Is it time for a ColdFusion Foundation?

Mar 24, 2009

Been reading the blog entry Sean Corfield had today about Model-Glue and related issues. The basic theme being that at times open source projects need help or new leadership to keep development going. Mach-II hit this problem back some time ago and Model-Glue may be in a similar situation.

As a developer, I use several open source projects and have also contributed back with some of my own. Naturally, our open source work may not directly put food on the table which can be a problem. Also donations or contributions tend to be sparse at best. This can leave projects to 1-2 developers who do most of the work and get very little for their efforts. Plus, the development tends to trail off.

So there is a possible solution which I've heard bounced around for some years. Brian Rinaldi I think was the last person I saw mention this before. If you've been in the LInux world, you've seen the success of the Apache Foundation and all the projects that have sprung from it. Why not do something similar for the ColdFusion (and perhaps even the Flex) world?

A foundation's main purpose is to sponsor open source projects that have become critical to the success of the CFML language. So projects like Model-Glue, Coldspring, Transfer, CFElcipse, etc. would be sponsored by the foundation. Developers who actively participate would get reimbursed for their work. Companies donating to the foundation would get the tax benefits and would feel better donating to a organized group. A solid foundation would increase fund raising and also help monitor projects. If a project looked like it was dropping off, the foundation would work with its pool of developers to get it back on track,

Like I mention before this is not a new idea and we've seen several examples of this working in other technologies, Any comments or thoughts would be helpful. We as a community should probably get better organized if we want ColdFusion to grow.

Comments

Bob Mitchell

Bob Mitchell wrote on 03/24/097:18 PM

If you want CF to grow, don't start up a foundation - make it better and more compelling than the tools developers are using at the moment. Make the product better - the open source movement will follow.
Brian Rinaldi

Brian Rinaldi wrote on 03/25/098:48 AM

Hey John...yeah, I did mention this actually a couple years ago. I still think the idea has some merit but needs to be thought through in greater detail (including folks other than myself). There are issues related to different structures for each project, how to determine merit, where to raise funds from, how to manage and distribute them, and how to make sure whatever you do actually contributes to the development of the software. So...essentially, it isn't an easy task.

Still, in many cases the issue is time not money - and the lack of reliable contributors is a major problem. When a project is left to one person to maintain it can often fall victim to overriding priorities (i.e. family, work, etc). Money can help this problem but doesn't solve it.
John Mason

John Mason wrote on 03/25/092:38 PM

@Bob - many of the tools that make Coldfusion compelling are not in the language itself. For example, the popular CFEclipse IDE or Rinaldi's Illudium PU-36 code generator. One of the reasons Linux or PHP are so popular is all the free tools, apps and plugins that have been built around those technologies. The same holds true for ColdFusion or Flex. If the open source community is active, it will boost the popularity (and therefore the business) of those technologies. Adobe and other vendors are working on the language itself, but it's the community that will drive the business around it. If you depend on the commercial side of this to supply everything, then it will naturally move slower and fall behind. The speed and flexibility and growth really depends on the open source community. Many of the largest IT companies understand this. For example, Microsoft is actually one of the largest sponsors of the Apache Foundation! IBM also supports a lot of open source work. Adobe is starting to realize this as well.

@Brian - naturally it would require the big names to give something like this life. Forta, Arehart, Corfield and Camden. And the details would need to be worked out. I think the Apache Foundation is a good model to copy from.

For me time is money, so these projects need programming time to evolve and grow, but the developer(s) naturally need to put food on the table. So if it comes down to doing a paid project or doing their free open source work, then naturally the open source project trails off. We've seen this happen and it makes complete sense. If a foundation can help fund some of the time, then the developer has an easier justification to do the work and not feel like it's hurting themselves or their business.

The foundation could also pool the developers together for special situations. Let's say it's a couple of months before a major conference and a project release needs some extra man power to get completed. Then we schedule a couple days and tell everyone we need their help to finish out a release. Sean is completely right when he mention most of the projects out there have only one developer working on them and we all know that's not a good for the life of the project. A foundation can help organize that better and group our efforts.

I think it's worth a shot and I would be interesting in putting money into it if the community show the interest. It would take some work, but like I mention earlier this is a proven method to grow and expand a technology.
John Mason

John Mason wrote on 03/25/099:11 PM

Been looking at the current top open source foundations and it's an interesting spectrum. Bare in mind, when people talk about successful open source projects, they typically refer to these groups. Here are the top three:

- Apache Foundation
- Mozilla Foundation
- Eclipse Foundation

Mozilla and Eclipse have full time paid developers on staff which help their communities. However, Apache does not. They do not directly pay anyone, but companies within that foundation do donate their developers' time to work on projects. So same result just the check comes from someone else.

I'm apparently offending some with the notion of injecting funds into CF open source projects. There isn't any CF related project that requires full time paid development work. I wouldn't argue that, but some sponsorship would go a long way even if it were very small. However, I would drop the money issue completely if that were a problem for some and it prevented a CF foundation from starting. An Apache model with no sponsors would at least be something.

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