[Wylug-discuss] Linux on the desktop

[Dr A V Le Blanc]

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Dave Fisher wrote:
> But why, oh why, can't open source developers get over their childish
> drive to re-invent every kind of wheel 'not invented here'?

On Sun, 16 Nov 2003 at 16:13:23 +1100 Matthew Palmer <mjp16 at ieee.uow.edu.au>:
> Because, in a lot of cases, the stuff developed elsewhere just isn't
> documented.  And since it's quicker to write code than to understand it,
> it's easier just to rewrite it so you know what it's doing - even though,
> deep down, you're just screwing it up for the next person (since obviously
> you won't be documenting what you do, either).
>
> Hence, twenty different ways of doing the same thing, all hopelessly
> unusable for anyone else.

Along the lines of what Matthew says, not only is the stuff developed
elsewhere not documented, it doesn't do what we want here.  And it
is much, much harder to design software that has hooks all over
the place for expanding or altering the code, and to explain what
constraints must be observed if you want to alter it without creating
a bug or a security hole or something.

     -- Owen
     LeBlanc at mcc.ac.uk