[Wolves] FOSS, who's it for? Us or them?

Kevanf1 kevanf1 at gmail.com
Tue Sep 16 13:52:53 UTC 2008


2008/9/16 Peter Evans <zen8486 at zen.co.uk>:

> His comment on looking at two flavours of code - Linux was generally a mess,
> uncommented, undisciplined and very difficult to follow.
>
> Open Solaris just after it was released by Sun.  Well laid out, commentled
> well and documented 'properly'.

Stands to reason really.  If somebody is being paid then they have to
'show' what they are producing.  Well, that's always ben the way in
the various jobs I've had :-)

> From a programmers point of view - if the API's are well documented you don't
> *have to* know what's going on beneath the surface.  Getting access to what's
> beneath the covers becomes important if the API doesn't work.
>
> Just because the source code's available doesn't actually make it easier to
> work with.

But, surely it's got to be easier if you have full access to the
source code rather than possible patchy access?  No, I'm not looking
for an argument I'm just trying to get my head around what I've been
told over the last 12 or more years about open source versus closed.
Isn't this the reason it has taken the WINE guys and girls so long to
be confident enough to release version 1.0?
-- 
==============================================

Kevan Farmer
Linux user #373362
Staffordshire



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