Hi guys,

 

First of all, I'm a huge fan of what you're doing. I can't understand why it's not open source. I'm a developer, and could potentially see myself as interested in contributing in making the site & tools better, but I feel like you've put up a wall.

 

If I was able to browse through the source, I'd be able to get a feel for the code and whether or not this is something I am willing to commit time on. Going through an application process has a much greater sense of commitment to it than simply cloning the repo and poking around.

 

I don't think that I am the only one that's scared off by the application-form.

 

// 2¢ ? 

You have been a CF Member Since 24 Jan 2016 and this is your fist post?  Hmm.

Can you code in C#?   Any experience C# on Macs?  What have you developed?.  Links plz.

That's not even remotely my point – I'm wondering why you're keeping everything about CustomsForge closed.

@@pimms Because we are doing some link between the website and the app that we do not want to put in the open and it would require more work for us to hide this part of the software if we would be sharing it openly. Work we can't afford. Anyone that wants to help is free to contact us and we will happily add them into the project.

 

In the meantime you can also participate in the toolkit dev which also share a lot of feature with CFSM if you really want to help the community on the dev side.

 

Options aren't lacking if someone wants to help.

 

Note that commitment is a major point for us. We had some people that just poke around and never support the software in the long term which is something we NEED to be able to do.

@pimms  As a point of reference the toolkit is open source on github.  Anyone can contribute to the code and make a pull request.  Since 2013, there have been only 27 contributions from users like you (pull requests) from the ~250k CF members of which maybe ~10k have used the toolkit. 

When a member/user asks us about open source it is usually for their own purpose and not actually to make a contribution to, "commit time on".  If you would like to make contribution there are many ways as @@firekorn pointed out.

Simple answer, CFSM is closed source because it contains proprietary information.