Tuesday, January 23, 2007

The Rules of Open-Source Programming

1. Rules must be either funny, whimsical or true.
2. You are not expected to understand these rules.
3. The rules as a whole may be self-contradictory.
4. Rules may have exceptions.
5. Rules may be false.

And now the rules themselves:

The Rules of Open-Source Programming


1. Don't whine unless you are going to implement it yourself.

4. If you don't work on your project, chances are that no one will.

5. A project is never finished.

6. The user is always right unless proven otherwise by the developer.

7. Release early, release often. Clean compilation is optional.

8. Open-Source is not a panacea.

9. Give me refactoring or give me death!

11. When a developer says he will work on something, he or she means
"maybe".

13. Your first release can always be improved upon.

15. If you like it, let the author know. If you hate it, let the author
know why.

20. Open Code != Good Code

22. Backward compatiblity is your worst enemy.

23. Backward compatiblity is your users' best friend.

31. You are your best tester

32. Your users are your second best testers

33. Your test-cases and test-scripts are your worst testers

34. Every successful project will eventually spawn a sub-project

37. Duplicate effort is inevitable. Live with it.

48. The number of items on a project's to-do list always grows or
remains constant.