After last month’s SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards, you told us that you wanted to hear more about the projects and from the developers. We put out a call on Twitter for your questions, and sent them to each winner.

Our first response comes from Max Horn, a.k.a. Fingolfin, ScummVM project lead. ScummVM won the Best Project for Gamers category.

What made you choose to make your project open source?

I joined the project after it was created, so I can’t give a definite answer to that one, but I think the original motivation to write ScummVM was to have fun reverse-engineering the games, to be able to play them again, and to let others share the fun. In retrospect, going open source was important because it allowed lots of people to help out — by improving the existing code, adding new engines, and porting ScummVM to new devices.
I don’t think ScummVM could have gone where it is now as a closed source app.

What does your development environment (OS, IDE, etc.) look like?

Mac OS X 10.5 running on a MacBook Pro. No IDE — I use BBEdit as my editor (and have been doing so for a decade now or so), and Terminal.app to compile code, together with gdb for debugging. I keep trying out XCode and Eclipse, but always very quickly go back to the editor+make+gdb combination, because those IDEs are all so terribly slow. Whenever I get a new machine, I try it again, hoping that now it will be fast enough, but it seems IDE producers compensate for faster CPUs by adding more bloat.

How long did it take you to develop your project and how many people contributed to it?

ScummVM was started in 2001, so people have been working on it for about eight years. During this time, we have had patches from several hundred people. Of these, maybe 70-80 made bigger contributions. In 2009 so far, a bit more than 40 people made commits on our project.

How many open source projects have you worked on? What is your favorite?

I have submitted patches to dozens of projects (including some I keep forgetting about; sometimes I am surprised to find my name in “thank you” lists). But serious contributions — maybe 6-8? My all-time favorite is ScummVM, but I enjoyed working on all of them. And there are some projects I really would like to get my fingers on, but unfortunately, days still have only 24 hours. Hopefully they’ll fix that eventually ;).

One of the first things people new to the world of programming want to know is what language they ought to learn first. It’s a great question and, as you can imagine, there are dozens of answers. When schism61 asked that very thing a few months ago, more than 200 community members leapt in to answer and here’s what some of them had to say:

Silverfang is a Python fan because it’s “a new open source language that influences good coding practices which is great for new programmers,” while Awsdcom suggested starting with php to because it’s one of the most common Web programming languages and fairly easy to learn.

Ross Turk, SourceForge’s director of community, says both are fine languages and, in fact, the SourceForge.net Web site was written in php. At then end of the day, though, Turk says Python is probably the way to go. “Python forces good coding standards on you. You kind of don’t have a choice in the matter. It’s also one of the purer object-oriented languages, so bits and pieces of what you learn with Python will also apply to Java and C++. On the flip side, python is also somewhat uncommon when compared to PHP, Perl, C, and Java.

“I personally started with BASIC a billion years ago, then Logo. But they sort of don’t count.” Turk goes on to say, “My first modern language was Perl, then PHP, then bits and pieces of Java, C, and Python. If I could do it all over again, I would have tried to learn C first…but that’s certainly not the easiest way to do it.”

Community member Ross Drew chimed in with some unexpected advice — new programmers should start with Pascal. He says it “enforces good programming style because it’s not immediately flexible. Its easy to pick up Pascal and once you get the hang of records and pointers, you have a good understanding of how the computer sees code.”

Conhed takes a broader approach to the question and says the first language an inexperienced programmer should learn ought to be based on what they want to do with it in the long-term. If the goal is just to solve or address a specific problem, then the best language is one that’s targeted at the individual issue.

“If you want to learn programming, but don’t have a specific problem to solve,” says Conhed, “then you should pick a newer high level object oriented language with strong enforcement of good coding practices. I would recommend Python as it is easy to start with and learn the basics. It pretty much requires good technique, and as a bonus, is very powerful and the extensibility is limited only by your imagination.”

Many community members say the best open source developers have a whole toolkit of programming options to choose from: Java, C, C++, Perl, and so on. They suggest new programmers simply pick a language, get proficient at it, then move on to learn a new one.

What are your thoughts? What programming language would you recommend to new developers? Let me know in the comments.

There’s enough stuff going on in the world to really get a person down, so the best offense is a good defense. Dr. Lisa recommends at least one good belly laugh per day to ward off the blues. If Awkward Family Photos don’t make you snicker, then go read your favorite comics. Need a handy open source viewer or comic grabber? Good news: There’s an app for that.

Comic Reader - This Python-based reader browses image archives in ZIP and RAR format, then extracts the pages in sequential order to read with a viewer or other app.

ACSoc Comics Library Management System - Do you have a humongous collection of comic books or graphic novels? Use this app to catalogue everything and keep track of who’s borrowed something from you.

Madcollector - This is a collaborative database that not only helps you manage an extensive comics collection, but also lets you export PDF lists and search your stash via an online search engine.

Comic Browser - This app makes reading comics online a piece of cake. Search comics by genre, arrange favorites, mark unread comics, and switch between comics with a single click.

Comic Pub - If you design comics, use this database to help display and manage your work online. The lead developer put this together to make updating and removing comics easier and leave the artist “more time to make teh funnies.”

eXtendible Comic Mailer - Written in PHP, this app searches Web sites like User Friendly and Pearls Before Swine for new comics and emails them right to you.

Strip Club - This online comic reader downloads and archives Web comic images. It’s a neat and handy little app, but I mainly included it because it has a great name.

Tech Republic has a terrific article up this week listing 10 reasons open source makes sense on smart phones. Author Jack Wallen says that besides the obvious cost savings, more customization options, better security, and improved phone-to-PC syncing are among the reasons the world would be a better place with more open source development on the mobile platform.

He’s absolutely right since, of course, there are few industries that can’t be improved by introducing open source software. One recent winner of SourceForge’s Project of the Month, ZK, is a an Ajax Java framework that makes it a snap to develop mobile apps. Of course, ZK isn’t the only project that’s focused on mobile devices. Here are a few more:

PicView - Put this picture viewer on your cell phone, then add your favorite photos to take with you wherever you go. The next time someone asks to see a picture of your kids, pets, or new car, you’ll be ready.

jsdbfs - Here’s a tiny JavaScript library designed for Mobile Safaru that stores CSS, HTML, JavaScript, or images in your phone’s local HTML 5 database so Web apps load faster.

PHP Gmail - This is an unofficial API for mobile Gmail that provides a base for Web apps that interact with Gmail.

nVMGc - Save all your SMS messages forever by converting them to text files or database rows and sending them to your PC for safekeeping.

Mobile Money Manager - A financial management app for mobile phones that transfers OFX formatted data to your computer.

Bloody Mess - Fend off monsters with this top-down shooter game based on the popular PC game Crimsonland. Even if you’re not a gamer, you should grab it just for the awesome name.

If there’s one thing the this community likes, it’s gaming. Sure, we’ve got groovy options like Frets on Fire and Battle for Wesnoth to scratch our gaming itch but, face it, the FOSS community needs more open source games. If you’ve got a great idea for a game don’t wait for someone else to make it for you, do it yourself with Construct.

Construct, an open source project hosted here at SourceForge, is a completely free DirectX game creator IDE for Windows. It was conceived by three full-time students based in the UK and averages at least one new release a month since it was registered a little over a year ago.

A lot of people think it takes a lot of advanced skills to create a computer-based game, but Construct is approachable even for beginners. It’s visually-based UI makes creating a game as easy as putting together a presentation with IMPRESS. If you’ve got mad programming skills, you can use Python scripting to create your masterpiece.

Construct team member Ashley Gullen says, “Without SourceForge, Construct certainly couldn’t exist, since you’re hosting all our code on CVS, our documentation via the MediaWiki hosted app, and most importantly, the downloads, which get through well over one hundred gigabytes of bandwidth a month. Without your hosting, it’d be impossible to host our project anywhere. None of us have any money for a server with that kind of bandwidth!”

Thanks, Ashley! You guys rock, too!

We’re going to try to pump up the volume of posts on our SourceForge.net community blog in the current weeks, and what better time to start than today? Two SF.net projects have recently made interesting releases that may be helpful to other projects.

The TEA project today released version 23 of the TEA text editor. This powerful and easy-to-use Qt4-based editor supports HTML, Docbook, LaTeX, ODT, DOCX, and RTF editing, among other formats. It features a small footprint, a tabbed layout engine, support for multiple encodings, code snippets, templates, customizable hotkeys, an “open at cursor” function for HTML files and images, miscellaneous HTML tools, preview in external browser, string manipulation functions, Morse-code tools, bookmarks, syntax highlighting, and more.

TEA has been around for a while, but a new project that made an alpha release also looks interesting, at least if you’re a PHP coder. phpSimpleDoc aims to document PHP object and non-object code, generating HTML documentation from PHP source code and javadoc tags. Version 1.0 is in its third alpha release, which means the project is at an early enough stage that you could have a significant impact on its development if you care to get involved with it.

So I’m a bit of an iPhone fanatic, and I’m not exactly good with patience. So I’ve been hitting reload on Mac Rumors constantly for a few days now. This morning, I saw that the new firmware was available for early download, and immediately upgraded. Technically, I suppose it hasn’t launched yet, but I really didn’t want to wait.

For those who aren’t familiar with the iPhone 2.0 firmware, it enables access to the Apple App Store. One of the things you’ll find once you go there is the SourceForge Network News application. This application allows you to read Slashdot news, catch the latest releases from freshmeat, read about new Thinkgeek products, see what’s new on Linux.com, and, yes, even read this blog right here.

I heartily suggest you check it out! You can find it in the News section, or (for now) in the Staff Favorites. Or you can click here to bring up its details in iTunes.

Oh, and yes, Monkey Ball rocks.

Many, if not most, of the people who use open source software aren’t just doing so because it’s free. Lots of us also really love the fact that its a community effort and, more often than not, the developers of your favorite apps are just an IM or email away. Of course, the community also relies on how much its members (to use a worn out expression) are willing to give back.

Do you wish you could help support your favorite projects but can’t code your way out of a paper bag and can’t spare any extra money to donate either? Well, there’s lots of other ways you can help and, thanks to our Help Wanted section, it’s easy to get connected with people who need the skills you do have.

Obviously, there are plenty of projects looking for developers and people who can code in specfic languages. But if gaming is your thing, there are even projects with that specific need. If, however, you’re better with graphic design or 3D modeling, there are several projects looking for you.

Want to test apps before they’re released to the public? Many applications under development need everything from sysadmins to people who just like using Web apps . Some projects need people to write documentation and help pages, translate apps into other languages, or design its UI. If you’ve spent a lot of time helping write code and are ready to lead others, there are even a few teams looking for a project manager.

If, in the end, you just can’t decide how you want to help then just jump in. Email the lead of your favorite app and ask what you can do to support the project. Alternatively, locate one in the community that’s still in the idea phase and let them know you’re available. If you’re looking to help out the open source community but think you don’t have anything to offer, have a look at the Help Wanted section or just ask around. I can pretty much guarantee you won’t be turned away.

There was a great question posed in the forums over the weekend and I realized this would be a great time to remind everyone of the procedure for uploading release files:

cheusov asked:

“I’d like to release my software but upload.sf.net fails…What’s wrong?”

Because the SourceForge community is so awesome, the project owner had the question answered within hours when ckedem responded with a link to the File Release System (FRS) answer page. FRS, the project file distribution method used by SourceForge, was chosen to allow “developers to concentrate their efforts on code development and not concern themselves with the administrative overhead in maintaining a globally distributed network of download mirrors.”

The page contains complete instructions for uploading files to the site, using one of three methods — Web Upload, WebDAV, rsync over SSH, and sftp — now that FTP and scp are no longer supported. The page covers everything you need to know about creating a package and making it available for download, and also offers some tips to keep in mind about naming conventions and configuring a download page.

If you’re looking for WebDAV tools, try Davtool for Linux or Windows, or DAVlib for the Mac.

Once just a vehicle for broadcasting teen angst, blogs are popping up everywhere these days. Though many people use hosted blogging services like TypePad, LiveJournal, and WordPress.com lots of folks in the FOSS community swear by the blogging software platform offered by WordPress.org. Our sister site Linux.com often highlights various WordPress plugins and there are loads more to check out on SourceForge. Some plugins tackle broad issues like adding extra language functionality while others are designed for with a very specific purpose in mind.

Of course, WordPress isn’t the only game in town. The Flash Blog “uses XML as the source of the files and PHP as the workhorse. Flash Blog is more of a Blog System, rather than just a blog.” If Java’s more your thing, Ministone might be just what you’re looking for.

If you’ve got multiple blogs to maintain, the cross-platform app Thingamablog can help. Linux.com’s Tina Gasperson took it for a test spin recently and says, “The software is easy enough for beginners to use, but sophisticated enough that veteran bloggers will appreciate it too.”

While all of these blog platforms contain their own editors, there aren’t too many standalone blog editors to choose from (why is that?). Offline apps like Mars Edit, Journaler, Qumana, Ecto, are either platform specific or not Linux-friendly. Yarns is an offline blog editor written in Python but looks to be a relatively new addition to the roster of apps hosted at SourceForge. If you’re adventurous, you could always try ScribeFire (formerly Performancing Firefox) but since browsers crash from time to time, this may not be your best option. Instead try an app like Bleezer, Drivel, or BloGTK to get the job done.