[Fsfe-ie] Princeton troll

adam beecher lists at beecher.net
Thu Nov 6 02:37:37 CET 2003


> However, I can't say too much for planning, accountability and
> support for end-users - plus free software projects usually deliver
>
It depends on the project too though, don't you think? I was mulling the
particular paragraph you quoted myself when I was reading it and thinking of
the PHP project...

> project planning
>
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=php-dev

An enormous amount of planning goes on on php-dev, plus there are major PHP
conferences now.

> quality control
>
http://qa.php.net/

Again, these guys do an absolutely enormous amount of work.

> coding standards
>
http://pear.php.net/manual/en/standards.php

Obviously this particular link isn't entirely appropriate, but PEAR is
bundled with PHP and the PHP developers themselves do adhere to strict
coding standards.

> accountability
>
This is a difficult one to call. I personally feel that PHP's vast install
base creates accountability and major responsibility, but I guess many Chief
Something Officers won't see it the same way.

> version control
>
This one strikes me as a little odd when you consider just how many projects
are stored in CVS. Perhaps CVS isn't considered good enough?

> support
>
And this one is like accountability, I could link to hundreds of sites here.
I personally would take community support over "proper" support any day of
the week, but I would concede that there's a certain amount of skill
involved in seeking it out.

All that being said, obviously big projects like web servers and mail
servers and name servers and the like are going to adhere to these kind of
"standards" quite closely, but many thousands of projects won't -- just look
at Freshmeat and Sourceforge. But aren't the big projects the important
ones?

adam



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