SIMILE Phase 2 Ends with Important Graduations
Jun 9th, 2008 by stefanom
May 31st signals the end of the 2nd phase of the SIMILE Project.
Phase 1 started in 2003 with funding from HP, while phase 2 started in 2005 with funding from the Mellon Foundation.
While the SIMILE PIs regroup for the next round of funding for phase 3 and part of the development team takes this opportunity (and the knowledge gained thru this project) to advance their careers elsewhere, the group has decided to “graduate” some of the most successful and used of our software projects and spin them off to get a life on their own as an independent and community-driven open source project.
The most successful (in terms of wide and diverse adoption) of the various software that the SIMILE project has developed over the years have been, without doubt, the collection of javascript widgets, namely Timeline, Exhibit and Timeplot.
Timeline, for example, is being used in very prestigious web sites (from the BBC’s, to the Governor of California’s just to cite a few prominent ones) and the project felt that it was time for Timeline (and the other javascript widgets) to develop a life on their own, independent on the availability of academic funding and/or the alignments of research agendas with the widgets’ own.
The code (and its history) has already been moved over to Google Code and a new Google Group has been created to host conversations, user requests for help or advice and further development. The web site with the examples, and the wiki with the documentation will be gradually move over time, also the general@simile mailing list will stop answering questions related to those projects. Please excuse our mess during this transition period and any inconvenience that this might cause you.
Those of you concerned about the future of such graduated projects should not fear: while SIMILE is not going to be the direct sponsor of their development any longer, it remains an enthusiastic and avid user of such tools, with many tools and web applications being currently under development that depend exclusively on them. So while development might proceed in a more community-oriented fashion, SIMILE (and its potential future research partners) are more than likely to continue to pour resources into the evolution and maintenance of such tools.
Well, I must congratulate all of you who contributed to the SIMILE projects. Timeline and Exhibit just blew me away. I hope that the community, if not SIMILE Phase 3, will pick up where left off. I hope I will be able to contribute.