Fri, 11 Jan 2008

Fascinating thread: FOSS Quality Control

A long-time critic of things Open Source showed up on the Classpath project’s mailing list and asked some rather provoking questions in a thread titled “Quality control and FOSS rant”. He at least ended with: “I suppose this is more of a troll than a criticism, sorry about that.”

Despite the flame bait, the thread contained some surprisingly insightful replies. It’s always great to hear some of the top software developers in the world noting their motivations and why they believe what they do works.

From Roman Kennke:

Both approaches (closed and open) apparently tend to produce relatively high quality code (or really crappy code, happens in both camps), where with the closed approach the developers (or vendors) have to take over 100% responsibility (because the end user has no way to interact with the development), which usually makes things very formal and slow, where the open approach relies very much on the end users reporting problems. In most active projects these are fixed really quickly, giving both the developers and the end users a warm fuzzy feeling ;-)

From Andrew John Hughes

There’s a lot to be said for feedback and interaction with your users that’s often overlooked. All the ideas of complicated quality control processes in the world is not going to make a user feel as loved as seeing someone responding quickly to their bug and fixing it in a short space of time.

From Mark Wielaard, a remark on the complex administrative process used by the project to review contributed code:

We do have a flow chart that people have to follow when contributing… It is all very formal really: http://gnu.wildebeest.org/~mark/patch.png

and from Archie Cobbs, a reminder about the track record of a certain formerly proprietary process on solving bug desperately desired by their user community:

The number #1 voted bug in their bug database has been unfixed for over 5 YEARS!

The comments on that bug make for hilarious reading, but the bigger point is this: the identity of the people making the decisions about the relevance of the issue are hidden. That sort of thing doesn’t inspire much hope for people on the outside. It’s not like we’re talking about national security or the future of western democracy; it’s a bug report that turned into a feature request for a piece of software that many, many people depend on! No one likes to be fed the line that their problem is so Top Secret that they won’t be told when (or even if) the problem will be addressed. The cloak of anonymity strikes again.

Fascinating thread.

AfC

fascinating-classpath-quality-control, posted by Andrew Cowie in /andrew/software/free-java at 02:30, 11 Jan 2008.

Don’t feed the locals

Spend a few weeks hiking in Tasmania over New Year’s…

Hazzard beach, looking south to Mt Freycinet and Mt Graham in Freycinet National Park, Tasmania, Australia.

No water here, or (anywhere else in the park for that matter). It’s only 600m up, but it’s a fairly steep climb. Lucky to have had gorgeous weather, but whoa was it hot. Packed in 10L of water. Heavy. Still ran low; should have brought even more. I used to think those pocket desalinaters were gimmicks, but I’m having second thoughts now.

The view east from Mt Graham, Freycinet National Park, Tasmania, Australia.

I like cooking pancakes when I’m trekking and make sure to bring maple syrup along, of course. Apparently, the wallabies at Wineglass Bay also like pancakes. The pot lid kept this one out of the batter, but didn’t prevent it from feeling free to lick the spoon.

Breakfast at Wineglass Bay in Freycinet National Park, Tasmania, Australia. Photo by Katrina Ross

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There are some astoundingly beautiful National Parks in Tasmania, although you have to drive for ever to get to any of them — forget about public transit; you’re renting a car so you can park it for a week when you get there. Great.

Worth it for the views, though. You get to missing mountains, sometimes.

Looking southwest from Mt Rufus in Lake St Clair National Park, Tasmania, Australia.

You can also forget about seeing any old growth forest; while the National Parks in the state cover an impressive amount of ground, the formation of these reserves appears to have come long after the bulk of the big timber was removed, and logging continues to happen in protected areas. From high up on the mountains you can plainly see the clear-cut areas, which is a shame, because properly managed forests can be a renewable resource. The trouble, however, it takes on the order of 70 years before a plot is ready for harvesting. Most people aren’t really that patient, and clear cutting is often “easier”.

What really gets me, though are the “state forests” which are marked as “multi-use”. Funny how there aren’t many trees left. Same thing happens all over - Canada’s “National Parks” are “multi-use”; take a drive through the Rockies from Calgary to Vancouver and you’ll keep coming to National Parks that are “temporarily closed for logging, no camping” and clear-cut. Then there is the activity of the American federal “Forestry Service” (which is in the business of building roads so that it easier for logging companies to mow down said forests). Australia, it seems, is no different.

And this from a guy who is otherwise pro-logging. Lumber is an essential construction material, and paper will remain the essence of recording and disseminating information for a long time to come. An immense number of jobs come from their production. But if we want to have those jobs in the future, and if we want the forests to continue to be viable and not have all the soil wash away in the next hurricane, the forest industry must be incented to contribute to the sustainment of the land. It’s pretty simple: no soil, no new growth of any kind, period. The only thing I can think of is something like a reverse carbon tax: for every large tree of a certain diameter, etc they can prove they didn’t cut down, they’d get a tax credit. Somehow, though, I’m guessing that all that would result in is plenty more bureaucracy but not a whole lot more in the way of sensible land management.

Anyway, I digress. The things you think about when you’re walking.

Approaching Russell Falls in Mt Field National Park, Tasmania, Australia.

Beautiful.

AfC

dont-feed-locals, posted by Andrew Cowie in /andrew/travel/australia at 00:26, 11 Jan 2008.

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