Photo “CHINESE FOOD OPEN” rights attributed to mag3737 on Flickr
A few weeks ago, Rupert over at chapterplay.tv blogged about OpenIndie and raised some really interesting questions which at the time I replied to in the comments. However, I think it’s worth answering one of them in particular on here as well.
What does the “open” in OpenIndie mean. You’d be right to be thinking along lines of open source software. I think it’s also important to think in terms of transparency and opening the relationship between filmmaker and audience. A lot of our values, especially mine as a developer, come from admiration and use of open source software. Crowdsourcing is fundamental to what we’re doing. Filmmakers are crowdsourcing audiences and screenings. We are crowdsourcing our startup funding and will be asking users and filmmakers on the site to shape the future of the site. In that way the community contributes to the site in the same way that developers contribute to open source software.
As for actually making our code and data open source, we very much admire the approach that Automattic have taken with Wordpress and I would certainly like to make our entire code base open source one day. This isn’t something that’s going to happen over night, or any time in the near future for that matter. We have some very definite goals for phase one and two and if/when we do open source openindie’s code, it will need to be prepared and planned carefully.
In terms of our data we’re strong proponents of Data Portability and will be making our data available via our API which is planned, at the moment, for development during phase three. During this process we’ll be making as much data available as humanly possible to allow anyone, anywhere in the world to build application using our data. All salient data is geo-locatable, meaning that every piece of data in our database which could potentially be mapped, can be. We hope this will bring with it fantastic opportunities for audiences and filmmakers alike.
I hope that gives you an insight into our thinking behind the name OpenIndie and don’t forget if you’re a filmmaker or film fan there’s still a way you can get involved. Simply, visit our Kickstarter campaign for phase two and donate. $100 gets you a filmmaker account to go live in phase two and $1+ gets you a user account where you can request and screen films.
For all the latest on what’s happening with OpenIndie, follow us on Twitter:
@openindie | @arincrumley | @kieranmasterton
Kieran Masterton
OpenIndie Co-Founder
Photo credit: Blue Sky on Rails by ecstaticist
So, in my very first blog post about OpenIndie, on my personal site kieranmasterton.com, I stated that I was going to be building the site in PHP, specifically, the Zend Framework. So why the sudden change of heart and will this impact upon our March 1st deadline?
To give you some background. I have been coding in PHP for almost 11 years. I started with Perl but quickly moved to PHP in 1998 when I learnt of its simplicity, ease of development and the growing support it had in the Open Source community. This shift from PHP to Rails I believe to be no different. I am by no means a puritan when it comes to languages. I know that some people become very attached to their language of choice and will defend it to a fault. However, I have always seen the language I use to serve a purpose. The right tool for the job etc. However, that isn’t to say that I’ve given Microsoft ASP.NET MVC framework even a cursory glance. Yes, I’m prejudice but you have to have some ideals and mine are Open Source through and through.
So, why Rails? Why not Django or something else? Simple. As I did with PHP I can see a natural movement growing. There is a community, a support mechanism which I have to say seems a lot less elitist - in my experience - than the PHP community, which all too often suffers from a superiority complex. I believe knowledge is for sharing and PHP developers are losing sight of this in my opinion. From a technical perspective, I have also been very impressed with both Ruby as a language and Rails as a framework. It is a pleasure to work with Ruby after dealing with a idiosyncratic and inconsistent language like PHP. Like PHP, Rails is Open Source - which, for us, is simply vital. Ruby is a pure OO language, while - lets be honest - PHP is faking it. PHP is, I’m afraid, flawed by design. All this isn’t to say that I don’t have a soft spot for PHP. It has served me well and there are still MANY instances where I would build something in a PHP framework (read Zend) over Rails. However, I think Rails is the right tool for the OpenIndie job.
I need to be agile, and given the crowdsourced, user-influenced nature of the site, I need to be flexible. Rails delivers. I need to build this thing quickly, quick to market, build new features, remove features, and maintain a DRY approach at all times. Rails delivers. I gave myself a week. A week of evenings and one weekend to play with Rails and decide if I was comfortable enough with the language and the framework to build OpenIndie in three months. And the outcome was a resounding, yes!
For anyone else looking to move from PHP to Rails, buy this book Rails for PHP Developers - you won’t regret it.
Kieran Masterton
OpenIndie Co-Founder
