Proposal: Coalition Against Open Sores (CAOS) projects
Introduction
After 4 hours of struggling with the abomination named Mambo documentation (I wouldn't grace it with a link) I have to conclude that it is a pure-bred torture device. Please read their documentation to get a taste of horror if you are seriously masochistic.
I am at a loss for words!
Lets begin somewhere just to give you a hint…
The documentation is sparse. The online documentation is meaningless in polite terms. It explains in detail the obvious (giving enriched meaning to the phrase "master of the obvious"), failing to explain the purpose behind it all. The context documentation isn't linked to be able to browse the rest.
Lets give one tiny example:
This page shows show a list of the Menu Items for your the munu you have just choosen.
Menu Item: This is the name of the menu item. Click the name to edit the menu item.
Section: This is the type of menu item.
Published: This is whether the item is published. See the legend below the list for an explanation of icon types.
Checked Out: This is the name of a user if this menu item is checked out. You will not be able to edit an item if it is checked out by another user. This is to prevent accidently editing an item while another User is editing it.
The documentation is full of such trivialities and it banters on and on how easy it is, how simple it is and you have to just click and you will have your website!
Proposal
Let's form a Coalition Against Open Sores projects (CAOS) whose objective would be to identify open sores projects and highlight their problems to save poor soul from drowning in their filth. Open Sores projects are Open Source projects with very poor quality product and/or documentation which are time-traps (you spend long hours after them only to realize that it is not worth it and you still haven't found a solution). And if you decide to adopt them in your projects, they bomb on your jeopardizing your project and possibly your career along with it.
Why singling out Open Source?
The noise-to-signal ratio appears to be very high for open source projects.
Looking forward for your comments and suggestions.
BTW: Please don't give me the cliche - if you don't like it don't use it, it is free.
It is free in direct cost, however it is expensive for the time to learn and support and for the cost of failure while implementing a solution based on it. And they make it a nightmare trying to evaluate products. Previously in the good old closed source era we had few decent products to choose from (and one or two bad ones which were well known). Today we have literally hundreds of open source products competing for mind-share in any give category, utterly confusing anyone trying to identify a good product.
What are your experiences with this issue? War stories welcome!
Filed under Open Source Software, Technology | Tags: Open Source | 
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February 2nd, 2005 at 7:16 am
We did NOT have a “few decent products to choose from (and one or two bad ones which were well known)”, we had a number of products, some of which were good, and only those who had used them had a good idea of which worked well. The big difference now is that we know about more products, and we know more about the products. This requires users to be more savvy.
I worked on an mathematical package some years ago that did not really describe the core algorithms it used. It had some information, but truly vital pieces of information were not out where the customer could see them. As time passed, we had a documentation gent put more and more of that info out, and a big reason was the existence of open source tools that documented what they did. To compete, we had to be quite specific about how our product worked. That documentation was not cheap to write or maintain, but it was important.
There are a lot of crummy open source projects out there, but I do believe that most users are savvy enough to watch the rate of change, and to watch for large scale usage. At least with these OS projects, there is some public information. I like that a lot better than the Cone of Silence we had to work with in years past.
Scott
February 2nd, 2005 at 1:25 pm
It’s not a question of being savvy. There is a information overload. No savvy customer can objectivaly compare 100+ products in any category within a reasonable time. ObjectWeb Consortium is a move in the right direction. We need more effort to identify the gems from the crud.
February 3rd, 2005 at 2:16 pm
So will you add J2SE to the CAOS? Its not open source, but Sun seems to pretend it is, so I think it qualifies. Java is so badly designed its sure to waste hours of your time as you search amateurish documentation and try to come up with undocumented hacks. How many bugs are there in the bug parade? 100,000,000 now? Take a look at the J2SE source and find out why. Its like first year computer science homework code, but worse.
February 4th, 2005 at 2:14 pm
Hi Slava,
I just read your review on the Java sources.
I haven’t had a chance yet to look into Java sources. I am looking forward to go through certain sections of the codebase.
Do you really think Java belongs to CAOS, considering the amount of high quality enterprise applications and other high quality software that has been developed using Java, the level of documentation including tutorials etc. My personal experince from 1995 onwards with Java tells me that it is very robust code overall.
Java has to a large extent spearheaded the rapid adoption of the web.
There are not many critical defects in there. Much of what you see in Bug Parade are enhancements or expression of personal preferences.
BTW: I enjoy your JEdit application. It is an excellent piece of software.
February 20th, 2005 at 4:32 am
good for done this
February 16th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
I totally undersand your point of view. And passed in to say Hi!
Anthony
February 24th, 2006 at 9:26 am
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