A Worldwide Open Source Album

It must be open source, that means many persons can work on the project, it will stay free to download, peoples will be able to make modifications.

One of the advantages of open source is that a collaborator can translate and offer the pages in his language.

Semi-postal and Air mail stamps will be integrated in time with the definitive and commemorative stamps fallowing the practice of Stanley Gibbons, Michel, Minkus et Yvert, in fact all the world outside Scott.

All true the main focus at first will be the Classic period, end date will not be fixes as example Commonworth will end with the end of Georges VI rein. Philippines at the end of the ww ll when the become a republc

The date will be the first year the design ( or series ) was release by the postal office.

By using a standard 8½ x 11 , collectors will be able to complement their collection with other choice of albums ( Steiner as exemple)

Since it's customable, different master, with different borders will be included. A collector can always add his own choice of border

Pages will be offer in LibreOffice and Powerpoint for the one who want custom the pages and in PDF for peoples who want simplicity.

Only 1 version of the same design in each of it's different colors will be included, that's means no Watermark, perforations or grills stamps with as common the same design and colors. This will greatly help the Identification of the stamps

At least 1 example of each design will be included in a drawing inside some box, other box will have the denomination and color. Collector will know exactly without confusion witch stamp to put in the box.

Time new roman or other fonts available on every Windows system will be use to avoid problem with printing.

<< formatting cleaned by KirkS >>

Sorry I'm at work and use my phone to post . I will fix mistakes but at least you will understand all my questions since a wild I alredy make some work will post it tomorrow

Q/ Is this a draft spec? Or, an RFI? (Request For Information, eg, who knows where to find one)

It's an advance draft I make already over 100 hours trying different setup I pass a lot of time with my intensive accumulation of now empty albums to study what have been done

After many test the most economic way is also the most customizable, strong and easy to use

8 1/2 x 11 paper back to back in plastic protectors. Everyone can print on letter size and it cost 5 cents par pages excluding ink or toner. A pack of thin protectors cost me 11$ at staples in Canada . Cream paper 11$ for 500 . Protectors hold 2 pages so 11$ for 400 pages

For an open source (or crowd source) effort to succeed several things have to happen.

First, you will need enough interest to support the effort. This means having enough people using LibreOffice and Powerpoint who are willing to contribute for every country. These contributors will have to follow a very specific layout specification so that the compiled effort is seamless and consistent.

If you find these folks, the majority of their participation will be fleeting. In other words I might contribute for while, long enough to get my album printed and in use. But what motivation would I have to continue to support it for decades to come?

You will need a large file repository and revision control system. Revision control systems are a horrible amount of overhead and hassle, but are an absolute necessity. Human nature is to download and stash files on their own computer. Folks will have to 'check out' a file and then 'check' it back in with the new revision. These changes should be tracked, who made the changes, when the changes were made, and a revision number. A good revision numbering system will be needed and included on each page (do not underestimate how difficult this can be.) Any system will have to handle the situation of having multiple people working on the same file at the same time. I am here to tell you this doesn't work well, ultimately it comes down to humans making a decision. If you and I both have a new revision, one of us will be over writing the others persons changes or someone has to do some kind of file merge. Frankly, most revision control systems are configured to disallow multiple check outs to work-around this issue.

And of course, you will need a single, large infrastructure in the form of secure server space and bandwidth. Note that this is not a trivial thing if you want it to last for a long time to come. You cannot simply say 'Il just keep them on my computer'. Hard drives die, things go south; it commands a substantial resource be applied. This is not something that you want to 'grow', the capacity should be planned for. (If the effort gets stalled while new capacity is added, it will lose momentum.) You will also need a good backup and archive strategy. Without these things, many people will be hesitant to pour hundreds of hours into an effort that might be lost.

Choose your file formats carefully, will these applications and file formats still be viable in 10 years? 25 years? 50 years? Heck, will the operating systems still be around long term? Let's look at PowerPoint as an example. The contributors may have any one of the following versions; PowerPoint 2000 Standard Edition, PowerPoint 2001 for Mac, PowerPoint 2002 Standard Edition, PowerPoint 2003, PowerPoint 2004 for Mac, PowerPoint 2008 for Mac, PowerPoint 2010, PowerPoint 2011 for Mac, PowerPoint 2013. (Leaving out earlier versions like PowerPoint 95) Are all the file formats compatible? (Answer, no.) Contributors will have to save and work with files in the lowest version format to be compatible. This means they cannot use some features. You cannot have one user developing pages in the older PowerPoint .PPT format and the next one using PowerPoint newer .PPTX format. You may want to standardize a more flexible format like .XPS. Trouble with this is few people use it and like it for home use. Study the EOL (End of Life) for any application that you choose, the context here is decades not a few years.

Who will do the testing and what kind of testing is expected by the contributors? Ideally there would thousands and thousands of contributors (like Linux had) who made this easier. But to develop a standard, there needs to be a lot of testing on different printers. (Not all printer margins are the same.) Last thing you want is to release the specification and then have people pop up with printing issues.

In short the development of a documented specification is a huge effort just by itself, I would expect this document might run 40-50 page or more. This is the first step and the document would reflect the planning that is also required. Without this document, the effort will fail. And this document will probably need to be translated into many languages.

Lastly you mention fonts but it may be more than just fonts. Ideally it would include languages (this is the world wide web). For example, would this effort support the Cyrillic alphabet? It could be done in a single language and then others could translate it for their own use, but this will exclude them from 'giving back' to the effort. Additionally, some words might not be the same length in other alphabets, causing layout issues.

I love that you are thinking this way and like the idea in general, but am very aware of challenges that this kind of effort would entail. Getting this huge effort off to good start, including developing the documented specification, is essential. It is like painting a room in your house, the final effort is entirely defined by the preparation work. No matter how pretty the fresh paint or color, if the prep work sucks it will never come out well.
Don


Edit: I have specced and sourced several revision control systems over the years. They are incredibly expensive and complex. But this is required for group development, without it group development quickly becomes a nightmare.

But they are do many things very well including handling revision numbering. By using metadata, they can stamp the revision on each page across the board. If you try to do this manually, each contributor will be required to understand the revision numbering and add them to the pages.

Thanks Don. Let me handle the files distributions system. It's really nothing for me. I think you over exaggerate . Steiner have 6500 pages regroup in set of around 40 to 100 . I did Hungary pages in less than a week. Their no need to Have more than a person working on a file a the time . When a country if finished only few correctio will be made time to time . The most time consuming is research not production. Once we know what we want change 1 person can do it. It's not wikipedia 6000 pages or less. In my business we keep real time sales and inventory of 50000 products sell in 20 differents stores with over 400 virtual desktop stations connected to our servers

Next week I will put Hungary on area66 test website so people's can download make comments and we gone go from there. I see many treads on this forum with project who have gone no where . I take different Aproach . I will present something and if you person are interested we can move on . If not I will just progress slowly. For fun. The most important is to start and after adapt so expect Wednesday to have a draw downloadable version of Hungary people can try it mod it and show idea

If the project start we will have also to find a name area66 is just a labtest hosted by godaddy

I am confused, are you saying that you will control everything? I thought this was a 'open source' effort. Perhaps by 'open source' you only mean that the released files are freely available to all? If so, I doubt you will get a lot of people to pour the hundreds of hours into this. Steiner's effort was not 'open source'. When a single person control everything the effort become 'contribute to me' and not 'contribute to the community'.
Don

My dream is to have it open source like Linux or jmri the software I use to program my locomotive. But talk and talk don't always produce results . So I say I will post something I did and we wil see where it go. I made a draft list to stArt somewhere . The semi. and air mAil can be done on separate pages so peoples put where they want . If they want them bob their nothing to talk about but if they want them mix it's important to get a way to help them with it.


Something I expect to a ear is why not use Steiner . Well it's good but for me to much expensive stamps or stamps hard to id so I need to mod them a lot and it from that I get the open source idea a lot of people's mod them or will like to do so . So why not make it collectively

But we have to keep it simple to no get out of control in can see 1 person in charge to post the pages another person will take management of the draw pages and another one the PowerPoint one. Some are good with some country as exemplar I can make a list of stamps easy to find fromphiloppines and other hard to find

Steiner make. Lot of work but less research some title are not representative

We time I can see the addition of specialied mini album like exempts the Canadian centennial or the infamous ofset 2 cents wazhington

Sorry I have the willing to talk about it but only a iPhone to post the fiber optic provider is making a major switch update tonight

I refer to Philippines in the post before let's take it as example . Some of the early Spanish stamps was used in different countries . The only way to know it was use in Philippines is if it's on a cover not practical to include in a simplified album . The first American period was using overprint us stamps with single and double usps watermark, again not that easy . Scott completely remove the common worth small over print . They. Also totally exclude a full series of airman I do understand some cost a lot but At least let put few cheaper and few blank space

Area66,


I commend you for these thoughts/ideas.

May I suggest using github for versioning control. It's free, and has some awesome functionality a project such as this could utilize.

Open Source Projects usually starts like this:

Someone has built something great, and chose to 'set it free'. Other people notice, and things go from there. Studebaker has some very good points re momentum and formats. To be successful, the 'benevolent dictators' that leads these projects has to make to right decisions. You have made some design decisions early on that some will agree with, and some won't. Have you thought about what technical solutions that can be adopted to eliminate these restrictions?

Re licensing, what open source license will you use? This will have a huge impact on the project.

Note that there are already 'open source album projects' like the one you're visioning going on. Why not build upon them instead of re-inventing the wheel?

Seems a really nice idea, but a lot of work especially as sites such as Stamp World (http://www.stampworld.com) have the stamp side of this pretty much in hand.

Why I see advertising for stampcrapworld here . We are talking about albums. And no they don't have the stamps part of it at all.
If you want link resource stuff link Jkblue website, he make so much effort to present the missing elements of the Scott int album .

http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.ca/