Thursday, July 30, 2009

AgOpenSource Moves Forward

by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 7/30/2009 2:20:33 PM

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Our Goal Is Not To Create Great Programs;
It Is To Create Great Programmers

This posting will quickly review the AgOpenSource project, whose Table of Contents is available at www.AgOpenSource.com or from a link on the sidebar of my blog.

Overview

Note: this overview is an excerpt from the home page of AgOpenSource

AgOpenSource is, at its heart, an experiment in moving from from stand alone demonstrations of specific Silverlight skills to exploring the breadth of Silverlight by implementing applications from design to testing.

By its nature, this project will experiment with a number of different approaches. That said, there have been some false starts leading up to the current incarnation, and it is my goal for there to be some stability in the project for the rest of 2009.

I will be updating the AgOpenSource project  on a weekly or semi-weekly basis for the rest of the year.

Multiple Applications, One Project

AgOpenSource.com  has settled into a on-going and active project which will serve as an umbrella for a number of applications that will be developed under one of two approaches that I have named

• Glass House
• Moderated Open Source

Glass House Projects are those which I will develop documenting my thinking and work from inception through delivery but which the community will contribute to only through comments and suggestions. By accepting this limitation I am able to move forward very quickly without needing to secure open source licensing.

Every week or two the Glass House application will spin out videos, mini-tutorials and so forth, complete with source code and the goal of these applications will include:

• Providing Silverlight Skills videos and mini-tutorials
• Insight into evolving best practices
• Potential prototypes for further development

Moderated Open Source

Moderated Open Source applications will be developed much like Glass House applications, except that members of the community will be offered, if they choose, the opportunity to contribute modules, alternatives, code, etc., to the project under a license to be finalized in which their code is provided to the project and for which the contributor will be acknowledged but the code will be open to modification both for integration into the project and for use in demos, videos, etc. (Details to follow)

CodePlex

It is my goal that the Moderated Open Source applications will migrate to CodePlex at the earliest opportunity; I am working this issue actively and will have progress, I hope, by early August.

Getting Started

For information on the first two applications to be developed, please see the Table of Contents on the AgOpenSource Home Page.

Pace of Development

I will be devoting 2 or more days per week to the AgOpenSource project, and expect to be adding both progress notes and videos/mini-tutorials as a result at a rapid pace beginning today. It is my hope that there will be active feedback from the community on many levels, including but not limited to:

• Questions and follow up
• Corrections and bugs found
• Alternative approaches considered
• Suggestions for features, design, approach, architecture, implementation, etc.