Nick, There is another issue that you have not mentioned, that is quite relevant.
Some coders say, "We wrote it as quickly as possible", or "did not want to clutter the source up with doxygen like comments", or "had trouble with the different documentation tools", or "the code is moving too quickly to write documentation", or some other excuse. At the end of the day, you end up with hundreds of thousands of lines of code, and no reasonable guide as to why things were done what &where. Which means that for someone to pick up the code and use it, they have a mammoth job in getting to grips with the code (which puts it beyond the reach of most mortals...) With good documentation, people can easily join a project and help out. Those student projects have no real documentation, and no one joins the project, and the student wonders what this open source cooperative thing is.... On a slightly different note, all those comments from coders (first paragraph) are in actual fact developer speak for "i hate writing documentation". This documentation process is quite important - doing it always to leads to code improvements.. Derek. ================================================================ On Mon, 16 Oct 2006, Nick Rout wrote: > > On 10/15/2006, "Steve Holdoway" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >Another nail... > > >http://news.com.com/Novell+makes+file-storage+software+shift/2100-1016_3-612 > 5509.html > > >Steve > > It just goes to show that it doesn't matter how open source Reiser's > > code is, if he is the only one that really understands it, and is the > > "driver" for the whole project, it quickly unravels in his absence. > > Theres a lot of projects out there that have been dropped or half > > finished by students who saw open source as a good way to complete their > > final year projects. Once the course is over they lose interest. It's > > damned hard forking a project or picking it up from the original author > > unless you were intimately involved in the first place. > > Which is why we are lucky that Linus has a good stock of right hand men! > -- Derek Smithies Ph.D. IndraNet Technologies Ltd. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ph +64 3 365 6485 Web: http://www.indranet-technologies.com/
