OpenSource: Collaborative Design

Question

After delving into the world of opensource I have found implementation is emphasised over design. Version control allows for a project to branch off in many directions, which projects may do; this suggests lack of consensus or direction amongst the participants.

What software or websites are useful for collaborative design?

Answer 1

There are literally hundreds more collaboration apps out there and more keep appearing by the day, but these should get you started:

Source Control (Online):

• Assembla - Public source is free, private repositories are paid
• Source Forge - Open source only
• Google Code - Open source only
• Git Hub - Public source is free, private repositories are paid

Bug Tracking/Project Management

• LightHouse - Unlimited open source, paid private projects
• FogBugz - Full version is free for up to two developers
• BaseCamp - Paid only
• Trac - Not hosted (although Assembla hosts it), open source - Python
• Bugzilla - Not hosted, open source - Python
• Mantis - Not hosted, open source - PHP

Mind Mapping

• MindMeister - Free for small plans, with options to upgrade

Documents

• Google Docs - Free
• Buzzword - By Adobe - free
• Scribd - Free

Graphics

• Aviary - I'm not quite sure how collaborative they are, but I think you can use their tools that way
• Photoshop Express - Another Adobe product
• Picnik - Free

Whiteboards

• Scriblink - Free with paid options
• skrbl - Free for public, paid for private
• Dabbleboard - Free and paid plans

Hosted Wikis

• pbwiki - Paid plans
• Wikidot - Free with paid plans

Miscellaneous

• Acrobat - Part of Adobe's online suite
• Zoho - Fits into a lot of categories

Answer 2

I've been studying collaborative design early in my Ph.D. (contact me if you want a literature survey draft that I wrote about it a back in 2003).

Anyway, collaborative design applications (as in UML modelers) fall into three categories in terms of timing:

• Synchronous - Two people or more editing at same time
• Asynchronous - Check-in check-out model, a mess if multiple people edit at the same time.
• Hybrid (can share certain things in real time).

In addition, they fall into three categories in terms of metaphores: - Desktop based - Essentially something like rationale rose with multiple user support - Whiteboard based - Free canvas, not necessarily structured, sometimes has support for UML recognition. Usually a mess to manage multiple models. - Hybrids

So this gives you a 3x3 "design space" of tools, and there are research tools inside every one of them.

The problem is that in switching to collaborative work there are many usability issues that are difficult to address. For example, access control, synchronization, awareness, shared viewports, etc. There are some academic advances on these, but they're not necessarily in tools yet.

If this is the topic you're interested in, comment, and I'll post some of the tools I'm familiar with.