RE: Open Source

["Jonathan Shore" <jshore@example.com>]

> From: Simon Cozens [mailto:simon@example.com]On Behalf Of Simon Cozens
> >
> > Ultimately the time to delivery for any release slowed down dramatically
> > because of these issues.
>
> Worked fine for me. Any reflection on management ability, do you think?

I should have mentioned, the other problem was that there was no single
manager.  Each region had its own and frankly each region had its own
priorities.  To me this is very characteristic of the management of many
open source projects.  Developers will do what they will - of course subject
to some basic guidelines / checkin criteria.

For someone how has very specific goals - there is no guarantee that an open
source project will address them in a timely manner - or even at all short
of doing it yourself or sponsoring someone to do it.

I think it depends on the goal.  If your goal is to produce a super-secure
SMTP service, the goal is probably general enough and useful enough that you
are going to get people to band behind doing it.

If your goal is to produce something much more obscure and perhaps only of
interest to a handful of people you probably won't get it done within an
open source effort short of doing it yourself or finding a way to generalize
the problem to a wider audience.

Anyway - that's my opinion.

JS