The code behind Everyblock.com (as of June 09) was released under an open source license, but as of today I’m not aware of a single website using the technology. Newspaper in particular I would expect to have a keen interest in this software, but so far not a single paper has tried it.
What’s the hold up?
The code has been downloaded 859 times as of this writing.
For those who care enough to download, one read through the documentation is probably enough to scare you off. If you actually try installing the system, all but seasoned LINUX geeks will likely balk or fail completely. (out of date dependancies, etc.)
It’s like baking bread from scratch vs using a boxed recipe. The materials required to cook from scratch cost more, you need to be or employ an experienced cook and it takes far longer. Unless newspaper have a budget for this project of even a fraction of Everyblock’s original 1.1 million they can forget about implementing software like this.
… unless … we we simplify the installation procedures and provide tutorials on best practices and example use cases for under funded newspapers.
Have you installed the Everyblock software? Where did you get stuck? Do you have ideas on what we as the open source community can do to make it more useful to the majority of newspapers out there?
November 12th, 2009 at 9:28 pm Vote:
Hey,
I am one of the 859 downloaders. We were looking to use the code base to start a hyperlocal company in Canada but after spending about 2 1/2 hours reformatting the read me files and looking at all of the software dependencies we decided that it was too risky to proceed and have undertaken our own development. The read me files highlighted that this solution is easy to pull together if you are one of the five Everyblock employees but as an outsider – good luck! There are too many dependencies and not enough details on how they did things. 2 years of development boils into 5 read me files of about 3-4 pages (20 pages in total).
One of the most disappointing parts is that the Everyblock team does not seem to understand open source development. They posted this code base to the internet but did not create an SVN site to allow them and others to download the most current code. Another reason we moved on. It appears they posted the code to the site to fulfill their grant application.
It becomes interesting because they GPL’ed the code base which means they need to continue to post changes somewhere on the web even though they are now a private company.
The other disappointment is that the iPhone code base did not come along with the web application.
November 24th, 2009 at 10:06 pm Vote:
Rod, how far along are you on your project? Can you share with us your alternative to the everyblock code?