

Ask HN: Open-source web apps - alexwyser

This is a proposal to all the developers at HN who believe in open-source coding. There are a lot of open source desktop apps but no open-source web apps.<p>I would like to initiate a project where all developers who wish to participate can join together in creating web apps.<p>I am proposing that we get together and build simple, usable web apps that others can build upon and extend to meet their needs.<p>The creators of the applications can still offer a paid hosted version but they must also offer a free version that anyone can self-host.<p>What do you guys think? Would anyone be interested?
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mechanical_fish
There are many, many open source web apps that work exactly as you describe.
Drupal. Wordpress. Trac. About three hundred thousand personal blog engines.
Every Rails demo app ever created.

All of these examples are highly extensible! Indeed, some of them are so
extensible that people get confused and think that they somehow don't count as
apps.

Meanwhile, it is senseless to propose to build Ye Olde Generic Web App. [1]
Come up with a very specific idea for a very specific tool and try to rally
people around that.

Note: Few if any open source projects start out as a statement of purpose with
no code attached. Write some code, put it up on Github, and _then_ try to
evangelize it.

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[1] Actually, it isn't senseless, but a generic web app without a specific
purpose is called a _framework_ , and the main reason not to propose one is
that everybody will yawn. There are hundreds of existing frameworks. Every
programmer perpetrates one sooner or later. Writing one is a fun exercise, but
don't expect other people to get excited about it.

