I am in a bit of a quandary, and hopefully someone out there has the answer.

I have an idea for a little web app. It’s not an amazing idea, nothing new or ground breaking, and there are already several products out there that do almost what I want. But not quite. Which is why I’m contemplating building it myself. When built this app will certainly fill a hole for my business, and I should think a couple of my clients. My idea is to eventually host this web app for others to use, charging a small amount of subscription.

So far so good, but the idea itself isn’t the quandary, it’s the licence.

As stated there is nothing new or ground breaking in this actual project, which is why I am thinking of adopting an Open Source licence. My reasoning for this is simply that once finished, and if I decide to turn it into a hosted web app, pretty much anyone would be able to subscribe, see it’s features and within a couple of weeks have a clone. As this is the case, why not open it out to begin with? By opening it up, everyone can benefit from the code, and the only competition (I can imagine) will be who has the better service (daily backups, customer support etc), which in my opinion is the most important thing as far as a web app goes.

But here comes the stumbling block. Which Open Source licence allows for this sort of usage? After doing a lot of searching and reading, I’m still not entirely sure.

Here’s my check point list of things that I need to cover:

• People can easily clone it, so why not allow them to use the same code base so all can benefit
• Product will be run as a hosted web app and a small monthly subscription may be charged to use the service
• I do not want to sell the code, but I may want to sell "installations" (e.g. someone pays me and I install the thing on there in house servers)
• Include the ability to use existing (Open Source) code to enhance the product
• Hopefully provide something of value to a community that has greatly benefited me over the years

What I certainly do not want to do, nor be accused of is to Open Source my project as a marketing gimmick or to get free (as in beer) labour from the Open Source community which I then sell on and take all the profit. The Open Source community has been hugely beneficial to me over the past decade, and at last I’m in a position that I can hopefully provide something of use back.

Many thanks for your time, and I’m looking forward to any replies

Sites and pages that have been useful

• http://www.opensource.org/
• http://producingoss.com/
• http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/
• http://www.sitepoint.com/article/open-source-licensing

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It’s official, everything I need has already been made - in a limited sense of course.

Today I had to copy the database and files (a huge amount of it) from one server to another server to essentially replicate an old website on a new domain. Both running Linux, Apache, MySQL and SSH As there was such a huge amount to be copied I thought that there must be an easy way.

Well, of course there is. A quick search for "linux  backup of remote server" on Google and I end up at a tutorial about Rsync. Couple this with MySQLdump and within about 2 minutes I have a complete backup of the current server on the new one!

Absolutely effortless. They’ve thought of everything!

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Was sent a very amusing PDF today. Everyone must know!

Click to view PDF >>

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Browsing around the internet the other day, in search of CSS examples, my girlfriend landed in the Yahoo! Developer Network, and notably the Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI). I can’t say I’d had too much to do with it before, knowing it was there, along with Amazon Web Services, Youtube, Facebook etc. I much prefer the "crap I have loads of work, no time to play with new things" route, but she persuaded me to have another look, and I must admit I’m blow away by the sheer scale of it.

They seem to not only have everything, but also have some of the best examples of everything. You can see all their examples in action here.

Now I’m in a bit of a quandary. The sheer amount of components available (the zip file of the library is about 11MB) along with the quality and the fact that there is not only a highly active development community but which is also backed up by one of the internet’s big boys makes it a compelling offer. However, what about all the "little" people out there producing some great stuff. JQuery, Dojo,  FCKeditor amongst many others? Is there the danger that with the YUI being so extensive, more people will switch over to this toolkit and the others get left by the wayside?

And what about licensing? Currently YUI is released on an open source BSD style license, but will it always be so? I’d like to think not. Not only is there really no way to stop people pulling apart JavaScript files, but there can be no gain (as I see it) to engaging the open source community and enabling them to use, develop and expand your product, then when critical mass has been achieved, cutting them off by closing the source.

Instead I’d like to think that Yahoo! will stick to it’s open source push, continually improving its developer network and offering. And as for ‘the others’ out there, to don my Chris Anderson hat for a moment, the web has an unlimited capacity, and as such there will always be niches. The little guys are there to fill that, as they always have and always will. But with Anderson’s log tail, there is always the possibility that the little guy may not remain so small.

Related links: http://yuiblog.com/

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