- Vaste

-- More prominent RSS and Wiki

One of the major problems with BeBits is that you can't find the feed or wiki unless you look carefully on the homepage. We have a tipjar and category links on the side; why not add a wiki link there too? Oh, and the RSS feed should be featured near the bottom.

It would be really convenient if we had a feed for comments, too; BeBits comments can sometimes be REALLY helpful. -vsucks

One of the problems with BeBits is various versions of the same program posted by different people. ssh is the typical example of this. wget is another smaller example. In the wget case it's pretty clear which is the latest version. However, if you get linked externally to the older wget version, there's no way to know that a later version exists.

-- Why not remove the other version if they pay no use?

It would be great if there was a link to the newer version posted on that page, in a visible place. I think that this community is fairly mature enough to handle a mechanism where an app can claim to be a later version of another app. The mechanism could allow for a "prior version" app to block such a link as well, if the author really felt like it.

"Obsoleted" apps could also appear differently in the search results, such as indented and underneath the app that has superseded them.

All this motivated by my recent hassle trying to find an ssh client and also by my pity for people downloading the old Divx Decoder instead of HybridDivx.

- shatty

Another idea to improve bebits may be to change the wiki to return a page that has a recent modified date when you hit edit. On my machine it always seems to go to the cache. I could be wrong about this but it seems like a bebits wiki config error.

- shatty

There is currently a discussion on OSNews about Eugenia's suggestion to sponsore(as user) development of Open Source software. This is something that maybe BeBits could start as a service ...

REQUESTS for developing drivers, REQUESTS for ports or just straight DONATIONS!

After the lost of Cosource.com that HAD this as main service (writting down your brainstorming results into project you wanna see developted and putting the money in) there were no other attempts. This is really bad as a lot of GNU/GPL software could get sponsored development if micro sponsoring would be more simple and structured.

My opinion is that Cosource didn't make it as this was the only service thay did... if Sourceforge was to take on this it would have been a success for sure! Maybe if BeBits do this for BeDev/BeUser community it would also be succesfull (even if using third party solution with money transfer like Kagi or PayPal or Amazone would help)! Maybe the service could also include 1$ fee per transaction to maintain the running of the bebits.

Does anyone know of services which make micro sponsoring more easy to do? Or has ideas how this could be inplemented?

- zblace@mi2.hr -

Another cool idea sort of banged around in beshare was the idea of having a profile page where you could see the applications that you had downloaded. On this page it could show you the version number of when you downloaded, and the current version number. It would also show what you had voted for the application, which would hopefully encourage people to vote. It could also show the current rating for the app. Of course for this to work, people would have to log in before downloading, or perhaps at the point of downloading...

- shatty

How about: advanced profile features(e-mail, bookmarks, webspace...) + discount on BeShareware for few $ per year of service subscription? Optionaly people who spend time working on making BeWiki and BeBits better get this for free (so everyone can be included even if some don't credit card)!

- zblace@mi2.hr -

FreeBSD has a ports collection, but no central website to access information about that software/download it. BeBits has a central website for application information, but no ports collection. How about creating a downloadable ports collection for BeBits.

- stonewolfsoft

How about a littel tiny text on every page informing that this is BeOS software and not windows software? It's known that bebits pops up very easily in Google and sometimes there is alot of confusion in the talkback sessions...

Look here for example (below): http://www.bebits.com/talkback/1920

- aphex