On Tuesday 03 October 2006 01:07, Ilias Lazaridis wrote: > Dan Pascu wrote: > > On Monday 02 October 2006 18:37, Ilias Lazaridis wrote: > >>> -- documentation is a big plus. > >> > >> again, can be provided incrementally > > > > Experience shows that this almost never happens. Once someone gets > > his pet code integrated, they never care to document it. They know > > how it works and don't need documentation, so they don't bother. > > What is worse is that (in my experience) they don't even return to > > maintain their code (in case it was something more than a bug fix) > > and the original author is forced to fix and maintain their code > > later. > > > > Currently the SQLObject documentation is scarce. There are so many > > things you can only find out about if you read the source, and there > > are things in the existing documentation that are no longer accurate > > and can be misleading. And I haven't seen any incremental addition to > > them, but while I read the code I discover new undocumented things > > added regularly. > > I see. > > Al this you've mentioned gives me the impression of a badly organized > project.
I think you got it all wrong here. I'm not talking particularly about sqlobject. I was expressing my experience with a dozen open source projects I participated in as either an active developer or just a user. It's the quality of the people that contribute to a project that gives the result, not as much how resources are managed. You have to have what to manage in the first place. An opensource project is not a company where people are motivated by a salary and have deadlines they must respect and a management in front of which they have to answer. It's _very_ difficult to get quality developers that are willing to devote their time in the long run to a project, and stay course for a long time. Not to mention that when the project leader doesn't appear to show any kind of interest about the project anymore, what kind of message do you think that will send to new developers trying to get involved? No wonder it is perceived as an abandoned camp, where effort is not worth investing anymore. And the way you put it makes it the perfect example of what I just said. When Oleg tried to outline some basic rules for code submissions, which were only meant to improve the project management, you were the first one to question the need to provide the documentation, suggesting that it can be provided later (incrementally), when everything indicates that such approach almost always fails. I have seen countless cases of people contributing substantial new features to a project without documenting their changes, and after their work was integrated they dissapeared not to be seen ever again. Good luck trying to get them to write the documentation later. Heck, they didn't even bother to fix bugs in their code after their patches got in the main source. So, can you explain how do you think that undermining the requirements that Oleg put in place would provide better organization for the project? -- Dan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys -- and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ sqlobject-discuss mailing list sqlobject-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sqlobject-discuss
