Welcome to the Open Design Engine (ODE) project Wiki. This wiki contains documentation covering development, installation, and use (on your own server or at http://opendesignengine.net) of the Open Design Engine software. If you are interested in starting a hosted project, click here. ODE started as a proposed joint project between Mach 30 and CSTART. We hope it will grow to serve a wider audience and be used to host Open Source Hardware (and Software) projects of all kinds.
We like to think of Open Design Engine as the Source Forge for hardware. And while sites like Source Forge and LaunchPad are focusing on features to support software projects (such as demo web and database servers for web site projects), Open Design Engine is focused on the needs of hardware projects. Open Design Engine is built on Redmine (licensed under the GNU General Public License v2), and has support for common features such as source code repositories, wikis, forums, and issue tracking. ODE also has full sub-projects so teams can breakout their work along functional lines (such as software, electronics, and mechanical engineering) all under the heading of the main project. And Open Design Engine has a desktop like file management system for storing non-source files in a way that is more familiar to developers who come from disciplines beyond software development.
ODE is being distributed similar to Wordpress. That is, there will be a version available for download that users can install on their own servers (like http://wordpress.org) and a hosted version where users can register accounts and host projects (like http://wordpress.com).
The following values are intended to shape the development of ODE. Ideally decisions will represent a balancing of multiple values. Note, these values were derived by reflecting on the views (or positions) presented during the early discussions about ODE at Mach 30 and CSTART. See the Mach 30 consensus process for more info on values and positions. Note, these values are listed in no particular order, the numbering is simply for easy reference.
See the links on the right hand side for more details on project development, installation, and use.