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BricaBox Back From The Dead as Open Source Platform
Written by Allen Stern - July 25, 2008
NY-based BricaBox which closed its doors last month, is now back as an open source platform. CEO Nate Westhimer explains, "I’ve heard from a number of people that open sourcing — or "freeing" — the code would be a good way to let the dream live on. After speaking with with several folks in the open source and free software communities, I believe this is the right thing to do."
Nate is now looking for developers to help with the forward progress of open sourcing the BricaBox code. I need to be honest here. I don't think this is a wise move. First, Nate has already moved on and will he really want to be attached to BricaBox going forward? Second, was the application ever really finished? Nate shared the lessons he learned by running BricaBox and that should have been the end of it - or perhaps a full sale of IP and domain. What I think would have made sense is to offer code snippets that developers could use in their applications like the Google Maps mashup, etc.
It will be interesting to see what the open source experts at Ostatic think of this move. Check out all of our BricaBox coverage.
COMMENTS - Add New Comment
Thanks for your opinion, Allen.
Not sure why it's a bad idea to make technology available to people who want it, though. I got a number of inquiries for the code -- so now I'm making it available!
Also, the idea that you can just give out "code snippets" is a bit of a misunderstanding of how such code-bases work. As it's a proprietary platform, the code relates to itself, so it wouldn't be of much use in other projects.
Anyway, like I said in my post, I don't expect anything significant to come of this. This is not going to be the next Wordpress open source project by any means, but I felt the benefit of making it available far outweighed the value of it as a folder on my hard-drive!
Nate - it's simple - now you are "stuck" attached to Bricabox - doesn't Rose want you working on new programs and ideas? I think your point about it not being significant is a good reason for why it should have just been sold.
Not really stuck to it. Again, we're not trying to build a movement here. We just want a good piece of code to be available. If people want to self-organize and enhance the code together, that's up to them.
As for my position at Rose Tech Ventures, I'm blessed that it's a job with both flexibility and responsibility. I guess that's one way of saying: I think I'm perfectly capable of balancing my work!
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