills are all old & rusty to be of any real help. :(