Dan Pascu wrote:
> 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.

ok.

> 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?

I just think that the requirements are not necessary within an active 
project.

But I realize that SQLObject is not that active.

.

-- 
http://lazaridis.com


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