Open community: an alternative to pseudo-useful state IT projects

Good afternoon friends.

Today I would like to talk about the situation with “IT” projects in our country. I, like many, are strained by numerous “cuts” around the creation of state sites, as well as the squalor, which is obtained for such (very considerable) money. I am strained by the fact that my hard-earned, honestly earned taxpayer money is spent on these “spotlights”.

However, I am not in favor of shaking my fists, calling out to the crowd from an armored car, picking up a weapon or writing angry articles on Habré (although the latter often have a positive effect). Instead, I propose to go a different (constructive) way. I propose to organize an open community, which will be engaged in the development of IT systems that are really in demand in society . Under the cut, I will try to describe in detail what I mean.
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Background question

Somewhere in the past six months I have been actively engaged in the work of automating various processes. About all of them I already wrote on Habré. I will not be modest, the articles were rated fairly well. Some asked whether it was possible to get acquainted with the source code of my development, because they wanted to use it in their organizations.

I have seen the effect from the use of my developments in our country too - in large volume of use and in terms of how it became more convenient to work. Actually, the main doubt was only in one thing - to put on commercial rails, or else to put all the sources in open access (in a collective development). Overloaded the second.

Demand

Will it be in demand? Is it worth the effort? In my opinion, there is generally a plowed field. Even if we take the two systems that I post myself personally (“electronic applications” and “electronic queue” - see the link at the very end of the article) - they can be in demand in a very large number of organizations. Is your IT department still accepting applications over the phone? You are on this list. Crazy lines of citizens in the hallway? You are also on this list. And these are just two relatively small components.

But you can create a lot of other compact and functional components. See where uncomfortable. Where can you save five minutes per person in line. Where can you make it easier. Where to automate. All in your power.

Personally, every day I encounter such minor inconveniences. Why do I have to fill out three forms by hand (!!!) with almost the same information? Paying any duty - again filling out by hand. Going to the clinic at the place of residence is akin to the story "Welcome to our humble little hell." In general, it’s not for me to tell you the details. Yes, you yourself see everything perfectly. Mess. Chaos.

Open community

And when there is a mess in Russia, where are her good fellows, what will they be able to restore order? So we will sit on the bushes, and only angrily pounding on the table in the evening in the kitchen, berating everything around? What prevents us from making an open community and changing our (our common!) Life for the better through it? After all, if everyone adds to the overall work something of their own, to the best of their abilities, the presence of desire and opportunity - for sure we will be able to get something worthy at the exit. And everyone will know: yes, in this there is a bit of my work.

I know that there are a lot of smart people on Habré, and there are those who are unhappy with the existing order (recently I see a stream of articles of this kind). Let's unite. The time has come for real action.

Just in case, I will also touch on a financial issue. If someone makes a significant contribution to the development, will there be anything more than moral satisfaction? I think the financial model here will be the same as in any other open community (for example, offhand - the Cum Joomla community). The very basis (Joomla) is free, but if you want to refine, customize, fit, tricky components to fit your needs or some other ryushechki - pay the money to a specialist. In general, the classic approach: payment for additional services.

By the way, more attentive can also ask this question: what is the reason for me (that is, the author of this article) to lay out their developments in open access? Is there a catch here? I will answer for sure - no. If it were a commercial development, one would suspect me of PR. The real goals are quite simple: to participate in team development and to adopt the skills of my more experienced colleagues in the workshop (I estimate my skills somewhere to four).

Proposals on the merits

In general, the dry residue of everything written above looks like this: let's offer a real (really working) alternative to all those projects that only promise us a happy life. Let it be small projects, this is normal. The main thing is not the amount of code, but its effectiveness, how many people it can really help.

And not to be unfounded, first set an example myself. Here is the link to download the source code of my own system. The system itself is a “base” on which additional components are hung (you can get acquainted with the components of the “electronic application” and “electronic queue”). Inside the archive are my explanations of the system (two html files), as well as a sql script for generating the base.

I would be happy to respond to specialists of any direction: designers, programmers, designers, layout designers, testers - in general, everyone who can make a contribution to this (God forbid, promising) initiative. Thank you in advance.

UPDATE: all interested - we register in Google groups