Re: Open Source RPG ?

[Pete Helgren <Pete@xxxxxxxxxx>]

David,

Not rambling.  You are right on.  The biggest hurdle is an assurance of 
quality and a community big enough to sustain the effort.  On the 
quality issue, if IBM was invested enough in the project they would 
insure that quality was maintained (the Eclipse/WDSC project is a good 
example) and that goes beyond the "peer review" mechanism built in to 
most open source projects. On the community aspect, I have seen a few 
RPG open source projects that have gained enough viability to be at an 
active status but without the broader developer support necessary to 
have a "developer community" which is at the heart of most projects. The 
few "successful" RPG-based open source projects I am aware of are single 
developer offerings that may be used widely but don't have multiple 
contributors.  And while that isn't a huge limiting factor, I just 
wonder why that is.  Could it be that we are willing to use RPG open 
source project but not really ready to "participate".  Or it could be 
that the RPG open source projects are just so good that no one has seen 
a need to contribute ;-)

Anyway, I am OT with this ramble but your points were well stated.  What 
I'd like to see are more open source RPG offerings (you'll see only a 
few at www.opensource4iseries.com) and a larger community effort on open 
source in general.

Back to the naming of RPG:  At the town hall meeting at Common it was 
suggested that we rename RPG, not open source it.  I am not sure that a 
new name would breath any new life into the language but I know from 
experience that ready-made open source solutions CAN drive greater 
language adoption.  I'd like to see that in the System i / RPG world as 
well.

Pete Helgren