Agylen

I think Matthew hits the nail on the head here:

A first step - when applying this to Open Source would be to create a similar storefront for the access to Open Source projects. Sourceforge is already part of that storefront, but it doesn't include any of the projects under the Apache umbrella or in the other Open Source repositories. The unified “storefront” would also need to have the same level of participation that users give back to Amazon or iTunes by providing their personal feedback in form of wishlists, comments, playlists etc. “Readers who bought this book also bought that book”.

I was thinking about this (having been inspired by Matthew's previous post on the same subject) while biking to and from home at lunch break. The thoughts I was having resonate very closely with Matthew's. What SourceForge and Freshmeat are lacking is much of the social, community aspects that make Amazon so effective: reviews, ratings and lists, indeed. Well, they have some of that, but it's underutilized.

SourceForge's aim, of course, is not to be a comprehensive catalog of Open Source Software, but Freshmeat's is. My problem with Freshmeat is that it has a very wide but shallow coverage. Too wide for my tastes, actually. I am a developer and I'm looking for developer tools, particularly for Java, but if I go to Freshmeat looking for reviews and comments about Cocoon, Spring or Hibernate I can find almost none, even though they are very popular projects. Nothing there can help me decide whether they can be good for my business.

I'm starting to think that it does not take much to start doing something to remedy this situation. We might develop a web application and call it Sourcezon.com, the Amazon.com of Open Source. It will, at least initially, be targeted at the main users of OSS, that is other developers. No kids looking for the latest P2P app that will enable them to exchange Britney Spears videos ;). Here is a preliminary list of features and peculiar characteristics:

• As already mentioned: reviews, collaborative ratings, “also-bought”, etc.
• Uses tags to categorize projects.
• Hooks into the blogosphere, both as a producer and as a consumer of RSS feeds.
• Taps into the network of webservices, like those provided by Amazon and Google.
• Anything else?

What could be the business model of this service? Maybe it could be supported by ads. Or it might be sponsored by companies that want to promote their OSS projects. There are plenty of those at the moment.

OK, enough food fot thought already, I have a daytime job to take care of, now :(.