I've been working with Ray Camden and others on a hush-hush secret project for the past few months. Well, it is secret no more ... Welcome to
RIAForge.
RIAForge is a place to host open source projects built with Adobe technologies - from ColdFusion applications to Photoshop plug-ins to Flex components and more. And of course the site is built using those same technologies.
RIAForge features:
- A unique project URL (eg. http://cfyahoo.riaforge.org/)
- File hosting
- Bug tracking
- Forums
- Blogging
- Basic stats
- Subversion access
- ... and more
This is not an official Adobe project, although the site is Adobe supported. Ray Camden did the primary development work with a lot of help and support from others, including Brian Rinaldi and Rob Gonda (SVN support is all from Rob, and will be a hosted project shortly.)
Let us know what you think!
Are there also any chance to have Unicode support on these pages? :)
I'll definately move some of my projects to this!
* otiose: serving no useful purpose; having no excuse for being; "otiose lines in a play"; "advice is wasted words"
* excess: more than is needed, desired, or required; "trying to lose excess weight"; "found some extra change lying on the dresser"; "yet another book on heraldry might be thought redundant"; "skills made redundant by technological advance"; "sleeping in the spare room"; "supernumerary ornamentation"; "it was supererogatory of her to gloat"; "delete superfluous (or unnecessary) words"; "extra ribs as well as other supernumerary internal parts"; "surplus cheese distributed to the needy"
For the record, we actually started building this long before Microsoft announced CodePlex and Google announced Google Code. Although had we known about those back then I think we'd have built this anyway.
Believe it or not we researched this one quite thoroughly back when I first tried to sell the idea. We polled lots of folks who create projects now. Most are not on SourceForge and the reason why is that SourceForge has gotten to big and bloated, it's hard to find anything anymore, projects get lost in the crowd. And most projects are dead, just taking up space. (Which is also why Google Code is growing in popularity).
But that being said, there is still a need for a place for the community to get together as a community. Not just for CF, but for all related products as well. And if some of those projects live on SourceForge or elsewhere, they can (and should be) included too. I don't believe that marginalizes us at all, on the contrary, I think it makes the community stronger. One stop shopping for the community helps create that community.
And then there is the whole dogfood angle, too.
All of which are reasons why Microsoft created CodePlex, incidentally.
--- Ben
Agreed. That's an option. Not an option yet, but definitley a future option.
--- Ben
I'm not clear how pointing at Microsoft and Apple and saying 'but there doing this' justifies this project's existance, either.
Come on man we really need things like that, it's equal sorry my comparation but it's like a "Hot blond" each time we see one we get excited.
I absolutly agree with this project, Ben, Ray you rocks.
Why?
Simple the sf.net and google Project or Microsoft Project it's dedicated both of them to their one goals, if you for example go to sf.net you probably will be lost in many projects in differents goals.
With this RIAforge you are feel like in home, due to if you really work with adobe technologies, and want a place to put all your projects in the shield you really need a dedicated site for that.
For example take a look at the OSFLash.org we need so much due to it's focus on Flash Platform, and anyone who's work with Flash goes to this site instead of Sf.net
A Ruge example of that, after the OSflash.org most projects open-source was hosted in sf.net now their are in osflash.org
I see that in this site you are really focused in using Adobe technology to support and helping people in the globe.
Don't agree with you man, you really need to see things across the wall. or you only see blocks?
Regards.
Having said that that, I'm very underwhelmed by the name. RIA? Isn't that a Macromedia coined phrase that was created to indirectly validate Flash as a client side application platform?
--- Ben
You don't have to mention to me that there are a lot of sources for CF open source, and probably the largest grouping are projects hosted on the owner's site. These won't go away, and no one wants them to...host your project wherever you like. Not to toot my own horn, but if you want a list that weeds out vaporware and other junk and is CF specific and you can find everything in one place, then go to my list - http://www.remotesynthesis.com/cfopensourcelist - I spend way too much time maintaining that and making sure it lists everything from every possible location.
Nonetheless, your concerns seem like a lot of griping over nothing. Especially when many people still think that there is no real open-source in CF and this site will offer visibility that my list cannot to get the word out (oh...and Flex, Flash, etc too).
What's with the strangly fixed width layout? On the about page I need a 1280px wide browser to NOT get a horizontal scrollbar!
However I agree that another one of these wasn't needed. Unless you guys put some serious effort to going and collecting all the good stuff all over the place in here, then it's a waste of time.
There are only a handfull of things in there, mostly Ray's where are all the really good open source bits, please don't rely on the authors to find and post their code to yet another site, you guys need to be proactive.
As for the name, I aslo don't get it. I think AdobeForge would have been better, I don't really see how some of the products are RIA. It might make people think twice about posting here also, such as my CFC isn't RIA so I won't post it here like zip.cfc.
Also, are you saying you don't agree you need to chase code for this thing and hope people just find it and both submitting again. If you are then I wouldn't bother at all, i'll stick with cfopen.org which seems to do the same thing as your new site.
I had my open source projects all over the place (OpenXCF on SourceForge, Concurrency for CFMX on cfopen and more recently stuff on Google Code). I'm in the process of listing these projects here so they get more visibility in a central location for open source projects based on Adobe technology. I think RIAForge is a great idea!
It's not like you have to *move* your project to take advantage of it. I just listed Concurrency for CFMX and Closures for CFMX and pointed to their Google Code home but now folks can download directly from RIAForge too - excellent!
My thoughts on the other systems:
OpenXCF on SourceForge is the hosting location for cfcUnit, Tartan, Clarion, a bunch of Mach II stuff, some Java custom tags that let you read/write Excel files and other assorted stuff. It was started by Matt Liotta and the project admins now include Paul Kenney, myself and Ray Camden with development work from Jared Rypka-Hauer and Joe Rinehart. Why didn't it get traction? SourceForge is big and clunky and hard to use.
cfopen where I originally hosted the Concurrency for CFMX project. cfopen just seemed too slow and unreliable and contained a lot of vaporware (as someone noted above!).
Google Code is very bare bones but again it's going to become big and projects will be hard to find.
Seems to me I can get the best of all worlds by using RIAForge as a focus, pointing to my Google Code project, and maybe using RIAForge to host what I currently have on OpenXCF / SourceForge.
I just want to go on record as saying - About bloody time! This is fantastic!
I'm going to be moving Transfer onto here as soon as I have some free time, and I will tell you my reasons why -
1) Hate sourceforge.. hate it with a passion. its too big, too bloated, and quite frankly I don't want to be lost in the amongst the masses.
2) Looked at Google Code. Liked it - currently doesn't have as much as I want in terms of functionality - i.e. bug tracking (I think it has that now), download management, etc.
3) I want to be in a place that is reasonably CFCentric. CFOpen was good for that, but this is way better.
4) CFOpen was a good idea initially, but unfortunatley wasn't the best implementation in the world (sorry guys! much kudos for the work, but it fell by the wayside). Emails went unanswered, the site would go down for days etc.
The only constructive critisisms I will offer -
1) Please be very specific in terms of the functionality you guys offer on a project. With some digging I've worked out that there is a bug tracker, and there is SVN, is there download management?, is there any form of statistics? forums? (I think there are... oh yep.. I see them)... oh and now I see a list on your blog ben, cool - but this sorta list should be on the about page, and more fleshed out please.
2) Open Source licences. Currently Transfer is under CPL, but that is not listed as an option on the Licences list. Am I going to have to change licences to come into RIAForge?
Otherwise - damn job well done. Well done. I am seriously impressed.
To your point about documentation, I agree 110%. In fact, someone asked me a question yesterday that I was unable to answer w/o looking at the code. So I want more docs as well. The site is _definitely_ still being upgraded each and ever day. (Although things will stop during MAX. :)
Yeah, I can see that. The "Forge" in the name threw me off, but if it's thought of as listing service similar to the excellent job Brians been doing then it kinda makes sense and doesnt seem so redundant and copycattish.