Talk.org OpenSourced and stats from Keynote

Posted by Pelle 3 comments edit

To make Talk.org a playground for more than just me, I’ve decided to open source it. You can find it on GitHub

I have released it as GPL3 as I think it makes sense for an app like Talk.org that we all get to learn from our experiences.

I will do my best to bring as many new features people create into the live application as possible. However be aware that at some point I may want to put some unobtrusive ads or something on it to make to pay future AppEngine bills. You have been warned. But then again you could do so yourself if you so please.

Anyway, it is a fairly simple app at the moment and is not seing large amount of use, however a fair amount of people came to try it out during the Stevenote.

These are the performance graphs from the Google AppEngine Dashboard:

Dashboard for Talk.org

The requests seem to take about 500ms each, which should improve once memcache is working properly again:

Dashboard for Talk.org

So far we have 58 users who have posted in total 166 posts. Not bad really for a tiny app, originally written last Friday over breakfast.

So far the todo list is:

  • Allow users to pick their own nickname when signing up (right now it relies on what Google gives me, which is wrong)
  • Atom/RSS/JSON support
  • OAuth
  • Followers
  • Tracking

Concensus seems to be that the best way to do IM/SMS support is for a 3rd party server todo it via OAuth/HTTP as AppEngine doesn’t yet support XMPP. This is obvious as a great separate project for some Erlang geek out there.

Posted June 9th, 2008 under:
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shot@hot.pl
Shot June 10th, 2008 destroy

You might be interested in AGPL-licensing it, instead of GPL.

For web apps, GPL makes little sense; as long as no-one is giving anyone any binaries, no sources have to be exchanged. AGPL is basically GPL with the additional clause that the sharing of source code requirement also applies when the application is offered over a network.

pelle@stakeventures.com
Pelle June 10th, 2008 destroy

I thought that was one of the main improvements of GPL3? I’ll research it.

rjmackay@gmail.com
Robbie MacKay July 26th, 2008 destroy

have you thought about implementing the open microblogging spec (as used in laconica) as part of it?

http://openmicroblogging.org/

I’d also agree with Shot about AGPL – its what is used in Laconica aswell. Basically just means that source code must be released even if you’re not distributing the application (which you’re not if its just running on a server somewhere)

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