Help setting up open-source project for charity

[dev1 at tagmata dot com]

Hi,

This message is a bit off topic, but given the nature, I hope nobody objects.

I'm asking for help from programmers to help set up a unique open-source project that could benefit a great many people.

The Tagmata Project's three aims are :

(1) to create a completely open-source website
(2) to use the site to generate money
(3) to use the profits to help alleviate poverty

The Tagmata website will be a completely open platform, allowing anyone to add to, modify or cusomize the site, right down to the source code. There will be a programming, database and data processing platform, and online tools to facilitate the whole development process. Tagmata will be an open website like Wikipedia is an open encyclopaedia (though with a stricter vetting process for security).

With the effort of a great many programmers from all round the world, we believe that Tagmata could become one of the most popular websites on the web. A number of years from now we could find that the successors to Google, Facebook and YouTube as the most popular search, social-networking and video portals could all be found on Tagmata. The potential really is that great.

By including revenue-generating features like non-intrusive adverts, we plan to generate money from the site, and then to use that money to help alleviate poverty. We will channel our profits through the excellent microfinace portal Kiva (http://www.kiva.org), which will be lent to entrepreneurs - principally in third-world countries - to help them set up or develop a small business, that can eventually generate enough money to help them lift themselves and their family out of poverty.

The project clearly has the potential to both create some exciting and useful online services, at the same time helping many of those most in need. However, at this stage of the process, the open-source website has not been set up. That is where we are asking for your help.

We need help to do the following :

- create the programming, database and data processing platform that the site will run on
- build the online tools that developers will be able to use to add, modify and customize the site

This process should not be too difficult - we know how we want to do this, we just need help with the code-writing. At this stage there is only one programmer working on the programming side of the project (myself). I think that if I were to do all the programming myself, it would probably take 4 to 6 months to complete it. If just 10 or 15 programmers could spare 10 hours a week for a few weeks, we should be able to set up the site in just 6 to 8 weeks. If more people can get involved, it could take even less time. The quicker we can get the website up, the quicker it is likely to take off, for the ultimate benefit of many people (possibly including anyone reading this).


A little information about the website platform :

Scripting will be done using Tagmata Programming Language (TPL) - the syntax is similar to Javascript, but uses PHP for the implementation, so the names and behaviour of functions would generally be like PHP. 

Queries to the database will use Tagmata Query Language (TQL) - a slightly simplified version of MongoDB's query language.


A little information about the software that the site will run on :

The programming platform will use a slightly patched version of PHP, with TPL being translated to PHP using a PHP extension. 

The database will use clusters of MongoDB with an Nginx front-end, which could be used for load-balancing, failsafe, caching and for direct access from the Internet (e.g. from XMLHTTPRequest calls).

The data processing will initially use Map-Reduce on MongoDB, any may later use Hadoop/Pig/Map-Reduce if needs be.


Some of the programming tasks that need doing :

[written in C]

- TPL parser and translator to PHP (included in a PHP extension)
- Nginx MongoDB connection module (could use some code in Nginx GridFS module)
- TQL to MongoDB query language

[written in TPL/TQL,XHTML,Javascript,CSS]

- online development tools

Other programming tasks can be found on our website: http://www.tagmata.info/development/programming.


For more information about the project, please visit our information site: http://www.tagmata.info.
For more information about the website, platform and development tasks, please visit our development centre: http://www.tagmata.info/development.

If you wish to get involved in this project, please contact us on IRC (Freenode #tagmata) or by email (dev@tagmata.com). Please to not reply to this message in this thread.

Apologies again for this off-topic message. We hope you understand.

Thanks,

Marcus Clyne.