Welcoming David and Noel

{reprinted from the Forum}

I want to welcome the next two additions to the TextDrive family:

David Heinemeier Hansson, who some of you know as the developer behind RubyOnRails, Instiki and Basecamp (and one of guys behind another TextDrive-hosted project: TextMate). David has already moved RubyOnRails to our servers, has a busy mailing list, and a Subversion repository and Trac install. Instiki is to follow.

Noel Jackson is one of our beloved VCs and the developer of Photostack. Noel has the same setup: SVN repos and Trac and mailing lists.

Up to this point, we’ve simply been adding to the TextDrive “staff” but these guys represent our first extension of TextDrive-Textpattern model, which is a relatively simple one: TextDrive is to be a hub for many talented open-source software developers and their users, and simply the best host for web professionals.

The idea is that these guys like Dean, will sign up users, provide specific software support via TextDrive’s ticket system, moderate their specific portions of the forum and contribute to our documentation. We then  put together top-notch development sites for them, handle all the non-software issues, and then TextDrive will remains clones of myself and Ryan (and all held together by Damelon-glue).

We observed during Textpattern development that a significant amount of Dean’s time was spent dealing with issues that came down to server misconfigurations or inadequacies that were outside of his control. And while frustrating to both developers and users, the only people that seemed to be drawing an income from all of that where the “bad hosts” themselves.

The idea was to “spin-off” a hosting company that wouldn’t just put together the best platform for Textpattern but the best setup period. The hosting itself would try to rally an involved user base and take an “open source approach”. In some ways the TextDrive-Textpattern idea is embodied in myself and Dean: I didn’t have a pre-existing user base, couldn’t design a logo to save my life or develop something like Textpattern (and honestly don’t want to), and Dean couldn’t put together and service a custom, innovative, full-fledged hosting company in less than a week.

Even look at what’s above: David has a Ruby project in a Subversion (specific Apache2 module) repository, uses a Python-based ticketing system that uses the Clearsilver templating language (Trac) and mailing lists (Python-based Mailman), but keeps his main site in Instiki, a Ruby-based wiki. Noel has a PHP program in Subversion, Trac and Mailman (python), his main site with Wordpress and is putting together documentation with Instiki.

TextDrive simply enables developers to focus on development and be freed from concerns about “the setup”, while providing an income that keeps the software itself free and open. And it’s not just the developers that win, users get centralised support, a community of like-minds, the ability to talk directly to the developer, the ability to directly influence how their host operates, a unique way to financially contribute to projects and the ability to contribute to the codebase. As an example of the kind of influence this can have, Textpattern has had 45 updates in less than an month, each of which have been immediately and publicly available.

So let’s all welcome our new developers. And I want to thank all of the VCs who really voiced and formulated the “hub-and-spoke” idea in the mailing list.

·:· Posted 16 October 2004, 06:36 by Jason Hoffman to TextPeople  |  

  1. Not many comments here yet, so let me spice up the TXD weblog…

    The more I think about it, the more I wonder what was going through my mind (stupidity !) when I hesitated when Dean talked to me about french representation of TXP and this idea he had of builing a hosting service … Where was I also when the VC200 was launched. I hate it when I feel like a “follower” but there it is, now I see it.

    This kind of “business model” (can we still call it busines since it seems to be more about passion and people and free spirit than about money for money) is the way of the future. I am convinced. Every day that I use TextPattern I am amazed by this software and discover something. And then TextDrive… TextDrive is amazing also. We users will build a buzz, of this I am also convinced.

    It’s great that technically gifted persons like Jason, Ryan and Damelon help out talented programmers of open-source soft to concentrate on developping mind-expanding experience like TXP (open a new world for publishers :-)

    Well if I was a tech/admin guy I would plead to join up and build some french speaking writing support to TXD (not that many french speak/write english) But I am not at all qualified technically speaking !

    I will bring as many clients as I can, though… Just posted on my blog in french some praise for TXD. Here in France hosting is much more expensive, so…

    Well, this post was quite long, sorry. But then again I thought a little praise a could do no harm ;-)

    Keep up the wonderful work !

    David.

    — David Molliere    21 October 2004, 22:22    #
  2. OK, I’m sold. As soon as I get back to development I’ll try to move something here.

    What are the chances of having a debian installation by the way? FreeBSD is great (it’s what I’m currently using) but support for mono and XSP on this platform is not up to par.

    — Victor    28 October 2004, 12:25    #