[Brass]

I developed a recipe management application a few years ago, and being a self-taught programmer to whom programming does not come naturally, I was surprised when the application became quite popular (it was the first stand-alone Mac OS X recipe management application that I know of, but there are several others now).

At the moment, I'm about 90% of the way through a major upgrade to the application which includes converting it to use CoreData. However, I've not been able to do much work on it for about 6 months, for two reasons: 1. I've been too busy with other projects (not necessarily programming) and 2. I've hit a few bugs which I'm struggling to make any progress with, and which I fear may be beyond my (admittedly very limited) programming skills.

Before I started this upgrade, I tried to find a buyer to take over the project completely, because I didn't think I had enough time to complete it, but when no buyer came forward I persisted, and got most of the way through the upgrade. However, I'm now fairly stuck for the two reasons listed above.

My first child is due to be born in a few short months time, and I'm about to build a house, so I'll soon have even less time to devote to this project. So I'm considering my options, and was wondering if anyone would be interested in becoming involved in development of this application, or in taking it over completely.

I'm considering making it open source, and maintaining control of the source. Or making it open source, and relinquishing control to someone else. Or paying some other developer to fix my bugs for me. Or giving/selling the entire project to some other developer for them to decide on its future.

Is there any interest from any developers in any of these options (or any others)?

If you'd like to see the application it is called, "Yum" and the current (non-CoreData) version can be downloaded at: http://nixanz.com/

The new in-house, unreleased (and buggy) CoreData version is lightening fast compared to this old version (especially in searching large recipe collections), and includes other improvements, such as smart categories and additional fields, and lays the foundation for more improvements in future release (auto-generated shopping lists, etc).

I'd be keen to hear of any interest in any involvement (either helping out, or taking over completely, or whatever) as I do not want to see this application die, but do not have the time (and perhaps not the skills) to keep it alive in the short term. Let me know of any interest by posting here, or by PM, or you can find my email address on the web site linked to above, or in the application "About" box.

[Thinine]

I don't have the skills at this point to offer much help, but I can tell you that open sourcing an application is fairly trivial. Just choose a license (GPL, MIT, BSD, etc.) and follow its rules in attaching it to your source. You can then offer the code as a package download or if you run your own server (or want to use SourceForge or something similar) you could offer direct repository access.

Good luck, whatever you decide to do.

[Brass]

Aw, come one... isn't anyone interested in either taking over this 97% finished project (and potentially making a good profit), or otherwise in open-source help?

It's a popular application, and despite zero advertising, and the application being freeware, I still get a significant amount of donations for it.

[Tick]

I would be. And I'm a fan of Yum. I still owe you that beerware.


Please pm me.

[Thinine]

You already have a website, and like I said, open sourcing the project is trivial. So what's the problem there?

[Brass]

Originally Posted by Thinine

You already have a website, and like I said, open sourcing the project is trivial. So what's the problem there?

There's no problem with how to open source it... it's more a matter of IF I should open source it. I've been trying to guage the interest in other developers taking over the project entirely, and also guage interest in if other developers would in fact jump on board if it was open sourced.

[Tick]

Originally Posted by Thinine

You already have a website, and like I said, open sourcing the project is trivial. So what's the problem there?

I think it's all going to work out just fine. Cheers

[Brass]

Thanks to all those who expressed an interest in this (both here and in private messages). I'm very happy to say that another developer has agreed to take the project on, and I look forward to working with them to get the next version released.