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Web Applications Do Not Make Good Open Source Projects
URL: http://java.net/pub/pq/182
At 7:24 AM on Nov 7, 2007, Geertjan wrote:
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Personally, I'm not surprised. I can see how mobile applications are not that popular, comparatively speaking, as open source projects, but one would think that web applications lend themselves really well to being open sourced, because of their 'online' nature. Still, there is something impersonal about the web, which contradicts the inherently personal feel of open source projects, at least in their initial phases. But this is all speculation, of course. My guess is that working on libraries and frameworks is really popular because these can be used in all the other areas. Nothing as cool as a new library of utility methods to speed things up and simplify them.
One open source web application that I know of is Hudson , the continuous integration engine. Are there others out there? (Of course, there must be.) And what could be the reason for web applications being less than popular as open source projects?
22 replies so far (
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Re: Web Applications Do Not Make Good Open Source Projects
I basically see two reasons that could be responsible for that:- No matter what you're about to do, building a web application at some point you gotta deal with visual web design. For what I have seen so far, both looking at the major Java IDEs (including NetBeans Visual Web and Eclipse), there is no convenient and absolutely pleasing way to do so. I know quite some folks you always disliked the idea of wasting hours and hours on trying to build visually appealing markup that works on all browsers. Building a desktop application for a well-defined platform (like Swing) or even a framework with no GUI at all seems to be way more pleasant here especially if you're all about functionality not how to interact with it.
- I am not sure whether there actually is a huge demand for "generic" web applications built in open-source projects. Sure there are weblogs, wikis and stuff, but as soon as your business needs do get more specific, same will your application. Building reliable, reusable frameworks seems to be a more promising approach here, given that, this way, you can simply include it and build your specialized web application using "generic" components.
Cheers,
Kristian
Re: Web Applications Do Not Make Good Open Source Projects
I second Kristian's primary reason: dealing with visual web design. Creating a visually appealing, attractive web interface is hard, takes time, and uses a completely different set of skills than what it takes to write a class library, a server app, or an app with a command line interface.I know that at least in my case, it's been disappointing when I've created very functional back-end code, only to afterward create an unattractive web user interface. It can be discouraging. Good visual web design is indeed hard. I've had to work with others who do have the requisite skills to see a good web interface come about that uses my back-end code.
Cheers,
David
Re: Web Applications Do Not Make Good Open Source Projects
Problem is that programmers think / want to actually design the web pages. This is what's bad with web programming. Graphic designers generally are on the side lines. Although some programmers *think* they separate design from content, they don't.Generally, largely, web constructs just suck, period.
Re: Web Applications Do Not Make Good Open Source Projects
My guess is that there are several factors at work:- There are quite a number of Java based web frameworks (how many can you name?), and when a project decides to use a specific framework they inherently lose the other potential developers who aren't familiar with / don't want to learn the framework chosen by the project lead.
- Frameworks, libraries and middleware are more likely to be used by other developers, and therefore increases its value. On top of that, you get more meaningful feedback sooner in development since other developers use it.
- End users are not as likely to run a web application on their own PC (can your next door neighbor manage an instance of Tomcat?) as they are to install and use a desktop application.
Technical Architect, ROME Corporation
Re: Web Applications Do Not Make Good Open Source Projects
...> programming. Graphic designers generally are on the
> side lines. Although some programmers *think* they
> separate design from content, they don't.
...
I guess that some do, but in my opinion it's just incredibly hard. Once you're used to a GUI builder like Matisse for your desktop application, you possibly don't want to get back to using a text editor (even if it actually has syntax highlighting, code completion and all these fancy things) for manually crafting markup and possibly CSS and possibly JavaScript to come up with a small crippled widget that looks broken in anything but the browser you used to test it. Personally, I think the (total?) lack of tools usable in those situations makes web application development rather unattractive...
Re: Web Applications Do Not Make Good Open Source Projects
Mike P, I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't know any developers who want to design web interfaces and I've spent the vast majority of my Java career building web apps. It's a pain in the ass and developers hate it.Java developers don't want to work on open source web frameworks because 1) as already mentioned, web design and cross browser compatibility are a major pain in the ass. It's simply not fun to do and it's one of the big failures in our industry but a major part of it is that the companies that make browsers (Microsoft in particular) f*'d up the web beyond the ability to measure with their non-standard, will accept any pos html you throw at it, browser. 2) Javascript. Do I really need to drill into that? 3) The vast majority of Java devs spend their entire day working on web apps because that's were the vast majority of the jobs are. The last thing I want to do is come home and deal with more web crapola. And finally, 4) the HTTP protocol is horribly out of date. This protocol was primarily designed around allowing hot linking between simple web pages. We're WAY beyond that now and it's design inflicts suffering on all the stuff that's built on it. The protocol needs to be scrapped and replaced with a protocol that actually reflects what the web is really about these days (beyond pr0n).
Re: Web Applications Do Not Make Good Open Source Projects
> ...looks broken in anything but the browser> you used to test it. Personally, I think the (total?)
> lack of tools usable in those situations makes web
> application development rather unattractive...
I know the guys I work with just use IDEA to edit the JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. Then they debug in Firefox and Firebug. Finally, they check for cross-browser quirks against IE 6 and 7.
They've been able to do some really great web app work that way.
Cheers,
David
Re: Web Applications Do Not Make Good Open Source Projects
> finally, 4) the HTTP protocol is horribly out of> date. This protocol was primarily designed around
> allowing hot linking between simple web pages. We're
> WAY beyond that now and it's design inflicts
> suffering on all the stuff that's built on it. The
> protocol needs to be scrapped and replaced with a
> protocol that actually reflects what the web is
> really about these days (beyond pr0n).
I'm curious if you are really referring to HTTP or to HTML? If you really mean HTTP, I'd love to hear specifically what you think is wrong with the protocol - how does it prevent you from building the applications you want?
Re: Web Applications Do Not Make Good Open Source Projects
Personally, one thing I like about working on the desktop, as opposed to the web, is that I don't have to deal with (1) servers, (2) networks, (3) browser differences, (4) unexpected acts of god that happen in relation to combinations of (1), (2), and (3)! Plus, I happen to like Swing...Re: Web Applications Do Not Make Good Open Source Projects
> Personally, one thing I like about working on the> desktop, as opposed to the web, is that I don't have
> to deal with (1) servers, (2) networks, (3) browser
> differences, (4) unexpected acts of god that happen
> in relation to combinations of (1), (2), and (3)!
> Plus, I happen to like Swing...
I agree. I have yet to find way with a web interface to make it as easy to make a UI look good by doing nothing and then make it look different via one line of code.
Sometimes the UI has to be a web ui. And everytime I have to do one I go through the same process - Which framework is gonna hurt the least and fits the best with what I am trying to build.
Re: Web Applications Do Not Make Good Open Source Projects
> I know the guys I work with just use IDEA to edit the> JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. Then they debug in Firefox
> and Firebug. Finally, they check for cross-browser
> quirks against IE 6 and 7.
If it can be done this way - fine. However looking at our set of customers, we still do have a strong MSIE 5.x visitors base (mainly people on old Windows 2000 systems) who need to be capable of using our site. This way, you suddenly end up trying to make your site usable (not even talking about displaying it in an optimized way) on anything from IE5/Netscape5 to now. Not really funny, for sure.
Second thing: I still sorta dream of a visual editor that actually allows for separating things as strict as having some web _designer_ building the web/ui design (possibly using a tool like dreamweaver or whatever) and having a set of libraries / frameworks / tools / ... around to simply load and display these designs from within my code, without having either the programmer being forced to mess with markup or the designer to mess with confusing inline code and/or tags possibly removed by his/her visual site creation tool. As long as this is an illusion, separation of concerns in terms of web design is, as well.
Re: Web Applications Do Not Make Good Open Source Projects
What're you talking about? There are tons of open source web applications. I think, though, the majority are written in PHP or other languages besides Java. And I think the culprit there is that it's trivial to find a web hosting account that supports PHP, but very hard to find one supporting Java. Weeelll... blinking in my face as I write this is a banner from lunarpages, so there are exceptions.- David Herron
Re: Web Applications Do Not Make Good Open Source Projects
> Second thing: I still sorta dream of a visual editor> that actually allows for separating things as strict
> as having some web _designer_ building the web/ui
> design...
Yeah -- To be sure, having a graphic designer / graphic artist / web designer right there as an equal member of the development team is paramount.
Re: Web Applications Do Not Make Good Open Source Projects
When it comes to interface design I have great hope for projects like GWT (google web toolkit) that aims for taking case of all the problems of the html, css and javascript and thereby allowing for the average developer to design good gui:s as they can do with swing.