Open Source adult software
 

If you guys had an option of getting open source software like a tube site, affiliate program, cms, link list :

would you use it?

and any developers out there, would you contribute to it?

Why would I do that? I could see if it was for a good purpose / cause, but for the porn industry?

people install wordpress all the time and hire developers to add plugins or do whatever.
why shouldnt we have our own set of open source tools at our disposal

Good idea but a lot of work. I think I'd take an existing OS framework that was easily extensible and package "tube site" or "link list" or other versions of it. The package route seems good.

I have developed numerous apps for the adult industry. I planned on open sourcing most them but whats the point. I'd rather make money and expand my business. Right now they all power my network.

If it was decent and had specific code standards. Was treated like a proper open source project and not dumped for dead. Then I would contribute.

I've thought about it but nothing yet.

that market is to small for open source and not really a challenge in it

I wouldn't contribute to such a project. Adult is strictly a for profit industry. Mainstream is a different story as there are many non-profit personal sites using stuff like wordpress. I'd open source some little stuff but a large project would be a waste of valuable time i think.

yea, lets fuck up the software development industry by following in the footsteps of all the free porn, tube sites, etc... :thumbsup

kaltura.org

Kaltura.org is the place to download the Kaltura Community Edition, Apps, Widgets and Plugins; ask questions, get community support; and contribute.
Learn more about ways you can get involved.

Instead of open source there should be industry standards, like the format use to dump content data. (Like FHG's Hosted FLV's RSS etc)

As of now every sponsor uses a different way to dump their data and you have to go and manually fuck around with all of it to make them compatible with each other.

i think i have seen open sourse tube sites before.

I bet there is open souse for a lot of progs.

It would be interesting to see what would happen with such an open source script.
Most likely, it would be flogged to death, just like everything else in the porn industry.

# PHPmotion is 100% free to download and to use
# Template based design of PHPmotion means you change the look and feel.
# A growing user base of over 100 000 webmastes have already downloaded PHPmotion
# PHPmotion also has a fully featured admin area to manage your site
# Full support for mp3 audio (can be disabled)
# Supports playlists
# Fully CSS based template for easy editing

http://www.phpmotion.com/

What Konrad said - I am purely in adult for the profit. My mainstream stuff is all non-profit cos it's vastly used for personal small project things. There's no one here in it for the love, so why contribute my free time to a community that is purely in it for personal profit?

You will never turn this community into a "community" since it's chock full of people who would sell their first born to make a quick buck. It's cold and vicious and so why contribute free time to a community that would rape you to cut down overheads?

What borked said. It would not work.

Unfortunately...

http://phpmotion.com/content/view/44/190/

I think it's misguided to overlook the profit potential in open-source, no matter what industry. Open source and non-profit are not synonymous. Linux, Apache, MySQL, Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, ... the open source model is just a little different but in no way does it mean there's no money to be made.

:2 cents:

oh, there is probably plenty to be made since you could hire yourself out to develop customised stuff, no doubt. However, most places have their in-house staff, so you would get no love now business from them, although you could charge for support.

Most of the main OS titles though rely on donations (redhat and mysql excepted - apache is still a foundation I believe) and this does work for smaller things - for eg from a very very small non-OS but free personal example - donations I receive average 3000-5000? per year, which is more than enough to keep me going. These donations come mainly from the odd 10? here and there and then some larger 2-400? donations at regular intervals. I don't ask for them, but just suggest people should donate to keep it free. About 1% have the conscience to do this. However, I have yet to receive a donation from anyone in the adult community (even though ~8% of traffic is from them)

This community has never shown (me anyway) any indication it would support anything that was given away for free.

I do stand to be corrected though :winkwink:

getting back to the OP though, Tanguy has an excellent piece of OSS software that I have the source of (just isn't released), that yes, I'd love to develop for, just to use in my own projects. I really do feel though that that great base he has that could compete with the big guys given a year or two of community development simply wouldn't work - the code would be "used" in the current commercial ventures to strengthen their position with them giving nothing back. OK, you could package it up under GPL or something but then be prepared to defend those rights by the big guys when they rip it.

There's just too much intra-community theft in this community for it to work in an honest direction.

Though, I would love to see it work, just to help the smaller guys get a better footing...

100% agree. API access to promo content as well. And also a global model database that is associated by a unique id as well. That way you can query all sponsors that have content of a particular model.

Add to that the fact that the people who run php motion are idiots too. Support eats nuts, I have purchased add ons that have stopped working and their reply was we're not going to release the code or update it ever.

Yeah, this idea right here will make people shitloads of money, a lot of surfers are looking for particular models.

I Agree :thumbsup

Now here's an idea and a half. This is something I'd devote my time to for free. It would help out the lives of us developers, but open a few extra doors for us as well.

Development itself would be quite simple. The difficult part would be getting sponsors and software providers on board, and uploading to the data feed.

wow, some great opinions. times have really changed in adult programming.
from 1998-2004 i constantly tried to get adult developers on board to exchange and share information but there wasnt enough that cared, guess thats changed.

over the last 14 years of developing in adult, i've written many programs. most of them just dead as projects but i still have the code. My focus has never been about selling software but about providing the service of programming.
So if the software was open source, we all could build some strong products and still sell the service of development by installing, updating, modifying.
But i have no doubts that everything would be stolen/reused without contrubuting back.

All that said, someone meantioned something about open standards. If we develop an open standards API for things like RSS feeds/stats collection I think that we may be able to really all develop some super new products.

No good deed goes unpunished.

It is the way of pirate like John said.

You don't make money if you give it away for free. I don't mind small questions or things like that, but if you don't want to pay, keep on moving.

kill or be killed.

This is worthy of a quote, since an exchange recently turned my ideas. I'm all for open source because without it, I wouldn't be were I am today. I also stand corrected on my opening sentence that I'm only here for the profit - yes I am and no I'm not. The time I invest in other people's affairs does not reward me monetarily in the way way the kick I get out of problem solving. Without a problem to be solved, I get bored, very easily. For that problem solving, I get paid, win win.

Now, back to OSS, and bear with me here - I don't just help out any old client - I help out hose mainly that can run things on their own, but require a little help. I don't want to get bogged down with XYZ,ABC day in day out, unless they're paying me a monthly retainer. And this is where OSS comes in - most of this clientèle can do 99% themselves, but require that little extra polish to finish things off.

So OSS is a godsend for them.

The other side of the coin though....

Jack Sprat, can't be arsed to do anything, download eg Wordpress, puts up a blog, does fuck all, profits. OK, those days are long gone, but still, puts up some OSS tube, does fuck all, profits. Meanwhile, Jane Doe works her ass off categorising all content, launching niche site etc, tube site etc, profits. But pays $1000/mo in software fees.

The adult world is already a niche. Can that niche support itself that is already under pressure from freeloaders, by launching OSS to allow man+dog to come in and do what he pleases?

The problem that goes with closed source software is the support with it. Konrad made a mix between the two - the script was open source, but not distributable (hey Konrad, I've not seen any license agreements in your scripts ;) ), which lends itself to pirating (and I'm sure it's rife). But he combats that with high fees to start with.


Where is the middle ground?


When it's open source, there is no middle ground - benefits of very fast advancement in code architecture, but massive influx in kiddies. Closed source stifles development due to costs involved in software support and development. Open (non-encrypted) source is costly as it has to outweigh pirating, but has the advantage to let others run free from base.....

Tanguy was spot on with this question, and I've made a full turn on the subject (at least in my head) :upsidedow