What is acceptable as 'open-source'? [was Python vs C++]

[Ned Batchelder]

On 8/27/14 3:50 AM, Frank Millman wrote:
>
> "Ian Kelly" <ian.g.kelly at gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:CALwzidkRO_hrYamwXBk0go-w1OJ6Ty6mYB_c5vHXB6okGOLg6g at mail.gmail.com...
>>
>> Ugh. There seems to be no public repository, and the only source to be
>> found is from release-versioned tarballs, so there's apparently no
>> collaboration other than some forums for reporting bugs and requesting
>> features. All the work is done by one developer in his spare time, and
>> he is currently on hiatus since April. Meanwhile the most recent
>> release is February, so it's not like somebody could just pick it up
>> and start hacking and expect to merge.
>>
>> That's only open-source under the most literal of definitions.
>
> This is quite a timely message for me. I am inching closer to releasing a
> version of my accounting software, and a lot of the above comments apply to
> me as well. At present I am the only developer, and my project is not hosted
> anywhere, so I have to decide how to make it available, and I am open to
> suggestions.
>
> I have had two attempts at running an hg repository locally, and I am afraid
> that I am not keeping it up to date. I do have a master copy, but I have
> made so many changes in my clone that a merge will not make any sense, so I
> will have to start afresh. I think that making it public will be the only
> way that I can force myself to update it regularly.

You don't need a "local hg repo", you just need a working tree.  I 
recommend choosing either hg or git, and then using BitBucket or Github, 
and being done with it.

>
> I could stick to hg (or git) but I have recently come across fossil, and it
> seems ideal for my needs. Has anyone used it? It seems to have everything it
> needs (a wiki and a ticketing system) for self-hosting, and I have my own
> domain that I have not activated yet, so maybe I should just use fossil and
> host it myself. Any comments?

Fossil is one of those technologies that is very attractive in and of 
itself, but is so under-adopted that it will itself be a barrier to 
collaboration.  (Frankly, hg is getting to that category also.)

>
> There is no test suite (shock, horror). I have not got my head around that
> yet. The things that I could write tests for are so trivial that they don't
> seem worth the effort, and the things that cause me problems are so complex,
> because they depend on exactly what features have been activated, that the
> permutations are endless and I don't know where to start. However, once it
> is public, if someone is prepared to do a bit of mentoring, I will start to
> fill the gap.
>
> Documentation is a mess. I did start using Sphinx a while ago, so there is a
> sprinkling of rest-format docstrings, but they have not been kept
> up-to-date, and in some cases are out of date. There are plenty of other
> comments in the code, mostly reminders to myself about various issues. I
> don't know open-source etiquette. Should I spend the time to sort this out
> before going public, or is it acceptable to leave it as is for now?

Go public first.  People might look at your repo and say, "ugh, this is 
a mess, I'm not going to help here," but the alternative is them saying, 
"there is no public repo, and therefore no project, ..."

>
> Any other comments?
>
> Frank Millman
>
>
>


-- 
Ned Batchelder, http://nedbatchelder.com