Re: Collaborative Flaming

Marc VanHeyningen (mvanheyn@cs.indiana.edu)
Sun, 02 Oct 1994 13:01:37 -0500


Thus wrote: "Roy T. Fielding"
>Sure, Marc may have seemed a bit presumptive with that caustic remark,
>but you most certainly deserved it. Yes, the code is spaghetti, but for
>many good reasons -- Ari mentioned just a few. Personally, I've seen much
>worse (and it wasn't even free).
> [ etc, about the disorganized development process of free software ]

I'll half agree. Part of the curious thing with free (and, for that
matter, commercial) software is that the squeaky wheel gets the
patching. Many people will clamor for things like "better access
control" or "authentication support" or other random new flashy
features. (Note: In this article, I'm not thinking of NCSA's httpd,
or any other free software in particular.)

Relatively few people will clamor for things like "adherance to the
spec, including portions of it that do not necessarily have an
immediate impact on interoperability" or "code that I can read without
breaking down and crying." So, quite understandably, some software
authors don't necessarily spend a lot of time worrying about such
issues; why waste time on something nobody cares about when your
mailbox is overflowing with things people do care about?

--
Marc VanHeyningen  <http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/mvanheyn.html>