|
|
Posted by d on 02/13/06 19:14
<sgoguen@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1139850023.482253.39880@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> I personally think you approached the wrong people. Is it easier to
> write a discussion board from scratch? It depends on the quality of
> code of the Open Source software. There are actually some programs
> that are just easier to rewrite because the current implementation is
> just horrible, but for the most part I've found a lot of programs to be
> salvagable.
>
> It sounds like these people are young guys who never really cleaned
> up or refactored someone else's crappy code.
>
> If it were me, I would recommend someone who actively contributes to
> Open Source projects. He is more likely to consider your needs when it
> comes to support and refer you to a popular/extensible package that is
> actively supported.
Being actively supported or not isn't as important as the direction of the
project. If you have many developers pulling in slightly different
directions, the projects can get very messy indeed. Also, if a developer
(or team of developers) are developing the project for their own use, then
bear in mind you'll end up with software that does what *they* want it to
do. OS, while sometimes fantastic (PHP, Apache, etc.), does have its
limitations. Without someone holding the purse with the ability to give
orders to coders, to steer the development, the OS product can get somewhat
lost. And without the consideration of making a product people will
actually pay for, the projects are less user-targetted and more
self-targetted.
I'm not bashing OSS (as a PHP developer, that would be somewhat
hypocritical), but simply pointing out some aspects of OSS that can have
serious implications on the smaller projects/products out there. Take a
look at OSCommerce, and you'll see exactly what I mean :-P
dave
Navigation:
[Reply to this message]
|