The FIRST Alliance - A whole new way to play

[BigJ]

Originally Posted by mobilegamer999

Open Source?
I can almost guarantee that we will not open-source the website. Our biggest reason for this is that we made the API public and extremely easy to get started with so that there was no need to open-source the website. While we wont be open-sourcing the website, we WILL be providing very simple/easy to read code example for how to do just about every feature on the website in many common languages (C#, Java, Ruby, PHP, etc.)

I wouldn't underestimate the ability to source-dive. You can give me all the examples in the world and I bet it won't cover every use case. If I encounter a weird problem I'd love to peek at the source and find out what I'm doing wrong or give you feedback or open an issue ticket or submit a patch myself.

I can understand if you want this to be "your thing" and nobody else's, but then I'd just say it that way. "We documented our API" doesn't really seem like a reason for "It will not be open-source" to me. Maybe I'm just weird.

[GGCO]

Dave, you misquote me. I was not saying the economics of our service (ie how we're paying for it) are sketchy or that we don't have a plan, rather responding to another member's post.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...7&postcount=96

As far as sustainability goes, we're going to implement ads soon to help recoup our costs. Secondly, we're not using a free service for hosting or our domain name or anything like that. We're paying for it just like anyone else. If you mean our design looks cheap that's one thing, but I don't know how by just looking at the site it gives you a feeling of shoddy work.

Maybe for an app like the Spyder, you'll never give up control and use a third party API. It probably just doesn't make sense for you guys and that's fine. However, we think there are a lot of other developers out there who have great ideas or tools they'd like to build and could really use our API. We're here to help those guys out.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by GGCO

As far as sustainability goes, we're going to implement ads soon to help recoup our costs. Secondly, we're not using a free service for hosting or our domain name or anything like that. We're paying for it just like anyone else. If you mean our design looks cheap that's one thing, but I don't know how by just looking at the site it gives you a feeling of shoddy work.

Your product is your API, how do you put ads in an API?

[GGCO]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Your product is your API, how do you put ads in an API?

Ads on the site. Sorry for the confusion.

[kmehta]

Originally Posted by mobilegamer999

Why not just build upon TBA's codebase?
The main reason is that its not THAT simple, TBA would not let some random outsider start modifying their code and pushing it live to the website. Even if they let us help them with their code, every time more people are added to a project, the slower changes become and the less often changes can be made.

Actually you can just fork the github repository and join the mailing list if you want to start helping TBA.

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by GGCO

We're paying for it just like anyone else. If you mean our design looks cheap that's one thing, but I don't know how by just looking at the site it gives you a feeling of shoddy work.

I never said anything like that. I have no idea of the quality of your work, and have no reason to assume that it's not wonderful. My simple point is that when providing an API to other apps, the other apps become dependent on you. Your decisions affect them. If you're running an end-user website and decide to take it away sometime, that sucks for the community but it doesn't really invalidate anyone else's work. If you take away an API that others are accessing with apps that they spent considerable effort to create, then you're harming them.

Originally Posted by GGCO

As far as sustainability goes, we're going to implement ads soon to help recoup our costs.

You've been pitching this as primarily an API service. How are you going to run ads on an API service? Or, from a different perspective: you keep pointing out how anyone could duplicate your website using your API. If you put ads on your website, wouldn't someone else just duplicate the site without the ads, causing people to use that instead (since people obviously prefer sites without ads)? Or worse, they put their own ads on it and pocket the profits while you're footing the bill for the grunt work of collecting the data.

I'm not trying to offend anyone, I'm simply trying to point out some of the real-world issues that crop up after the enjoyment of creating it wears off (which it will, I promise). Things that start out as a fun side project can turn into an annoyance faster than you'd think. Pretty soon you'll find that instead of getting praise for an awesome tool, you'll just get complaints about "why doesn't it have feature x" and "when are you going to support y" or "it's down, how soon is it going to be back up?". Instead of being grateful, there's a lot of people out there who just expect you to provide more and more things for them, for free.

[Joseph Bisch]

Originally Posted by mobilegamer999

Why not just build upon TBA's codebase?
The main reason is that its not THAT simple, TBA would not let some random outsider start modifying their code and pushing it live to the website. Even if they let us help them with their code, every time more people are added to a project, the slower changes become and the less often changes can be made.

Open Source?
I can almost guarantee that we will not open-source the website. Our biggest reason for this is that we made the API public and extremely easy to get started with so that there was no need to open-source the website. While we wont be open-sourcing the website, we WILL be providing very simple/easy to read code example for how to do just about every feature on the website in many common languages (C#, Java, Ruby, PHP, etc.)

Of course TBA does not let random outsiders push code live to the website. I have contributed code to TBA, but ultimately Greg was the one that pushed it to the server. Would you let me push code live to TFA?

Open source is not equal to no security.

Your reason for not making TFA open source is not a real reason. As others have pointed out making an API and open sourcing a software project are two mutually exclusive actions. If you simply made the decision not to open source TFA then that is your reason, not that TFA has an API.

With respect to the accusations of this being a "hobby project", I think people need to give you guys a chance. Where would TBA be today if people wrote it off as a "hobby project"? I don't mean to be mean to you guys with my above comments, but just as you guys want to make sure people don't have misconceptions about TFA, I want to make sure they don't have misconceptions about TBA.

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by Joseph Bisch

With respect to the accusations of this being a "hobby project", I think people need to give you guys a chance.

I meant no disrespect by saying it looked like a hobby project. I have lots of hobbies, FRC used to be one of them. FRC Spyder started as and arguably still is a hobby project (though see my earlier post about how things don't always stay fun). The key factor here, though, is that if I get bored of any of my hobbies and stop supporting them it doesn't really harm anyone else's work. The creators of the First Alliance website are pitching it as a service around which other people should build their own sites or apps (which are also likely hobbies). Now you have a tricky situation where if the TFA folks get tired of the hobby and neglect it or shut it down, they're hurting other people's work too. That's my concern here.

I'll try to stay out of this thread from here on out. Best of luck to TFA, and any other services built around it.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by GGCO

Ads on the site. Sorry for the confusion.

No confusion. You have stated numerous times that the API is your differentiator, this means that it will probably be your biggest cost. People like myself will be consuming your API and never hitting your website so I will never be generating revenue for you but I WILL be generating costs for you. Do you think, based on your current traffic, you will be seeing enough web traffic to cover your costs? I don't want to know numbers I just want to make sure you've considered this possibility.

TL;DR - How do you make sure that people like I are not just cost generators for you without creating API limits and forcing me to pay for more use?

[mobilegamer999]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

No confusion. You have stated numerous times that the API is your differentiator, this means that it will probably be your biggest cost. People like myself will be consuming your API and never hitting your website so I will never be generating revenue for you but I WILL be generating costs for you. Do you think, based on your current traffic, you will be seeing enough web traffic to cover your costs? I don't want to know numbers I just want to make sure you've considered this possibility.

TL;DR - How do you make sure that people like I are not just cost generators for you without creating API limits and forcing me to pay for more use?

I do feel that we get enough web traffic that ads would be a sufficient revenue source to support the website.

[Nemo]

I am trying to use TFA or TBA to follow the championship, and it would be really nice if either site would put the teams' championship schedules on the team pages before the event ends. Right now the team pages only have tabs for their district and regional events.

[mobilegamer999]

Originally Posted by Nemo

I am trying to use TFA or TBA to follow the championship, and it would be really nice if either site would put the teams' championship schedules on the team pages before the event ends. Right now the team pages only have tabs for their district and regional events.

There you go, got that fixed for you on TFA.

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by mobilegamer999

There you go, got that fixed for you on TFA.

That was fast!

[flippy147852]

Can you space out the bars for the divisional Event Stats graphs? they are really smushed together and the numbers are hard to read

[GGCO]

Originally Posted by flippy147852

Can you space out the bars for the divisional Event Stats graphs? they are really smushed together and the numbers are hard to read

Hey Flippy,

We're aware of that usability issue and we'll try to do something about it when we release the next set of fixes for the site. Really appreciate the screenshot btw. It always makes our jobs easier. Have a good competition!

- Grant