The bishop extended a new calling to me last Sunday. One of the first things I did was to start thinking of the software tools that I could write to facilitate the record keeping and communication required in the calling. Then I saw Molly Bennion’s post about innovating in callings, which led me to make a public committment to do something, which led me to make a private committment to the project to an individual who emailed me after seeing my comment.
All this got me to thinking about an idea I had a while ago. Wouldn’t it be great to have a central repository of freeware and open source software for LDS audiences?
There are plenty of individual projects floating around out there on the Internet. They are often hard to find, unsupported, and out of date. Having a Sourceforge-like site would allow projects that interest people to recruit developers, find support, and increase visibility.
Off the top of my head, here are some types of projects that might be developed:
- Trackers for home/visiting teaching, missionary contacts, Personal Progress, etc.
- Aids for scripture study — annotation, search, memorization
- Unit membership visualization tools (I’m doing this — put your ward members into Google Earth)
- Family history tools
I’m sure there are many others.
The site could also host web services and downloadable resources of interest to the LDS community.
Some guiding principles, as I see them: Projects should not substantially duplicate functionality available through official lds.org unit websites. I would be very careful about internet-based projects in which data about members is shared through the network. I’m not an open-source zealot, but I would prefer projects to be open-source. At any rate, even the closed-source projects should be free (as in beer)*.
There are a lot of smart and capable programmer types out there in the bloggernacle. And really, there are contributions to be made by non-technical folks as well. Any takers?
* Note to Word-of-Wisdom police: Free as in beer is the standard way of making the distinction between free (no charge, like free beer) and free (unfettered, like free speech).
A few more points:
I’m willing to set up the site — get the domain name, find hosting, set up software infrastructure. I’d need some help in maintaining it though — I’m pretty busy right now.
I envision running advertising from the start. I believe in planning for growth. There’s nothing worse than having a popular site die because it is too popular. There’s always the awkward call for donations, flirting with advertisers, premium membership options and other measures that ruin the whole thing. Best to have a source or revenue from the start and have the site be self-sustaining.
Don’t leave out us LDS Macheads. We need some good wholesome software also. If it can work on both platforms, it would be really great! Many members are switching to OSX. Those guys at Blue Mango came up with perhaps the best piece of LDS software to date – Virtual Historian. It was created on a Mac but works on both systems.
The key thing to achieve this is a clear charter. What is the purpose of the site? Do they have to be programs just supporting the LDS community, or does it allow tools applicable to a broader segement of Chrstianity. What licenses are supported – will it allow anything OSI approved? Do we also allow shareware, closed source, a range of commercial tools as well? do we require specific platform suppprt, or just encourage it? 98% of the world runs Windows, Kevin and those who favor the “just works” model often tend towards Macs, while geeks like me tend to turn to Linux and BSD platforms. Not everyone who would want to contribute is skilled in tools that support even two of these. And who makes these decisions? For an effort like this to work, you need to build a community around it – that means committed volunteers from the start, a charter, and a governanace model.
Something akin to SourceForge would be cool – and thier software itself is free, which helps. But there is more needed to run it that a typical basic hosting account. You need ot run SVN or CVS for source code storage, have the database capacity and disk space for releases and so on, and long term archival of that data. I’m not trying to say it can’t be done. But it needs to be economically viable, and that means either sponsership or advertising. Is Bruce Inouye in a position to do that spondership on a long term basis?
Aside from just a repsoitory though, because this is a narrower scope than sourceforge, there may also be the opportunity for collaboration on data formats ,etc.
Reducing redundant projects though is a very daunting task. The Apache Software Foundation does this and as a result few projects now start within Apache but instead start elsewhere (like SourceForge) and then migrate to Apache. To make a rule about duplicate project will limit people’s contributions. Let’s say there was an existing project that offered a range of features for Home Teaching, but was missing one that a particular quroum presidency really wanted to have, and that a memeber of that quorum could produce, but thier skillset was in a different lanugage or toolset. Should they not produce it, or just not share it because of the redundancy? I’ve been doing software development for a couple of decades now on multiple platforms and environments, and it is not an exact science. To achieve the duplication you have to have an architectural oversight body in place and a general roadmap. Not that doing so would be bad, but that is a rather onerous burden for an organization of volunteers, particularly one that is not yet in place.
Overall, I think the idea is great and would love to support it. My comments here are not intended to discourage, but rather to help layout some of the logisitics needed to acomplish it.
Andy, I think this project will start very small. The primary service of the site, as I envision it, would be as a place to coordinate distribution of releases, recruit developers, and provide support. All projects would be welcome, so long as they are free (as in beer). This means we would distribute closed-source freeware. It also means that I don’t really care what license the software gets released under. A full-blown community with a charter and governance model is a few steps down the road, I think. Maybe I’m wrong, though.
I’ve already stated that I would envision the site being advertising supported from the start.
My concern about redundant projects is not between projects hosted on the site — I agree with your points about the problems of trying to police that. Rather, I would discourage efforts to duplicate or enhance functionality already provided by the LDS Church for units at lds.org. I believe that the church’s model of discouraging individual unit websites and providing those services centrally is wise. I don’t care if there are five different personal progress trackers out there.
Of course, this is just my personal vision. I’m completely open to other ideas. Thanks for taking the time to share yours. If we can get a couple of strong project proposals and a core group of developers, we might be able to make this fly.
Bryce, there are some tools like you described available at http://www.ldsoss.org , which seems to have similar goals to what you’ve mentioned.
Personally, I’m doing my part and working on a free program to manage food storage:)
I’ve written home teaching tracking web software before, but I think, although it’s unknown to most people, and I’ve never used it, the church already provides software which allows the tracking of home teaching, it’s just only accessible from the meeting house computer.
Bryce, for days I’ve been pondering the # of coders/designers/code-hackers I’ve met in the LDS blogging community and have been thinking about writing a post on some possibilities. (That’s what jealous people who can’t code do.) My thought was that perhaps these folks could create some kind of association or site and create codes/plugins/hacks/programs etc. that would be of particular interest to the LDS community. For one thing, I’d love to see what would happen if they got together and hacked a WordPress blog to their hearts delight – perhaps keeping LDS interests in mind in the process. It could be fun to see what they might think up or do.
I started to write up a list of people who I think could be involved in one way or another. Basically it’s people who have built blogs from the ground up, written plugins, designed sites, provided tech help to others, etc. So far my list has on it: Bryce I., Clark Goble, A Random John, DKL, Dan Hersam, J. Max Wilson, Connor Boyack, J. Stapley, Kim Sievers, Christopher Bradford, Russ J. … is Mark Butler a coder? … I know I’m missing some. The LDS blogging community seems to be known for its lawyers but I think I’d prefer even more that it was known for its coders/designers/etc.
You all should definitely check out the LDS OSS mailing list before duplicating any efforts that are going on there:
http://ldsoss.org/index.php/Main_Page
You’ll find a bunch of coders there, as well as church headquarters personnel, who are collaborating to develop LDS-related software.
My only comment — please, for the love of people who don’t have the time or mental energy needed to get set up with a Linux system, encourage people make things run under Windows 2000 and XP.
Actually, never mind that. Please, developers: make things run under Windows 2000 and XP. I end out creating insane spreadsheets in Excel to do things that I see described on open source webpages all the time, because all of those programs are fundamentally not easy to use or even install… and I’m fairly proficient at such stuff. Consider the masses — you know, the people who can’t write this stuff themselves, and also can’t code their own HTML, and haven’t changed any of the default settings on any computer program, ever. There’s already tons of awesome open source stuff out there that those people can’t use.
(I ask for 2000/XP because, well, the last time I did tech support, almost all of my calls came from users of one of those two systems; Me was quite rare and the 98 PCs were near death. Also, I use 2000, so there’s just a hint of self-interest involved.)
I vote for supporting OSX as well.
Don’t forget the Yanceyware reader ( http://www.yanceyware.com/products/reader.htm ) and all the Ebooks ( http://www.thecoffeys.net/ebooks/default.asp?action=category&type=All [feel free to fix my tags, Bryce]) available for Windows-based PDAs. It was great to have every Primary, Sunday School, and Priesthood Manual at my fingertips when I was in our Bishopric. Ditto the scriptures in mulitple languages.
I’d also download recent Conference addresses, Boy Scout Merit Badge requirements, various study guides (I had True To The Faith electronically long before I had a hard copy) and you’d be surprised how helpful it is to have a copy of the US Constitution at your fingertips when discussing with someone what the text *really* says!
Yes, I am a coder too. I mostly stick to C++ though. One of my particular interests is genealogy software. I have written quite a bit on a consulting basis over the years, but there is a wide open field for some world beating collaborative family history software – My dream project is sort of like a hybrid of Wikipedia and OpenGIS, except heavily tailored for genealogy.
The Church has been working on some nice advances in this field lately as well. Check out Dan Lawyer’s web log:
Taking Genealogy to the Common Person
Bryce, it might be early yet for this, but I’m wondering if you’ve thought of any names or urls you would use for this project/website.
Our stake went live this year with ymyw.org as a complete solution for tracking scouting and young men and young women requirements. We love it because of stewardship level access, it lets bishops and stake leaders pull up the youth and see progress before interviews. That is the reason we moved away from the quorum on an excel spreadsheet (It also means that when the youth lose their books we are not reduced to guess work). The issue we had at first was posting everything online without control of security. The Church is naturally very sensitive about posting youth information online. But once the stake did its due diligence we love it. Operating system is irrelevant of course because it all lives online. No the ward building doesn’t have wifi but with the site does work fine by Blackberry I hear.
I have actually setup a site. I work for the Church and have been hired by the Church to do exactly what you are saying you would like done. I’m working on getting the site live now. Please email me should you want to be involved.
By way of information, the site will “probably” be under the domain “ldsdevnet.org”.
Drop me a line and share with me your comments.
Tom
In response to Mark Butler:
Check out http://werelate.org
They’re heading in that direction, perhaps.
Dan H.,
The major transition as I see it between something like that and what is needed corresponds to the transition between the text based web and so-called semantic web. I have a friend who works for a firm trying to extract genealogical metadata from published web pages for search purposes and it is exceedingly difficult.
It would be comparably difficult, but for different reasons extracting data from a regularly structured source like a biographical dictionary. But web formatting is highly diverse and does not typically carry the necessary information for structured searches. The data eventually need to be published (at a minimum) in both structured and presentational format, or some hybrid of the two. And even then, without a collaborative edit mechanism for the former, one just ends with data (and error) multiplication that turns into a virtually irreconcilable mess.
One technology that I know of that may be suitable for doing this is that used for distributed source code control (git / arch / Bitkeeper, etc). It is much more scalable than current Wiki technology (which is based on a single centralized database), and has the advantage that it is inherently multi-schema (tree) while allowing for a structured review and edit process.
In other words, if you don’t like some body’s change you don’t have to have it in your tree. But ultimately we would like everyone to work on the same tree, just as Linux kernel developers generally work on variations of the same version, the so called head branch. The system naturally promotes collaboration.
None of us has the resources to do it all by ourselves – we have to cooperate. But we probably cannot run the history of the world on a single database server either – that is where distributed revision control technology comes in handy. Individuals, families, and organizations might maintain only a portion of the tree that they care about, and submit changes back into the reference tree with some sort of editorial quality control.
Now I have talked to some marketing oriented people who think that is all a bit much for neophytes to comprehend, but I see it as ultimately the only way a quality (as in legal or scholarly quality) product will eventually result. A no holds barred Wiki style edit war might be good for a first pass, but at some point discipline has to set in.
Regarding “Unit membership visualization tools (I’m doing this — put your ward members into Google Earth)”.
Make sure you don’t run afoul of Church and legal restrictions about publishing private information. Locations and addresses are very sensitive information; if non-members or LDS-targetted businesses can get hold of your map and turnit into a mailing list, you may get in trouble.
Best of luck — cool ideas.
Bryce, anything new on this? The comments are interesting, particulary the one referring to ldsdevnet.org, though it isn’t up yet.