3 ms·
Ask HN: Are open-source websites possible/practical?
Suppose one has an idea for a web service that is universally beneficial and will make the world a better place. There is lots that can be done and myriad directions to go in, but it should be completely free (modulo hosting costs, that can be covered) and best run by volunteers.
For regular code open-source is great, but how about extending this to the full design and development of a website. Design, front-end, back-end all submitted by regular people.
Is this plausible, and how would you see it happening? Would it be better to use Rails or Django or what? Either way anyone could fork/clone the project and run it for free on Heroku/AppEngine (with test data) and then submit changes to the main project.
- Tichy 15y agoDoesn't Wikipedia work like that?
- rfurmani 15y agoWith Wikipedia you can update the main text content, but there is no direct access to the backend or even to the templates/css/etc. Unless you meant MediaWiki being open source? That's an interesting datapoint. Do you know how quickly MediaWiki changes are pushed out to wikipedia? (Also, the idea I had in mind is more suited for a single host, rather than some software that would be beneficial to host on many different sites)
- namank 15y agoAS long as you set a couple of APIs to account for security and standardization across the site, I don't see why not. Also, someone has to be the Gatekeeper to push code to production. That's essentially what Wordpress plugins are, its all open source.