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Open Source Design in risk?
Stylissimo writes "OSWD.org, the biggest source for free open source web templates, has been offline for several weeks, which has caused a dilemma for the large number of webmasters who rely on open source design. While some of the OSWD.org designers are doing their best to keep the open source design scene alive, others are worried that the absence of OSWD.org will hit the internet hard and maybe even kill the scene. Aaron Nikula, administrator of OSWD.org, has published a statement about the situation and the site may be back again."
I suspect they're in trouble because they're not performing a valuable enough service. Linux never has trouble finding funding because it's so valuable to people that Linux stay in healthy shape. I've taken a look through OSWD before and found most of the sites were ugly. Not only that, they wouldn't adapt well to a site design I have in mind.
So it goes.
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
If someone did died (permantly or not) it will be replaced as soon as it needs to be. Geeks tend to like to have tools ready when they need them. So if one is missing theopen source geeks will start to work on it. No matter the name or brand everything will return from it's death in some form.
I like muppets.
...I've been wondering. The site has been very valuable to me for several months now...infact it had become part of my daily, check this site for new stuff rotation. Hopefully they can resolve whatever dispute is keeping them offline soon, or the remaining interested parties will start a new site to replace it.
Unfortunately its sounding rather like greed has reared up in the wake of the disaster...
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
If it is an open source movement and the web site is dead with the possibility of it never going up again, is it not in the realm of possibility that others will pick up the pieces and do another one?
Isn't that the point of Open Source? The ability that others can take the source and do with it as they wish as long as the results are also open source?
The death of a web site doesn't mean the death of the OSWD community...unless no one cares and they all let it die.
Phoenix
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
I think the article is making a pretty bold claim. Most of these situations tend to resolve themselves eventually and something as trivial as a website doesn't cause death. This reminds me of the days when a major local warez bbs got busted and the scene was declared "dead." Yeah right.
What especially strikes me is about the part "webmasters who rely on open source design." If you're a real designer, you shouldn't have to rely on anything like this except your own talent. Things like this site are certainly a great help and can speed things along, but I do not see how anyone can attach "designer" to their name and then feel the world is over when a website they use is down. Furthermore, there are other websites out there that may be smaller, but do a good job catering to this audience.
Forgive my ignorance, but design sites were around before this site and will be after. Apparently their design didn't accomodate actually hosting content reliably -- perhaps that should be included in their next template.
If a project is useful, and the people in control of the project won't help the project evolve in some direction or just sit on it and do nothing, you fork the code. In this case, you might not have access to the website source code, but I would think there would be an archive somewhere.
This is the reason why there should be at least two independent people in charge of open source projects.
I find it kind of ridiculous that one man appears to have the power to eliminate a valuable resource used by thousands of users. That just can't be right.
>|<*:=
I'd say, buy a new domain and start fresh, Aaron. Do your thing.
if you know frank why don't you ask him to post a statement to inform the community or at least make some of templates available on an ftp server for the meantime.
Why was this modded funny?
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
As I understand it, Frank didn't put up the site again right away because he needed motivation to redesign it. He was unhappy with the current codebase and design and used the server problems as a "fire under his ass" to get the new site done. He has posted a statement on oswd.org explaining the new difficulties which Aaron has caused.
I write code.