I want to briefly talk about an interesting metamorphosis - otherwise known as gross scope creep.
We wanted to give some sort of acknowledgment and support for the many open source projects we use. What started off as a single web page on the Codio site turned into a few weeks of full-on application development.
The result is "I Love Open Source".
Video
Click here for a really quick overview of I Love Open Source.
What is "I Love Open Source"
http://iloveopensource.io is a full fledged application (it is itself Open Source and forkable on GitHub) that encourages any GitHub user or organization to publicly state which Open Source projects they use. And in the process of doing so, they have the opportunity to donate something, if they wish, to any of those projects.
Codio Loves Open Source
If you click the logo below, you'll see our support page and which repos we use.
Supporters
Here's an example Supporter page with 3 OS projects it's acknowledging. You can see the person contributes code and cash to the jquery project. You can also see the donate options beneath the GitHub Octocat logo.
You are encouraged to link to your supporter page from your website or README.md file.
Maintainers
Anyone owning a repo that wants support, whether simple acknowledgments or cash, heads over to the Maintainers section and sets up their donation preferences (Gittip, Flattr, Paypal, Wire etc.).
Now, when people are setting up their support or when anyone sees a support page, they are always gently given the opportunity to donate there and then. See the above image.
What about Gittip, Flattr & Paypal etc?
I Love Open Source does not handle any payments at all. We allow the developer to use their own existing Gittip, Flattr and Paypal buttons. For the record, we do not take any commissions or have any commercial involvement with any of them.
The fact that I Love Open Source is itself Open Source and does not handle any cash transactions means that it can concentrate on acknowledgment in general and providing an easy way to support and donate.
Code and Idea Contributions
I Love Open Source can be forked on GitHub so feel free to fix code or add features and issue a pull request. Before you embark on huge endeavours, it may make sense to raise an Issue first here.
Any great ideas you want to discuss or bugs you want to report should be done here in GitHub Issues also.
Many thanks to DigitalOcean
A short but important word of thanks goes to DigitalOcean. They have been very generous in providing I Love Open Source with their lovely servers at no cost.
Please Support Us
The only support we ask for is that you Tweet about this project so the word spreads fast. We're @iloshq on Twitter.
Even better, create your own I Love Open Source Supporter page right now and link to it from your web site or README.md file.
