An Architect's View

This morning I presented ColdFusion and the Open Source Landscape (PDF, 544k) at the awesome CFinNC conference. The feedback has been good so far so I wanted to get the slides online quickly for everyone to download / read. The talk covers several aspects of open source development in ColdFusion and gives some insights into the For ColdFusion Foundation (4CFF).

One of the common complaints I hear about ColdFusion's popularity (or perceived lack thereof) is that we don't have any of the 'killer' open source applications that make PHP (or insert language of choice) so popular. If you look around at great open source applications (MediaWiki, Drupal, Wordpress, Apache, OpenOffice, Linux, Firefox etc), they all have a few things in common:

• A dedicated team of developers - and documentation authors and testers and so on
• An organization that helps with project logistics, community management, marketing and so on
• Financial support of some form - usually in terms of sponsorship for infrastructure, sometimes in terms of actually paying people to work on the project

In the CF community, we have none of these. A handful of open source projects have a small team of developers, rather than being just a lone developer. Some projects have infrastructure (e.g., Trac/SVN) donated by a company - and that includes RIAForge and any of the source code hosting companies that offer free plans for open source projects. What if an organization existed to help open source CFML projects grow? What if that organization could offer infrastructure, assistance with project logistics and marketing, and could help marshal volunteers to encourage better documentation and testing and so on? That's the idea behind the For ColdFusion Foundation. 4CFF was announced at CFUnited as a incorporated, non-profit organization with a board of directors in place and a set of bylaws based on the Apache Foundation. The goal of 4CFF is:

The For ColdFusion Foundation (4CFF) is a non-profit dedicated to helping the ColdFusion Community at-large through fostering a collaborative environment for ColdFusion Free Open-Source Software Projects and their Developer Communities, so that we all may enjoy great software.

Since CFUnited, 4CFF has been working on logistics and is close to announcing the first two open source projects that will be moving under the 4CFF umbrella. It's early days for the foundation but you can read more about the concepts behind it and the people involved on the 4CFF website and you can follow announcements on Twitter. You can join the foundation's free membership mailing list or send your thoughts to the foundation, via the 4CFF website. If you're at MAX, quite a few of the board will be there and you can ask your questions in person. Look for the Space Chimps!