Development project to visualize the vitality of the developers community

Olivier Berger oberger at april.org
Tue May 15 17:11:26 UTC 2001


Hi folks.

I'd like to submit one idea that we got recently of a system that could
be used to visualize the vitality of the developers community in our
areas, and could also serve as a tool to better know how to contact
those of us who travel a lot for free software...

Here is the little memo I wrote :

(ideas for a name : World Almost Real-time Developpers Positioning
System)

This project aims at developing a system which would allow easy
geographical representation of Free Software Developpers on the
terrestrial globe maps. This would be a great way to represent the
vitality of the Free Software community, as well as a contact tool
which could help in joining people traveling alot.

This project was discussed by members of the french chapter of the FSF
Europe and myself, on the way back from Essen, where the general
assembly of the FSF Europe was held. It started as a joke, when we
thought how cool it would be to have real-time localization of the
Free Software developers if they had some GPS with them.

Even if we don't think that exact and real-time positioning is needed,
it would still be cool to get some graphical representation (on a
volontary based registration of the developpers when they arrive to a
new location), and see those great migrations when community groups
gather (GNU/Linux trade shows, GUADEC, Usenix, etc.).

The system would ideally consist in a web site with a database of each
developer's last known location (and status / ways he can be joined,
etc.), and a graphical representation system. This system could be
implemented by providing ways for developers to enter latitude and
longitude coordinates in a form (which they could get from public web
sites converting city to coordinates... any available ?). It would
then give the user access to maps of earth/continent/countries,
etc. which would represent the people in those areas, and maybe the
moves since last positions. This would draw trajectories and/or spots
of variable width that could be rather cool (imagine that you see all
these people arriving to the LSM for Debian Conference, then migrating
to the LinuxTag, etc.).

Allright, I think my description is long enough.

Any comments, suggestions of implementation, or known patent records
that this project would infringe ? ;)

Best regards.

-- 
Olivier BERGER - Secrétaire de l'association APRIL 
APRIL (http://www.april.org) - Vive python (http://www.python.org)
PĂ©tition contre les brevets logiciels : http://petition.eurolinux.org



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