APM: Trello, Trello Bot, Commercial vs Open Source, and Monthly Meetings

[Will Braswell]

Howdy Perl Mongers,

There seems to be some amount of confusion about my suggestions and intentions, so I'm hoping this e-mail will serve to clear this up.

Trello is a free, non-commercial web-based project management system released by Fog Creek Software.  I am in no way connected to Fog Creek or official Trello development.  The Trello.com servers run on the Amazon EC2 cloud, and the Trello server software code is NOT released as open source.   The Trello API is documented and available for public development.  Trello was developed by Fog Creek for their internal use, and was released for free public use as an act of altruism.  There may be for-pay Trello features in the future, but the basic Trello platform will remain free.  Think of Trello as a kind of Facebook-like platform that is task-oriented rather than socializing-oriented like Facebook itself.  However, unlike Facebook there are no ads on Trello, and the point of Trello is definitely NOT to try and somehow data-mine or monetize your Trello tasks.  Trello is a good platform put out by a good company with good intentions.  It would be awesome if all the Trello code was
  released as open source someday, but this is not necessary for our purposes as long as the API exists.

Trello Bot (TBot) is an open source AI software project released by my company, Asset Exchange Strategies (AES).  Trello Bot is written in Perl, and includes a pure-Perl implementation of the Trello API.  Trello Bot also lives on the Amazon EC2 cloud, which enables faster connectivity to the Trello.com servers.  As Trello Bot's name implies, most of TBot's initial features revolve around expanding or controlling various aspects of the Trello platform.  However, in the near future TBot will be able to interface with other platforms beside Trello, such as Facebook, Wikipedia, OpenCyc, etc.  Trello Bot is an ambitious, on-going, open-ended, real-world Perl project, which is why I recommend it be adopted as (one of) the official Austin Perl Mongers community projects.  You can download some early Trello Bot code from the TBot Development Board, which will be updated with a brand-new code release in the next few days:

https://trello.com/board/trello-bot-development/4fd03104949bc7a12262d006

As an avid FOSS Linux/Perl developer, I am very sensitive to the need for not letting commercial interests co-opt a group like the Austin Perl Mongers, and let me be clear when I say this is not my intention.  My most selfish agenda for APM has already been openly stated at the last meeting: by promoting the local Perl community, I hope to network with potential programmers that I might someday hire as interns and/or paid professionals.  I see this as a totally legitimate side effect of supporting APM, and my intentions have been approved by those in attendance at the last meeting insomuch as I already have a few new interns on-board and a professional coder contact provided by APM Vice President Mark Lehmann.  I do not consider anything I said to be a "sales pitch", unless you consider an attempt to get people interested in an open source software project as "sales", which I don't because no money is exchanging hands.  Again, to be clear I am not selling (or affiliated with)
  Trello, I am not selling the open source Trello Bot project, and I am not "selling" anything else that would make me a negatively-oriented commercial entity or conflict of interest.  My company AES provides financial services for people with IRA retirement accounts, which I didn't even bother mentioning at the meeting, so if you want me to "sell" you something that's all I've got to offer right now.  :)

Regarding the monthly meetings, there is obviously some range of preference on the meeting formats and content.  The only direct input I have to this is that I have offered to give a brief presentation and demo of Trello Bot at the August meeting, which could run as short as 10 minutes or as long as people are interested in talking about TBot.  We can include any other presentations, discussions, or activities at the August meeting.

Also, I am already holding weekly break-out meetings for anyone interested in Trello Bot development, each Tuesday night at 7pm at my office: 2407 S. Bagdad Rd, Leander, TX.  There will be pizza and caffeine provided at these weekly meetings.

I hope this helps clear up some of the misconceptions regarding Trello, TBot, and my intentions as the new APM President.  Please reply with any questions or comments and I will do my best to provide helpful answers.

Thanks,
~ Will