L. Peter Deutsch writes:
 > > Is it even possible to "stone soup" a big project, by writing some stub
 > > code, and releasing it to the world?
 > 
 > That might be a good way to collect ideas, but I think managed control of
 > the structure (as opposed to the individual routines or whatever) would be
 > required pretty early if the result wasn't going to be a mess.

Oh, sorry, no Peter.  I meant that someone who wished to "stone soup"
a big project like a PageMaker clone might be able to manage it by
splitting the project into little projects with APIs, and writing some
stub code that fits the API.  I'll bet that the GIMP works that way.
A lot of the GIMP are its effects filters, and file-format loaders.
The code to glue them together probably isn't too awfully large.

Write one effects filter, and one file-format loader, and even the
most basic glue code, and publish it.  That's sort-of what I did with
the packet drivers, and they were certainly successful -- certainly
THE largest GPL'ed project targetted at (not ported to) MS-DOS.  I'll
even bet that it would capture the free software prize for most CPUs
running GPL'ed software.

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