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."

Comments

For once

[tomhudson]

... its NOT the slashdot effect

OSWD will be back shortly. We are experiencing technical difficulties.

Re:For once

[Will2k_is_here]

Oh, the site is down. Here's a google cache

I can't believe this

[RootsLINUX]

They're already having trouble getting their site back up, and then you decide to go and slashdot them? Good lord, have you no sense of decency???

Re:I can't believe this

[IamLarryboy]

Their server is going down hard. Here is the text.

***

Hello everyone, I'm Aaron "MonkeyMan" Nikula, I've been running OSWD for the past 3 years, so here's your authoritative explanation.

On Oct 13th our site was displaying a "Forbidden" error. We tried to contact our host (phpwebhosting.com), but despite our "emergency" support ticket it took them a week to reply to it and they do not have a phone support number. Turns out they had attempted to contact us through an email address that Frank used to create an account years ago. After all that was sorted out it turns out they disabled our account because the website was crashing their server. They have 196 users on that machine, 92 mysqld threads, and 33 apache threads, so I think we just used up too many resources for a shared (and cheap) host.

Regardless, none of that has anything to do with the problems we're having now. A little bit of OSWD history first. OSWD was started by Frank Skettino about 4 years ago. I joined 1 month after the project was created (before we even had the OSWD.org domain) and that's when I started writing PHP code for the project. After a while (months) Frank started doing less and less and I started picking up slack. I think I've written 95% of the code that was running the website. I also maintained the website. About 50% of the designs were approved by me, 45% by various volunteers (Josh, Josh, Locke, and Skatters to name a few), and 5% were done by Frank in the early days. In fact, when I had to take a trip and was away from the internet for about 4 months, nobody maintained the site. There were hundreds of designs in the queue and nobody approved them until I got back. I also started the OSWD design contests, in fact (as Josh mentioned) we were in the middle of one when the site went down.

After OSWD started to gain some steam Frank decided to add our first commercial venture. He added the template monster affiliate program to the website. It has been criticized in the past by our members because it's not open source and people confused them with our free designs. I think it's worth noting that he never told anyone how much money he made and he didn't share the money. He was paying for the hosting, so I was fine with that (although our hosting cost was $10/month, I can assure you he was making more than that).

So, back to the present: all these things were making me upset. When the site went down I thought it would be a nice time to ask Frank to pass the website to me for the benefit of the project. He hasn't talked to me since. Also, I don't have access to OSWD or access to my email account. OSWD DOES have new hosting, the transfer was done 2 weeks ago. The problem is that Frank won't do the work to bring it back up. There are no technical problems anymore, he's just sitting on it. Also, he won't give the project to anyone else to do it for him, I think because he wants to keep as much control on the website as possible.

So that's what's happening guys. I really appreciate all the offers of hosting, but that's not the issue here. And really, unless Frank gives up the website, there's not a whole lot I can do help. Hope that clears things up!

But open source means...

[Phoenix]

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

Clearing up some misconceptions

[AnomalyConcept]

I know this is Slashdot, where no one bothers to read the articles, but after reading roughly 10 comments that were speculation (and completely incorrect based on the information presented in the links), I decided I had to steer the discussion back on track. Mod me down if you want.

The reason (as stated in the articles) why OSWD.org is down is because the person that started the OSWD.org site, Frank, is trying to keep control over the site, although he isn't doing the majority of the work behind mantaining the site.

Sure, OSWD.org had some hosting issues, but that's not why the site isn't back up; the (seems to me) Second in Command, Aaron, who is dedicating a lot of time and effort into maintaining the site wants to migrate the site to a new host (and has already had everthing set up), except for the content/backups, which Frank refuses to provide.

There are some controversial issues:
After OSWD.org gained some popularity in the beginnings, Frank added a "commercial venture" to the site, the 'templat e monster affiliate program', which was non-free. Aaron's concerns is that it was confusing people and because it was non-free.

I think the issue here is more of "what happens if the project leader is unwilling to provide the content (or source code) for a project, and wants to maintain it tightly within their grasp?" I know the common first reaction would be to say "Fork it!", but how can you fork if you don't have the content or source? OSWD.org (presumably) has has a lot of templates submitted, for which a second backup copy may or may not exist. // If there's already another response like this, I apologize. It took me a while to write this.

DISCLAIMER: I am not affiliated with OSWD.org, nor do I remember having visited them in the past. I may have, but all information above is from the articles linked, namely http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showpost.php?p=226 5475&postcount=40.

Re:Clearing up some misconceptions

[slackmaster2000]

I've been in this position before.

I was the only administrative-level moderator at a very popular website for several years. I also produced two successful commercial products for the site, and helped work on many new ideas.

There was a problem, though. The site owner was a frequent no show. In fact, for the last couple years I was there he was virtually invisible...only popping up from time time to restart the server. He wouldn't respond to emails, even from me. He wouldn't respond to user requests or ideas, even when they were filtered through myself or other moderators. He wouldn't back up moderator decisions and the whole site turned very chaotic. He basically just disappeared.

So there was a dilema. Yes, he owned the site and it was his to do with as he pleased. However, the vast majority of the content was produced by volunteers and users.

The solution?

I got in touch with another guy from the site who I felt was trustworthy and we started a small business partnership and started our own website dealing with the same exact subject matter. Since we were members of the original site since its beginning (or nearly), we ended up "stealing" a ton of its users. There were of course big moral debates and a lot of hot heads but it cooled off after six months or so. We just recently passed our two year mark and while the original site has like 30,000 members and millions of forum posts, we only have about 3,000 members and a quarter million posts...but that's ok because it's operating the way we want it to, and that's what it's all about. Our business model is successful too in that we haven't had to pay our high server fees out of pocket since the second month of operation. The original site didn't have a successful model of operation, it all depends on that one invisible guy to fund it with donations and advertising, neither of which are reliable sources of income.

So one lesson learned: if you're willing to volunteer a huge amount of time for a project you believe in when somebody else is going to reap the tangible benefits, and then the project turns to shit.... maybe it's YOUR turn to go for it. You've already got the know-how and the drive after all. You don't need a terribly "unique" idea for a website either, there is a lot of room for good competition out there, which benefits everyone (as long as you're not doing anything slimey).

Another lesson I didn't expect to learn: about a year ago I went through a very unexpected divorce, and suddenly my priorities shifted drastically. I went from putting probably 30-40 hours a week into my project to putting maybe a few hours a month into it. I suddenly understood things a lot better from that other owner's perspective...I didn't want to respond to emails...I didn't want to fix things...I didn't want to take care of anything, it just felt like a burden, but one that I couldn't let go of because it was my baby. Anyhow, the last couple months have been much better and I'm not sure I learned any specific lesson except perhaps some tolerance and understanding.

Re:At least we have an explaination now....

[kmmatthews]

I wouldn't say greed has reared up - the greed has _always_ been there. This prick (Frank) has always been making money from everyone elses work; now that the site needs to be moved to a different host, the guy is just plain too fucking lazy to do it, and too controlling to let anyone else do it.

IMO, something new needs to be started from scratch, without Frank being involved AT ALL.

Then fork

[suso]

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 know frank.

[hatrisc]

I work with him, and he is currently re-coding the site and it should be up soon.

I do not know anything about the 'political' drama that Aaron claims, nor do I know if it will be resolved.