[clug] How you know your Free or Open Source Software Project is doomed to FAIL

Ivan Lazar Miljenovic ivan.miljenovic at gmail.com
Tue Jul 28 23:02:00 UTC 2015


On 29 July 2015 at 08:50, Alex Satrapa <grail at goldweb.com.au> wrote:
>
>> On 29 Jul 2015, at 07:08, Ivan Lazar Miljenovic <ivan.miljenovic at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Is a configurable build really necessary?  Especially for smaller
>> projects, or ones written in something like Python or Perl where the
>> libraries are typically smaller and more focused.
>
> Are you using OS-stock, Virtual Environments, Vagrant, Docker, AWS? Where? Which version of Python or Perl?

Admittedly, I don't develop in either Python or Perl.

That said, however, I chose them more because they have their own
build tools designed from the language, and from what I can tell
they're primarily installed with "<installer> install <package>"
rather than a configuration script.  As far as I'm aware, it doesn't
really matter whether you're using some kind of container technology,
etc.

>
> If your project is backed by a data store, where is it? Is it ANSI SQL, MySQL, Postgres, Oracle, Mongo, Readis or something else? Can I use Postgresql or is the project tightly bound to MySQL?
>
> Is your project a bunch of components that work together, some of which I don’t need? For example I might want to use your “Dropbox clone” for storing files, but don’t need it for email, calendar, contacts, etc. How do I enable just the ubiquitous file store portion?

This seems very application-focussed; my objection to this point is "I
have an FLOSS project for a library that does <foo>; it does one thing
and one thing well".

>> What happens if you don't have a website? Does every little library
>> need one? Or does a project page on your VCS hosting sufficient?
>
> A website is useful for helping your project find users. For example this one is quite simple: https://getnikola.com — The website provides the useful details: what does this software do for me?
>
> Without the web site, I’d just be landing at a Github page with a README.md here: https://github.com/getnikola/nikola
>
> The web site makes Nikola feel more polished, so I’m more willing to dig into the guts of it. Yes, judging a book by its cover or a person by the shoes they wear, yadda yadda. But it’s the way humans work.

I have a library specialised for one particular purpose (e.g. handling
textual operations).  Other than the library documentation, does it
really need a full website?

Admittedly, if your library is something a bit higher than lower level
operations, you may wish to also provide examples; but can't you also
provide that with the library documentation that would either be
viewable on a central package repository or installed along with the
library?

-- 
Ivan Lazar Miljenovic
Ivan.Miljenovic at gmail.com
http://IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com



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