Rumors of new Gnash functionality exaggerated (Linux.com)

Rumors of new Gnash functionality exaggerated (Linux.com)

Posted Jun 23, 2007 18:58 UTC (Sat) by AJWM (guest, #15888)
In reply to: Rumors of new Gnash functionality exaggerated (Linux.com) by jwb
Parent article: Rumors of new Gnash functionality exaggerated (Linux.com)

Good observation, and I'd agree.

Until a new app or library becomes at least barely usable, only a very few die-hards with the vision are willing to put effort into it. Once it reaches the point where the more casual user (for that particular app, but still an experienced programmer) is willing to give it a try, the "many eyes makes bugs shallow" effect starts to take over, and that accelerates as the app becomes usable to more and more people.

At that point the progress rate also depends on the complexity of the app and how well the code is structured and documented to make it easily understandable/modifiable by programmers new to the project.

(And sometimes that's the difference between an ugly hack that does something an end user/programmer wants done but he's not willing to pass back upstream, and a clean one that he is. Case in point, mplayer, which I wanted to display the file name playing as the title of the window it's playing in. Couldn't quickly (ie, within a half-hour or so) figure out the "right" way to do it, so I did an ugly hack with a global variable. Works for my needs but may well not work in other situations.)

---

to post comments