Summary: if you want it Open Source, start small, release often, but
above all, start NOW.

I'm an open source software developer.  I lead a project and contribute
to a number of others.  So I'm probably in a unique position to
appreciate what you are suggesting.

Your collective idea to collaborate on an open programmer for micro-
controllers should work, and I hope it does, but already I see a risk.

Eventually the thing should be able to do all things for all men, and
Alice, but the key to open source software development is to aim for
minimal functionality and get it out there sooner rather than later.
This early release practice stimulates development dramatically.

The risk I see is that you will demand the functionality that you need
before you will use it, and so the functionality required will exceed
the resources available.

So, a smaller functionality list could be;
        - 16f87x based,
        - serial port to host,
        - 16f84 programming only,
        - no bootstrapping.

You don't have to get it right first time with open source.
But it certainly helps to plan for future features!

Light reading:

http://www.opensource.org/ (what is open source?)
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/ (my hero's papers about open source)

--
James Cameron   mailto:quozl@us.netrek.org   http://quozl.us.netrek.org/