Meta XRepublic - FAQ

  
Design & Discussion
Originated August 2001
Frequently Asked Questions  
Who is working on XRepublic? From its inception in 1998, Michael Bowen has been the sole designer of the XRepublic. At present I am pseudocoding and working on classes and methods. I hope to have enough designed soon such that I can open it up to more capable programmers than myself. I expect to collaborate in due time.
Will the XRepublic system be open source?

As I am new to the formal Open Source Movement, my answer would be a qualified yes. I want this kind of system to be open and free to the world, but I am unclear about matters of control. If Linus Torvalds wasn't a genius programmer would Linux be useful? I am not a genius programmer but I do believe my vision of this system is valuable. So long as that vision remains the core of XRepublic, I hope lots of people would collaborate and contribute their programming skills. But is it still XRepublic if I don't code it? If some other group or individual produces some majority of work do they inherit control? These are questions which are not easy for me to answer and I don't believe will go away, and as such make me somewhat skeptical of the open source idea. But there is no question in principle that I would very much want others to contribute openly and share ideas in a scientific fashion.

I should also say this about propriety and money. If I were to find myself suddenly wealthy, the work of XRepublic would be the focus of my life. I would spend the years necessary to become a genius enough programmer and build as much of it as I could. It would be that thing which would be my philanthropic contribution to the world. But since I am not wealthy, this is my avocation and I bend to the necessary concessions of a collaborative production. I welcome like-minded individuals into my garage to share in my enthusiasm at this prospect, but if the idea takes off, there may eventually be money matters. I would not lie today and suggest that I wouldn't expect to profit from my origination and contributions.

Finally, it should be noted that by publishing all that I have about XRepublic on the net in this public and in private conversational spaces I have a demonstrated public spiritedness. It may be that XRepublic becomes nothing more than a demonstration point for a new class of communications systems. This is in contrast to scrupulously guarding the idea and taking it to a venture capitalist with schemes of avarice and code in escrow.

Does all this make XRepublic Open Source? More yes than no I think. But it's clearly not a black and white issue. As you can see, it is the details of this that make it interesting. Thanks for asking the question - this is just the kind of transparency a system like XRepublic is designed to provide. [at some point in the future you will be able to enter your feedback here].