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I love FOSS, and even though it doesn't work as a model for everything, there are some kinds of applications that just seem to be a perfect fit.
I think one such application is software for CAD as it relates to construction and land surveying(my trade). Much of the design and record data from the field must be accessible for decades and this fact alone builds a strong case for using open formats. Unfortunately, and much to the chagrin of all of the surveyors I know, there seems to be a slow push by the software side of the industry away from using the open formats of old toward proprietary formats. A lot of this is caused by the ever increasing complexity (and reinventing of the wheel) of design software; however, when it comes to boots the ground, not much has changed with means and methods. There are only so many ways to accomplish what we do and most of it has already been optimized. The result of this push toward proprietary formats and overkill software has been the abandonment of good, functional, and simple proprietary software that just worked. Many of the companies that created this good software no longer exist because they have been embraced and extinguished by larger players. There is a growing reality that the only option to keep work going is to pay many 1000's of dollars a year per person for what should be a fairly simple piece of software. This is not the kind of software that would require a lot of support.
So my question is this: What is the best way for me to begin a successful FOSS project like this?
For the record I am not a programmer, but I dabble from time to time. I could foresee it being a fairly easy sell to convince the powers that be to throw some money (one time cost) at a development team to create for us what we need. Between the different companies and contacts that I know in the industry, a sort of corporate crowd funding effort is not far fetched. Why the heck isn't this already done for all the standard corporate software, rather than paying needless licensing fees into perpetuity? Sometimes software just becomes stable. A FOSS solution would be a godsend to smaller mom and pop operations and I think it could cure some of my resentment of people constantly breaking good things for the sake of "progress".
BTW, I have looked at some of the existing open source CAD software and found it all pretty wanting. Could requesting special functionality from these developers be a better route than starting from scratch? Thanks in advance!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by lentilla on Thursday January 04 2018, @09:02AM (4 children)
Sadly I can't give you a a perfect solution - only some thoughts. You want:
The best example of utilities is Unix - where each tool has a single defined purpose and it does it perfectly. Now, to accomplish any given task is "simply" a matter of chaining the utilities together.
The biggest problem is that you will be forever at the mercy of slick software salespeople that will offer to "make it easy" by providing an all-singing, all-dancing, monolithic, proprietary solution. To the big boss; standing on the golfing green; it will appear all too attractive. Then you'll be back to square one.
A point for you to consider: choose the GPL rather than a BSD-style licence. That way - assuming your software gathers a following - it won't be easily subsumed into some company's monolithic bundle. Even better if your software has some "killer feature". If it's GPL, your "competitors" will have to implement the functionality from scratch to achieve parity. Additionally: I'd be more likely to contribute to software where I knew it couldn't be locked up in someone else's product.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @11:00AM
Patent Protection and basically anyone using it has to release their modifications.
Works out much better than normal GPL since literally anything other than an organization making modifiations solely for internal corporate use results in the need to release their source code, helping to ensure that your tools stay free and all patches available no matter who is using it (short of groups who ignore copyright law.)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Thursday January 04 2018, @12:26PM (2 children)
That sounds counterproductive. If your aim is to be able to access the data in the distant future, then it's far better to have proprietary tools produce and consume your formats than vice versa. I can't think of a single successful file format or protocol where the reference implementation has been GPL'd, and dozens where it's BSD licensed.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @01:12PM (1 child)
The license is only relevant if the proprietary products would want to use your code to implement support.
That is most likely only the case if it is a really complex data format, they have no intention of ever adapting it as their primary data format, you provide data format support as an entirely stand-alone library and the API is really good.
In all other cases, the proprietary vendors are rather likely to rather write their own.
And if you don't write a excellent specification they won't touch it with a 10-foot pole because they're not that stupid.
That is why writing a project and pushing a new data format a very different things, and it's unlikely you'll manage to do both.
(Score: 2) by BananaPhone on Thursday January 04 2018, @03:37PM
I think this was resolved when Oracle sued Google for using the JAva API in their ??? language for Android.
Had Oracle won it would have been akin to copyrighting words in the English language.
File formats as very much like an API.