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Re: Building on the Schoolforge.net site [school-discuss] Credibility of OA Texts



On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 9:32 PM, Jim Jütte <jimjutte@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
 So for the review part, one section could include "Support".. Community, Developer, whatever... This is the sort of "review", I think we need. Something that I as a person who is willing to try can grab onto depending on my level of experience.
 
I like the idea of some way to review what a software's community is like.  I've definitely abandoned certain software because the community didn't seem that friendly or their documentation on what was required to submit to the community wasn't up-to-date.  (Only problem is, I'm guessing users will have their own definitions of friendly.)  I've run across some development projects that refuse to take patches or fixes if they're not for the platforms or libraries they want to work with (with none of that information as to platform and library preferences documented anywhere).  I'd say the wide majority of groups where I've asked questions, I've ended up having to fix it myself or find an alternative.  Once in a while, I'll be pleasantly surprised by a group like the Timidity developers.  I reported a problem I was having on their mailing list and was going to fix it myself, but one of their developers tracked it down and had it fixed within a day.  Unfortunately, that fix and many of the other Timidity fixes don't seem to make it into most Linux distributions because they're still building the program for a 2004 tarball instead of the latest version in source control.  I've found some developers very happy to take patches.  However, I have an ever growing collection of patches for projects that have no interest in them or for programs that are no longer supported by anyone. 
 
Wish there was a better way to keep track of and make available all the bug fixes if a project isn't active or doesn't want them.  I've seen patches for certain software scattered all over the Internet.  Would be nice if it was easier for end users to access the fixes they need.
 
For those of us with other levels of experiences or who feel comfortable doing it yourself without support, I think one good measure is how easy it would be to fix the software yourself.  I often use that as a criteria as to which software I'll run and which I'll avoid.  If the program is buggy and full of spaghetti code, I'll try to avoid it.  If it's buggy, but easy to read the code or very useful, I may try to fix it myself.  If it has a lot of dependencies either when I build the software or I run it, I may prefer to go with something with a more simple design.  Maybe a good measure would be simplicity of design.  Does it have a lot of dependencies when building and/or running and does it build cleanly or do you have to go through hoops to compile it or to set up a system to run it on if it's interpreted code.
 
Sincerely,
Laura
http://www.distasis.com/cpp