The open source development of Part-up
Do you know how to code? And do you get excited if we talk about things like Meteor, DDP, websockets, MongoDB, and SASS? Well if you are, you're welcome to join the Part-up Development Tribe. Because we're open sourcing our software. Part-up is the platform for swarm organizing, so we're also organizing the technical development of our own software as a swarm. That means making Part-ups code open source and working within a Part-up tribe. Open sourcing software means that we embrace and celebrate open exchange, collaborative participation and transparency.
For the non-geeks: "the source code" is the part of software that most of us don't ever see; it's the code web developers can manipulate to change how a piece of software works. Programmers who have access to the software source code can improve that program by adding features to it or fixing parts that don't always work correctly. Anyone who knows how to code is invited to take a look and commit new code to the Part-up codebase. Just for fun or as a paid contribution.
“We are combining the power of open source and agile software development with the power of working together in teams on Part-up." - Ralph Boeije
How to join this development process?
The foundation of Part-up’s software is developed by Lifely, a digital agency based in Amsterdam. Last week we’ve put the Part-up codebase on Github (an online platform for software development). All development is taking place on Github, so other developers can easily join in.
In this first phase of open sourcing the development process, developers should first become part of the Part-up Development Tribe. There you find part-ups to contribute to. Each part-up links to a coherent set of features on Github. Ralph Boeije, leader of this tribe, will give members of access to the (for now still private) repository on Github.
In the next phase of open sourcing the development, the code will be fully accessible for everyone. The start of this phase will be at the next release party of Part-up on the 18th of January. On this day Part-up is organizing a hackathon: all members of the Part-up Development Tribe will get together to meet and develop new cool features for Part-up users that are requested by the community.
Nice piece Jasmijn!