Why & how Daily Fintech is releasing Front Page Weaver code to open source.
FrontPage is an expert-curated news service, with clickable news headlines plus a 250 character commentary – news you can trust from experts who have walked a mile in your shoes.
Front Page Weaver meets a need in the market because most news services are written by overworked journalists who add very little value beyond the Press Release.
Front Page Weaver code does 2 things:
- A browser extension for Chrome that makes it easy for experts to create their news selection and commentary.
- A backend service that “weaves together” these content contributions into web pages for readers.
I had originally planned to use Front Page Weaver as proprietary code on Daily Fintech. Let me explain why I am now releasing Front Page Weaver code to open source.
When I started writing on what became Daily Fintech in the summer of 2014, I had no ambition to build a media business. I was doing advisory work that required me to do a lot of research and I decided to share insights from that research in a blog. All I did was use standard WordPress – 100% content without any proprietary code.
I am proud of what we have built so far (a multi author blog with a small but influential following) and could see clearly how to build a successful media business, but life is short and I am no longer young (68th birthday recently) and startups require a lot of personal sacrifice. Thanks to some financial good fortune, I no longer had a pressing need for a big exit win.
We have made FrontPageWeaver open source by posting the code on GitHub under the GNU General Public License, version 3 (GPL-3.0). This strong copyleft license is the same license used by Creative Commons (you can learn more on GitHub). The code has been developed for us by a team at a firm called Trivialworks; I hope that people will use their services, but one point of open source code is to make this totally your call.
I hope that the community picks up and improves Front Page Weaver because respect for truth is under huge threat today and information about money is so important. What people will do with Front Page Weaver code is not under my control. This was the hardest thing to accept; I hope that good use floats to the top and bad use gets ignored, but I cannot control that.