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[Discuss] licensing: who freakin cares?
- Subject: [Discuss] licensing: who freakin cares?
- From: jc at trillian.mit.edu (jc at trillian.mit.edu)
- Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2016 17:19:47
- In-reply-to: 5709B38B.6030007@gmail.com
- References: 5709B38B.6030007@gmail.com, <1E33A4DC-8FF0-4688-87B6-9C61D8AC45CA@icloud.com>
Rich Pieri wrote: | On 4/9/2016 4:14 PM, Eric Chadbourne wrote: | > I bet most of you really don't care. I know most non-tech humans | > couldn't care less. | | Think about it. Think about what the world would be like if all of the | software we use was up to these standards of no coding discipline, no | quality assurance. Think about all of the machines and devices in our | lives with computers embedded in them. Think about ... Hmmm ... My personal experience is of being pushed in exactly that direction by "management", while the developers were pushing for more/better testing, standards compliance, etc. But the primary motive of most managers I've known is to get the product out the door and producing comapany income. We can fix the problems when users report them. In other words, the push for quality usually comes from the developers, while management normally wants the least quality that they think they can sell. In particular, I've on numerous occasions been specifically ordered to not implement some "unnecessary" parts of standards. This does tend to produce quick complaints from customers, often followed by refusal to pay for the software until such blatant failures are fixed. Then I get asked how quickly I can produce a minimally functional implementation of the things the customers have found missing. All this never gets the message across, and the same managers just go on to order incomplete implementations, combined with delivering what are effectively pre-alpha versions to customers. The open-source work I've been involved in has rarely acted this way. Part of the reason is that if the leaders try it, people just quietly drop off the team and start working on something else. Or they fork the project and do the needed work themselves (leading to the usual hassles if they try to merge it back into the main package). I have released open/free software before I thought it was ready. But I included explicit lists of the important things not implemented or fully tested to my own satisfaction. I know lots of other people who have done this, often as a way to get a collection of willing testers who understand that the author(s) don't think it's really ready for prime time yet, but are willing to be "guinea pigs" to get some of the functionality a bit earlier. I haven't often seen this in a business setting, where the developers are rarely even permitted contact with the customers, and "negative" parts of the documentation are routinely deleted from deliveries.) -- ------------------------------------------------------ _' O <:#/> John Chambers + <jc at trillian.mit.edu> /#\ <jc1742 at gmail.com> | |
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- [Discuss] licensing: who freakin cares?
- From: eric.chadbourne at icloud.com (Eric Chadbourne)
- [Discuss] licensing: who freakin cares?
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