Neil Ireson wrote: > Hi David, > > > There is definitely a possibility of maintaining a development group at > > MIT, funding permits. Do you think that is a better venue than an > > external open source project? Is it more trustworthy? > > > > Not more trustworthy but where ever the code resides it would be good > to have a core of developers who can control the code base, especially > until the it's comfortably sitting in the Open Source community. I > have to say that Open Source contributors (like myself) tend to be > good at debugging and tweaking to fix/add bits of functionality but > this can lead to inconsistencies in the code. For a successful project > you still need some people to ensure that the code develops as a whole > and this means maintaining and improving the architecture and ensuring > any changes adhere to that architecture, to avoid developing some > Frankenstein monster. Hi Neil,
I see your point. I'm afraid that the challenge is to gather that core of developers at MIT--it's a lot harder than one might think, and perhaps harder than getting a team of open source developers. Open source developers contribute because they need the code to work better, and they just need to get the code on their computers and tinker. Institutions hire developers because somewhere within the hierarchies somebodies make some policies or bless some projects after getting convinced by somebodies else how the code bases can benefit them in some vague ways in the future... Then the cost center gets the bill; meetings are scheduled; resources get allocated; job descriptions get written, corrected, debated, torn, rewritten, posted, ... You get the idea :-) But actually, another way to look at it is to shift your timeline: what we already have now is "a core of developers who can control the code base", and we want in a few months for the code to be "comfortably sitting in the Open Source community." So I think we are in agreement, but with a time difference. :-) > I have to say that in the end I'm not a UI developer and so I'm > unlikely to make much of a contribution to Exhibit, however I am very > interested in seeing if it can be taken forward in the ways recently > discussed here (re Backstage). I would have also thought that given > the interest Exhibit has created in its short life it offers a very > good opportunity for MIT to get a lot of quality publicity and this > would convince the bods with the cheque books to fund further > development, at least in the short term. I wish it were so. But let's face it, Exhibit's publicity is minuscule compared to MIT's publicity. In fact, it's hard for me to quantify how much Exhibit is used or is relied upon. I don't know how many people will scream if simile.mit.edu goes down tomorrow for a day. Maybe we need a survey to quantify that. The way I see it, there are interests on this mailing list to keep some of our tools running. I can't speak for the interests of those with cheque books, though. Anyway, this is a tough problem. I just want to make sure we cover all bases. David _______________________________________________ General mailing list [email protected] http://simile.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/general
