Charles Fry wrote: > As previously mentioned on this list, I think that PAF would be an > excelent piece of software for the Church to open source. It is > something that almost everyone needs and that many people use. In my > experience most volunteer software development is done by people working > on software that they use and care about. That is where much of the > motivation comes from. This would make PAF a prime candidate for open > source development.
I've heard discussions at the church about making PAF open source, but the idea always gets a chilly reception. No one has given me a particular reason why it's a bad idea; they just don't seem to like it. My guesses: - perhaps the code is embarrassingly ugly - perhaps the code includes proprietary libraries - perhaps it would hurt commercial genealogy software - perhaps it's not aligned with our intended open source strategy These are all excuses, though. Ugly code? Have some humility, just release it. Proprietary libraries? Release the code in a nonfunctional state, without the proprietary libraries, and let the community clean it up. Hurt commercial software? Maybe for a short time, but there's a lot of room for innovation; innovators will still sell. Not aligned with our strategy? If that's so, then our strategy is not aligned with the standard open source strategy, which is to release early and often. So I'm a bit annoyed that the church hasn't released it. However, PAF currently has few advantages over GRAMPS and PHPGedView, so the open source community may catch up anyway, at least in terms of functionality. Shane _______________________________________________ Ldsoss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ldsoss.org/mailman/listinfo/ldsoss
