âThe first thing is thinking that you can throw things out there and ask people to help,â when it comes to open-source software development, he says. âThat's not how it works. You make it public, and then you assume that you'll have to do all the work, and ask people to come up with suggestions of what you should do, not what they should do. Maybe they'll start helping eventually, but you should start off with the assumption that you're going to be the one maintaining it and ready to do all the work.â so true :) âThe other thingâand it's kind of relatedâthat people seem to get wrong is to think that the code they write is what matters,â says Torvalds. Most software development managers have seen this one. âNo, even if you wrote 100% of the code, and even if you are the best programmer in the world and will never need any help with the project at all, the thing that really matters is the users of the code. The code itself is unimportant; the project is only as useful as people actually find it.â Thanks for sharing that interview with us On Oct 17, 2011, at 3:38 PM, Ben Coman wrote:
While I am waiting for enough time to devote to learning more Smalltalk/Squeak/Pharo, I came across this article [1] which reflected upon recent discussion on Fuel version format compatibility, as well as on other projects. Perhaps it is that it is such a great environment for experimenting with ideas that it encourages developers to do so, but it seems that functionality often becomes orphaned as the trunk progresses. I see some efforts provide a more professional platform, and understand that involves 'some' ripping/replacement of unmaintainable code, but which contradicts the philosophy of 'no regressions' mentioned in the article - which in practice I imagine a hard line to walk. Linux is the poster child of open source development success, and while it is more mature that Pharo such that the presented philosophy might not fit exactly, perhaps something can be learned. I hope you find parts of it interesting.
cheers, Ben
[1] http://h30565.www3.hp.com/t5/Feature-Articles/Linus-Torvalds-s-Lessons-on-So...