Myths Open Source Developers Tell Ourselves

[dhau]

...not SEGA or videogames related, never the less, please read this article. I find it quite useful in real life, not just some sort of academical findings.

 

[antime]

Nothing there that hasn't been said lots of times before. As usual, the author makes the mistake of believing there is an "open source movement" and that people are working together towards some common goal. People writing code for fun or to satisfy some personal need can't be forced to follow industry practices nor can the development be required to satisfy ISO9002 certification. You write the nine-billionth text editor because you want to write your own editor, not because "the movement" needs one.

If you're getting paid for your work or you're purposefully setting out to create a product with mass appeal then yeah, dumping your work in Sourceforge's CVS probably isn't enough. However, that's only a very small portion of the total amount of software out there.

 

[dhau]

Originally posted by antime@Dec 12, 2003 @ 05:45 PM

Nothing there that hasn't been said lots of times before. As usual, the author makes the mistake of believing there is an "open source movement" and that people are working together towards some common goal.

True, I agree with you completely. My very few contributions to Open Source projects was result of adjusting code for my own needs, and then releasing it back for fame and glory

I didn't meant to help Richard Stolman or do some good for the world

Never the less this guy does reiterate some important points, which are quite efficient in proprietary projects just as good as in open source

I beleive a deeper analysis of quality vs. timelines and vs features is discussed in excellent series of "Manager in the Strange Land Part x" at gamasutra.com

That guy does show that fixing bugs at the early stages is great, however spending most of your time doing this is counterproductive. Very interesting reading