Why OpenOffice.org Failed - and What to Do About It (ComputerWorld UK)

I've just signed up to LWN entirely for the purpose of responding to this post. It is an incredibly insightful post. It should be read out loud to anyone who even *thinks* of touching VBA. Heavy weaponry and attack dogs should be extensively used to ensure the wannabe developer's mind is focused on the subject at hand.

However, I would question one of the claims here, that this development model is broken. From the point of view of programmers, even of amateurs like myself, this is clearly the case. A world where version control consists of thinking up a new cute name for your spreadsheet every few weeks is not a world in which I wish to live.

But, from the point of view of the managers in (e.g.) the pensions industry, the model works fine. It limits expenditure. It avoids hassle and political intrusions. It stops the IT dept stepping in and turning a two-hour job into a two-month fiasco. It prevents their employees being snaffled by real software companies.

Fundamentally, this is because the ten-year event horizon of a competent programmer is greater than the six-month event horizon of a competent manager. They're not worried about long-term maintainability; they're worried about whether adding in a market value adjustment can be done *yesterday*. They're not worried about verification; they're worried about spelling errors in the Most Holy Standard Wording. They're not worried about separation of concerns; financial professionals are used to being concerned about *everything*, all the time...

The only real silver lining I can see is that a sort of software middle class is emerging. People who separate their concerns, who know that code commenting is important, who are aware that GOTOs are bad... and who talk to each other, sharing best practices. More, they are able to explain the motivation behind these practices to managers.

As this element hits critical mass, I predict we'll see a gradual shift from the alchemy of the traditional VBA guru to the science of these new practitioners. Most of this science will be reinventing stuff that real developers already know, but eventually the two communities will reach feature parity.

One big part of this process will, of course, be developing better Office tools - proper spreadsheet/programming hybrids and the like. The main reason no-one does proper source control on spreadsheets is because you *can't*, not really. I'm hoping this will become a visible issue over the next few years.