Article:		Myths Open Source Developers Tell Ourselves
Subject:		Design explanation and installation conditions
Date:		2003-12-15 09:23:25
From:		anonymous2
This is very important during and after development of any project. For instance, I once tried to be useful in the development of a GTK application in the area of accounting, because I was having difficulty to find an appropriate open source accounting application. I did not have much time and had no experience in open source actual development. The project leader gave me a few hints over email, probably assuming that I knew what I was trying to do. I was then caught by other priorities and never went back to that project. If there was some documentation stating the design goals and general structure, the history so far, and a little skeleton package of what was working, then I might have joined the project and made time for it. As a consequence, I am now working on a LAMP accounting package project for which I have a test user, who has helped indicate design flaws and implementation bugs. In the near future I will release it for open source development, but first I firstly have to learn how to make all these components downloadable from my web site, fix the existing bugs, add a better safety structure, and write explanations on how to install, start using, and the requirements on my server and client. This will enable somebody out there to use his/her current knowledge to introduce improvements. It is a small system right now, but may grow a lot as we add features and improve the model. But I know that my elementary documentation and history is the only way to make it understandable for the people who will make it evolve. Otherwise, it will die from starvation.

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• Design explanation and installation conditions
  2003-12-22 12:36:50  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  I wrote about something related a couple of weeks back.
  
  Its "How to choose an Open Source Library". http://www.manageability.org/blog/stuff/how-to-evaluate-open-source-library
  
  It'll be interesting to contrast that piece with this piece. Stay tuned!
  
  Regards,
  
  Carlos