I'm thinking of open sourcing an old project
demo.chartwidget.com
demo.chartwidget.com
http://paddymullen.com/2008/11/19/open-sourcing-chartwidget/
In 2007 I wrote a javascript charting package named <a href="http:/demo.chartwidget.com">chartWidget</a>. I intended to pursue business opportunities with it, that didn’t work out (another post).
Take a look at the site. You can view the javascript source, but it is obfuscated, I modified the YUI Compressor to munge global variables somewhat safely.
Anyway, I think I wrote some pretty cool code. I’m not currently doing anything with it, and many friends have recommended that I open source it. So I am thinking about it.
I have some questions
1. Which license to choose? I’m leaning towards GPL, because it is still a bit hard to let go. Which license puts me in the best position should someone want to use it (for me to possibly receive consulting fees)?
2.Should I include my whole subversion repository, about 700 revisions, I’m worried to do this, because it quite likely includes passwords ( I know bad practice)? On the plus side including the whole repository could show thought patterns, to help other people debug the code
3.Will anyone care? I guess I can find out by doing it.
4. My code is idiomatic to say the least, in some places wrong, and in many more places just hard to understand. How much will this matter for me, if someone looks at the code will they consider me an idiot?
5.What questions am I not asking that I should be?
* editted to remove p tags
2. I would not include the repo.
3. Thank you for considering open sourcing instead of letting it die.
Here are some other common open source license types if you're still deciding: http://www.opensource.org/licenses
2. While a revision history is nice to have available, odds are most people aren't going to really look back at older versions of the code. Some code cleanup and documentation would be preferable (but does require your setting aside time to do that).
3. You'll never know until you do. And it doesn't cost you anything to do it. (With some exceptions... see #5)
4. You're not claiming its perfect so don't stress too much about it. Part of what open source is about is allowing someone to see what makes everything tick, warts and all. Because someone could always contribute back fixes.
5. Have you thought about where you're going to make your code available (Sourceforge, GitHub, etc.)? Is there going to be a Google Group or something so people can ask questions or share their experiences with the code? Even if you're not expecting a massive wave of adoption, having some of that in place can make everything better (both for people interested in your code and yourself).
Good attitude. I've open-sourced some of my own projects in the past and found the response always surprised me.
You could ALSO offer a "commercial" licence. That would give users the right distribute your code with their closed-source commercial code.
The dual licence approach means that users that aren't making money off your code don't have to pay, and those that are do.
On the repository point: I'd suggest putting the current code onto something like Google Code. If you're not moving the code forward and no one else can fix bugs or make improvements, then the project is basically dead.