

Ask HN: Are these personal projects worth open-sourcing? - Poleris

Hello all,<p>I have a couple of small personal projects I've been working on over the years and I was wondering if they would be of use to anyone:<p><i>1. nginx configuration generator</i><p><pre><code>  N.new('annotalia.com') { proxy(2666) } &#62;&#62; gen[:machine1]
  N.new('.eshao.es') { pppr } &#62;&#62; gen[:machine2]
  N.new('research.dsoglobal.org') { doku } &#62;&#62; gen[:machine3]
</code></pre>
Ends up as a fully configured proxy to port 2666, a domain that supports perl/python/php/ruby, and a doku configuration respectively. It only generates the nginx configuration, but I've found it really helpful to setup my multiple sites. Currently, it supports most normal use-cases (like subdomains, specifying log locations, etc.) as well as specific applications like Wordpress, Rails, and Mailman. And of course, extensible.<p>An example configuration file can be found at: &#60;http://dl.dropbox.com/u/146184/config.rb&#62;, just so you can get an idea of how concise it is.<p>- -<p><i>2. Puppet configurations</i><p>I use puppet extensively to manage all my machines and have a ton of configurations which are accompanied by documentation on setup and any miscellaneous gotchas. Although FreeBSD-exclusive, I put a lot of thought into each file and code elegance (using macros, etc.) which might be helpful to others.<p>An example manifest can be found at: &#60;http://dl.dropbox.com/u/146184/mailman.pp&#62;.<p>- -<p><i>3. Blogging platform using Etherpad as a backend</i><p>I love writing in Etherpad. So much, I made an entire blogging platform which is controlled from within Etherpad. You edit configuration, tags on posts, and posts themselves (in Markdown) in Etherpad and everything gets cached locally as static HTML on the backend.<p>An example "Etherblog" can be found at &#60;http://annotalia.com&#62;.<p>- - - -<p>My assumption is that (1) would be suitable for github, (2) should go somewhere in the puppet wiki/github, and (3) should be discussed with the Etherpad folks first. But I honestly have no clue where to start and even less of an idea of whether these are valuable enough to bother open-sourcing. I do know that all of this needs to be cleaned up and I am only willing to do the work if someone will benefit.<p>So HN, please lend me your advice on:<p>* If you would find any of these projects personally interesting or useful?<p>* How you would go about open-sourcing the projects? Any good guides out there?<p>* Most importantly, if any of you would be willing to mentor me through the process, I'd really appreciate it. My email is in my profile. Would be great to have someone comment on my code quality and guide me through brainstorming anyone I need to contact, putting something up on github, and publicizing the projects.<p>Sorry for the long post and thank you for your time!
- Edwin
======
BjornW
Maybe a stupid question, but what would be the altternative?

Recently I started to think along these lines: code not being used and/or
worked on is slowly decaying (due to bitrot :) ). Personally i would opt to
share even if it's not perfect. Practice makes perfect and that's what you can
do by making your work available to others and thus allow them to 'judge' your
work. Your question seems to imply that this is part of why you're considering
sharing your work. From a practical viewpoint: it might be good to think about
maintenance and support, although i presume most open source project first
need to be used at all before this becomes problem. I hope this makes any
sense.

~~~
Poleris
That is exactly why I'd like to open-source my work. My concern is more about
the practical question of how and/or seeing if I persuade someone to walk me
through the process.

------
jacquesm
hey Edwin,

(1) Absolutely!

(2) I don't know puppet, so no comment

(3) same

Please post about the nginx configurator if you decide to do it.

~~~
Poleris
Hi Jacques,

re: 1, do I just put it on github and hope people find it by themselves? Do I
advertise it? If so, how?

Thanks for the interest, I'll work on cleaning it up now.

\- Edwin

~~~
jacquesm
Github or sourceforge or your own homepage it doesn't matter, that depends on
where you want to go with it.

If you plan on just releasing it in to the world ('fire and forget') then your
own homepage would be good enough, if you plan on long term collaboration with
people using your code then sf or gh ?

As for advertising, please post it here, probably reddit and /. are also
teeming with people that would have an interest in this.

