Henry (et al.),

Take a look at the newly created DH Commons: http://dhcommons.org/

Perhaps DH classicists could agree to channel their requests for collaboration through this avenue, at least until a better option presents itself?
jk
--
Joel Kalvesmaki
Editor in Byzantine Studies
Dumbarton Oaks
1703 32nd St. NW
Washington, DC 20007
(202) 339-6435

From: Henry Francis Lynam <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Reply-To: The Digital Classicist List <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2012 14:54:22 +0000
To: <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Subject: [SPAM - Header] - Re: [DIGITALCLASSICIST] DH and Open Source - Email found in subject

Hi Bridget,

Do you know of a list of active Digital Humanities open source projects that are looking for contributors? The Digital Classicist wiki has a list of projects (http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/Category:Projects) but it isn't clear whether they are finished projects or still requiring input.

If the list does not exist, I wonder would it be a good idea to create one that allows open source DH projects to briefly describe themselves and indicate what type of contributions they require. Potential contributors could create a profile and based on this profile be matched with interesting projects. I imagine this type of community website already exists somewhere for general open source projects.

Henry.


On 5 March 2012 13:27, Bridget Almas <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
I've been watching this chain of discussion with great interest. Our experience with the Alpheios Project<http://alpheios.net> has confirmed the point that Leif and others have made that it's quite hard to build up a sizable (or any) external developer community, even when that is an explicit goal of the project as with ours. We've reached out to University Computer Science departments, itemized some explicit areas in which we are looking for contributions, etc. but have so far been unsuccessful in drawing out people with expertise to contribute.

Scott's point on another part of this chain, about test-driven-development facilitating contribution is an excellent one. This is one area were were probably remiss in Alpheios. In my own personal experience extending other open source projects, that has indeed been a useful facilitator. (The eXtensible Catalog<http://www.extensiblecatalog.org/> project is a good example of a project which seems to have thought this through from the beginning and for which I found the unit tests were crucial to my ability to extend the code). However, I also think that lack of unit tests shouldn't be a deal killer; this is just one of several factors which can enable contribution. Having well-commented and well-structured code, and a development team that is willing to answer questions may be even more crucial. The Salt-n-Pepper Framework<https://korpling.german.hu-berlin.de/saltnpepper/trac/> and the Son of Suda Online<https://github.com/papyri/sosol> are two other open source projects I've been working on extending lately and it was really these factors, i.e. quality of the code and design and availability of the developers for querying, that were the key enabling factors for me. I also think you have to be willing as a developer to invest a little time and effort into exploring the code to see if and how it can be extended and reused.

On the whole, I think this is an excellent opportunity for growth in the digital humanities community. There are alot of great projects and developers out there, with various overlapping interests, and if we could do a better job of harnessing the combined potential, I think we would be able to exponentially increase our productivity.


Bridget Almas
Sr. Software Developer
Perseus Project, Tufts University
and The Alpheios Project


On 02/28/2012 04:21 AM, Leif Isaksen wrote:

Hi Henry

I think there are quite a number of different ways that projects can
be 'Open' and they all come with their own challenges.

'Open Source' in terms of source code is easy in principle but
surprisingly challenging in practice. It's not a big deal to put stuff
on GitHub but the reality is that it's fairly rare (in proportion to
the overall number of OS projects) to build up a sizable developer
community and these only tend to be for tools with a very high degree
of generalization. There's also a huge variation in overhead depending
on whether you're trying to manage that community (a la linux) or
simply saying 'anyone who wants to use this is welcome to'. I'd
obviously advocate Open Source over closed source any time, but
perhaps we should be looking at this the other way round. Who's
actually going out and looking to recycle Open Source tools? (and I'm
looking for more than Open Office and Firefox here).

'Open Data' is the area thats currently in vogue and I'm inclined to
push for that much more strongly. Again, relatively speaking I'd argue
that you can do more with a lot of data and a few tools than with a
lot of tools and not much data. I think the literary humanities is
surprisingly blessed in this arena, compared to, say, archaeology,
where historically academics have been more tight-fisted, (probably
for the simple reason that they can - it's hard to stake out an Austen
novel as your own turf in the same way that people lay claim to the
intellectual content of an excavation). But Open Data should mean more
than 'you can have it if you email me'. Ideally it should be
discoverable and online (and if you want to go the whole hog, Linked
Open Data).

Passing over 'Open Standards' (which are extremely important, nuff
said), on the Pelagios project we're experimenting with what we might
call 'Open Methods'. Essentially we're a consortium of projects who
all have the same goal in mind (place-annotation of our own Web
resources) but for which we have limited guidance, and differing
needs. As a result we're trying to openly discuss and share our own
approaches to the problem via the Pelagios blog and (openly archived)
mailing list.
http://pelagios-project.blogspot.com/http://groups.google.com/group/pelagios-project

The annotations that we produce are all open data (and we put any
centrally developed code on GitHub), but our biggest hope is that
other folks will make use of the methods and data to annotate their
own resources (which then become linkable to ours and vice versa).
It's a bit of a messy process (we're in the processing of creating a
'cookbook') but the idea is that it makes maximum use of the
community, rather than operates as a closed consortium. I'd love to
know of similar initiatives out these so that we can trade notes!

Best

Leif






On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 6:41 AM, Henry Francis Lynam <[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]> wrote:


Hi Tom,

These are great projects and they show the benefits of wider engagement with
the community. Thanks for the links.

Thanks,
Henry.


On 27 February 2012 14:31, Tom Elliott <[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]> wrote:


Hi Henry:

I think one can find all kinds of engagement (or not) with open-source
approaches across the digital humanities. Some projects start with open
development from the beginning (our http://pleiades.stoa.org project is one
example), others only move in this direction after an early prototyping
phase (e.g., http://papyri.info). Some remain closed. Certainly I think that
the number of projects that start life as open-source is growing.

Does this help?

Tom


On 2/27/12 6:21 AM, Henry Francis Lynam wrote:


Hi,

A question for the group. In general, are projects in Digital Humanities
open source? When I say open source, I mean are they open source from
inception where they actively encourage contributions from the wider
community of programmers and host their evolving source code on public
repositories? I know that certain projects ultimately make their code
and texts available but this is a different type of open source.

If they are not open source, is this because of intellectual property
reasons or is it one of quality control? I would have thought that there
is a wide pool of programming talent who could be attracted to open
source projects even if they do not have classical training. Of course,
an open source model does not in any way suggest a free for all and can
still maintain the strictest levels of quality control (e.g. consider
the Linux kernel).

What got me thinking about this is whether there are alternative ways of
contributing to digital humanities without proceeding down the
conventional academic route.

Any thoughts appreciated.

Henry.

Henry Lynam,
Trinity College Dublin.



--
Tom Elliott, Ph.D.
Associate Director for Digital Programs
Senior Research Scholar
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
New York University

http://isaw.nyu.edu/people/staff/tom-elliott/

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