What Aspects of Open Source Projects Do You Avoid?

paulproteus writes "I'm a Debian developer and a part-time contributor to a few smaller projects. I do a lot of free software-y and open source-y things. Sometimes, though, I don't do them. I figure some other Slashdotters might have similar hang-ups — we contribute to a project, but there are parts that we really dread thinking about. So I wrote a post about having these hang-ups, and I made a place on the web to share how others can help your project. What are the parts that, in your projects, you would be relieved if someone else looked at for you?"

Comments

Adding comments

[kickme_hax0r]

I've picked up an open source project that doesn't have comments. There's major chunks of it that the code is such a mess that I have no idea what it does, yet I'm supposed to be fixing it.

Re:Ego

[WrongSizeGlass]

I try to avoid the rabid advocates who seem to think (or at least they project) that using anything that isn't open source is some kind of affront to the entire open source movement.

Sorry guys 'n gals, but sometimes I need something now and can't wait for it to be included, supported or fixed in an open source solution. My clients aren't patient and don't really care about the necessity for creating an equal playing field for all software developers.

Re:Thanks for Slashdotting me

[paulproteus]

The blog post can also be read at http://www.asheesh.org.nyud.net/note/debian/avoiding-working-on.html

Re:One thing I don't do is troublesome licenses

[TheRaven64]

And the moment you distribute it you have to give the code to anybody you distributed to who asks

No you don't. You just have to give it to the people that you give binaries to. The GPL explicitly does not require you to give anything back, it requires you to give freedoms forward. In practice, this often means community-driven development with people contributing their changes upstream. They do this because it's cheaper than maintaining a fork though, not because the license compels them to. And, guess what? That economic incentive applies to permissive licenses too.

Compare, for example, Yahoo! contributing changes to FreeBSD back and Google keeping their internal version of Linux private. The GPL did absolutely nothing to protect Linux. The BSDL did nothing to protect FreeBSD. Yahoo! gave code back because they determined it that the cost of maintaining a fork was greater than the competitive advantage gained by keeping the code private. Google kept their filesystem (among other things) private because they made the opposite decision.

90% of software that is developed is never distributed. It is written in house to solve a particular problem. Whether you see any code back from these people depends entirely on whether they think it's cheaper. They can use GPL or BSDL code internally without any legal issues.