While calculators weren't my first programming experience, starting ticalc.org was formative for me. Getting all the TI hobby site maintainers (and ZShell developers) involved, registering the domain, setting up the server (Slackware!), etc. really led to my career in tech.
While I regularly encounter new technical challenges, almost every organizational challenge I've ever encountered as a technical leader since has had precedent from working on ticalc.org.
I do wonder whether and how ticalc.org should evolve now. Traffic and activity peaked before smartphones became ubiquitous (for obvious reasons) but it's still pretty popular - See https://ticalc.org/about/webstats.html.
We've always been strictly non-commercial and I don't envision changing that (mainly because I believe in our all-volunteer public service mission, but also because any serious encounter with bureaucracy would probably be fatal for the project.) But I am thinking about succession - what happens when our active staff no longer have the time or energy to maintain it.
I wonder if HN'ers with comparable experiences with long-running volunteer projects like this have some wisdom on this topic?
Thank you so much for launching the project! I imagine that if you ever come up with a succession problem, plenty of people (myself included - just ask!) would be happy to help maintain the site.
Have you considered how to release a full archive of the files? In 2021 this volume will be easily handled by data hoarders. Of course the whole site is very valuable but the upload collection is irreplaceable - ticalc.org is the host for releases.
We have over the years considered and rejected becoming more of a community hub (i.e. with a forum instead of just comments on news articles) - moderation is just not a battle we're staffed for.
> The day that my program (Antrun) was on the frontpage of ticalc.org is still one of the biggest success-highs I've ever felt :)
I have no particular advice for you, but greatly appreciate the site and all the fun and utility I received from it. At the very least you might want to consider periodic snapshots of the site and all the software be put up on archive.org.
Thanks! (I founded ticalc.org back in 1996.)
While calculators weren't my first programming experience, starting ticalc.org was formative for me. Getting all the TI hobby site maintainers (and ZShell developers) involved, registering the domain, setting up the server (Slackware!), etc. really led to my career in tech.
While I regularly encounter new technical challenges, almost every organizational challenge I've ever encountered as a technical leader since has had precedent from working on ticalc.org.
I do wonder whether and how ticalc.org should evolve now. Traffic and activity peaked before smartphones became ubiquitous (for obvious reasons) but it's still pretty popular - See https://ticalc.org/about/webstats.html.
We've always been strictly non-commercial and I don't envision changing that (mainly because I believe in our all-volunteer public service mission, but also because any serious encounter with bureaucracy would probably be fatal for the project.) But I am thinking about succession - what happens when our active staff no longer have the time or energy to maintain it.
I wonder if HN'ers with comparable experiences with long-running volunteer projects like this have some wisdom on this topic?