Aspects of Developing With, and Using, Open Source Software
When I talk about choice being a weakness, I am talking about the fact that open source developers have a choice of what to work on. Look at it from their point of view - they're doing it for free. They are not getting paid for their blood, sweat and tears (and there's plenty of that in programming - even open source programming). Consequently they, and they alone, will choose what projects they work on. And who can blame them? The bottom line is that they will work on what interests them, and nothing else. One result of this is that we are knee deep in programmers' editors, but have precious few word processors! (As an aside, I have as a programmer long been convinced that there will only be 'enough' programmers' editors when there is a different one for each programmer...) It is perhaps one of the crowning achievements of the open source movement that it has succeeded in making writing device drivers 'sexy'. So maybe there is some hope. The other fairly clear weakness that comes out of the problem of choice is linked to the fact that programmers absolutely loathe documenting their programs. This of course operates at all levels, from documenting the code itself (only wimps need printout) right the way through to end user documentation. Open source document writers are a very precious asset indeed. |
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