It’s clear with that with the news that Yahoo! and CBS Sportsline are creating open networks allowing developers to create applications that the online sports and fantasy sports world is about to change. A project ahead of the curve appears to be SCORE OS - Fantasy Sports Management System. His team’s goal is to created an open source fantasy sports management system. We were fortunate enough to obtain an interview with Randy Burgess, the project’s Lead Developer, to talk to him about the project and open source.

1. What is SCORE OS and who is behind it?

SCORE OS is a collaborative development project with an aim to create an open source fantasy sports management system for both businesses and consumers. The key members of the project are Don VanDemark, Randy Burgess, and Jim Burgess, who have developed and hosted fantasy sports leagues of various types for the past ten years.

2. Why did you feel that open source is the way to go?

Limited time and resources are what pushed SCORE OS towards an open source model for the development of the system. Both Don and Randy have worked on fantasy sports systems for almost a decade, but most of that work was done solo. By pairing up and sharing their work, they found that more tasks could be completed and better ideas came out of the process. Thus, under an open source license, more developers and businesses can contribute to share in the rewards of development of SCORE OS at an even-more rapid pace.

In addition, we are starting to see a slowdown in fantasy sports advancement, despite the boom in sports-related social networks popping up. While the Big Sports Media (Yahoo, CBS, ESPN, AOL, and Fox) have solid fantasy sports platforms, their social networking advancements have been limited and aren’t getting the same kind of traction that Facebook and MySpace have seen–despite having a large supply of consumers who love to frequently communicate. ESPN has spent more time switching fantasy technology providers and trying to maintain faulty systems than providing new features, and that hurts the entire fantasy sports industry, not just ESPN.

Big Sports Media firms are focused on scale, and that limits their ability to innovate. Huge overhead forces the big companies to specialize on particular sports that have the most instant eyeballs, which leaves out niche sports or new styles of fantasy scoring. Open source technologies provide a low barrier of entry for developers to create what might be the next big game that isn’t NFL/MLB-based or that uses a scoring system never thought of before.

We don’t want to sound like we are knocking Big Sports Media, because we are fans of their products and content. After all, we personally use fantasy systems with the big guys right this minute and have enjoyed playing fantasy sports on their platforms for years. However, there is tremendous room for growth in new games and smaller sports and Big Sports Media cannot focus on all of them and still make their numbers. SCORE OS is simply aiming to be a more economical alternative for fantasy sports development.

3. What technologies and platforms will SCORE OS run on?

The original code and prototype is from Pre Pro Sports, a fantasy college football league manager system that was written in ASP.NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005. SCORE OS is being developed on a LAMPD platform, which stands for Linux (operating system), Apache (web server), MySQL (database), PHP (coding framework), and Drupal (social publishing). While the LAMP stack is the layered technologies that most web developers are familiar with, the Drupal social publishing system is the key to the SCORE OS development. Drupal takes care of most of the complicated website issues, such as user management, security, theme management, social applications, and content management. With the basics covered, we can then incorporate the pieces of the puzzle for fantasy sports management and re-release the entire system as SCORE OS under the same open source license as a LAMPD setup, known as the GPL.

4. What is the current status of SCORE OS?

In two words: just beginning. We are still trying to inform the fantasy sports industry about the SCORE OS project and recruit some additional developers or partners to provide support–mainly with requests for development time or expertise. With all three of the founders also having full-time jobs taking precedence, our time available for SCORE OS is extremely limited. Our short-term goal is to have a first beta release of SCORE OS this fall for a Premier League Soccer fantasy game. If the timing works out, Men’s College Basketball will be next and we’ll begin adding new sports and fantasy games from there.

5. Which fantasy sports do you play and why do you them?

Jim and Randy play in several fantasy sports (Pro Football, College Football, Pro Basketball, College Basketball, Pro Baseball, Pro Soccer), but they tend to stick to a similar format for all of them (head-to-head and dynasty). Don runs his own Pro Football/College Football hybrid league and also plays in Pro Baseball and Pro Soccer. You could say that all three guys are fairly diversified in the types of sports they watch. The “why” part of the equation is probably similar to most people that play fantasy sports: fantasy leagues are a great outlet for competitiveness, friendships, networking, and just having fun.

6. What is your vision for the future of fantasy sports?

We see fantasy sports advancing with web-based technologies that bring the fantasy team owner experience as close to reality as possible. We can see fantasy sports systems tied into web-based social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace or even professional networks like LinkedIn, that allow for more interaction and networking (i.e. trash talk) between fantasy owners. We can see where video and audio feeds are delivered to users based on the makeup of fantasy rosters and/or scout lists. We can see new developments with fantasy sports “intelligent agents,” which are smart applications that develop newsletters and broadcasts based on various fantasy league results, transactions, and events. You can think of this concept as a customized SportsCenter based on what happens in a particular fantasy league. Basically, fantasy team owners of the future will get to experience more of the excitement of managing a team that Jerry Jones and Mark Cuban have for themselves (without half of the headaches).