Social Networking Goes Open Source With Insoshi

Re:Social Networking Goes Open Source With Insoshi by garbowza on Tuesday April 29, 2008 @10:32PM (#177222)

This could be a lucrative space, especially in the enterprise. While the field is a bit crowded, I think Insoshi differentiates themselves by providing the source code, and for secure intranets that is a necessity.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Social Networking Goes Open Source With Insoshi by jsdalton on Tuesday April 29, 2008 @11:16PM (#177251)

I know of two other open source social networks that also offer their source code: Loved By Less and Buddypress.

Here's the problem I have with Insoshi and Loved By Less: They don't seem (as yet) to offer any kind of architecture to modify and extend the code base. If you want to customize, you are altering source code.

Contrast this to Wordpress, which has an awesome plugin architecture and an extensive system of hooks to allow for customization, all without touching a line of source. Though I haven't seen BuddyPress source, I am hopeful that it follows Wordpress's suits.

It is the ability to customize and extend, coupled with a super powerful and slick admin system, that has made WordPress such a successful venture.

That's my opinion at least, from an admittedly cursory review of the source code on these projects.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Social Networking Goes Open Source With Insoshi by mhartl on Tuesday April 29, 2008 @11:24PM (#177263)

They don't seem (as yet) to offer any kind of architecture to modify and extend the code base.

That's part of the plan. Remember, WordPress wasn't born with plugins and hooks; it grew them.

"Release early, release often", right? This is the "early" part. :-)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Social Networking Goes Open Source With Insoshi by jsdalton on Tuesday April 29, 2008 @11:47PM (#177275)

Awesome, go get 'em. I think you'll have some stiff competition from BuddyPress, particularly since they've got a head start on the extensible platform, but I wish you guys the best... it's anybody's game at this point. Ning is really the platform to beat, in my opinion at least.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Social Networking Goes Open Source With Insoshi by 1gor on Wednesday April 30, 2008 @07:18AM (#177414)

There is another social network on Rails out there: http://code.google.com/p/railscoders-net/. You can see it in action at http://railscoders.net/. It is also associated with a book ('Practical Rails Social Networking Sites', published by Apress).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Social Networking Goes Open Source With Insoshi by ryan on Tuesday April 29, 2008 @10:51PM (#177233)

Plus, he wrote the book! :)

[ Parent | on HN ]