In an interesting entry over at coding horror, we hear about the idea of "happy talk" and the general corporate stench that accompanies it. Happy talk is the type of corporate language employed that masks anything realistic that may actually going on. So why is this necessary? Obviously not everything that goes on at a company needs to be portrayed literally and it never is. The stakeholders need to be happy. Hence the term. If the company isn't placed in an overall "happy" light, all isn't well and people become upset. The news is, all is not well and never will be. Especially in software development, things just simply do not go as planned.
So what kind of effect does this "happy" corporate culture have on the software development effort of a given organization? Does the this bogus lingo spill over to the software development culture? Not always, at least not on the same scale. But sometimes it does.
So take some developer working in a large company for instance. This developer is in change of developing and maintaining some component in a complex system. Any developer is going to experience the stresses involved with deadlines. The stress arises because they need to make compromises that lead to not so high quality code, that is potentially buggy. But if he knows this component looks good on the outside and works "well enough", no harm done right? He'll just continue collaborating with the other developers as if all is well. This in itself would not be very damaging but what if scenarios like this are continually repeated?
It would be nice if all environments were like some smaller shops and developers could fearlessly admit to flawed code. The company in turn would in turn say to the concerned parties something close to what is actually happening. Doing otherwise sets the stage for upset customers down the road when things really go wrong.
Showing posts with label corporation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corporation. Show all posts
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
Open Source Freeloaders
In an interesting entry about leeches in open source software, the question of big corporations and open source software freeloading is raised. Does such a thing as freeloading on open source software exist? Well, according to the entry, some members of certain open source communities believe that doing so in a corporate environment without ever contributing back to the community would be considered freeloading. However, the open source license used in many popular open source projects does not require any contribution back to the community. Is this an ethical concern then? Do corporations feel bad for not contributing back to a software project that they are allowed to use for free? No. Individuals, maybe.
When you have put a significant time and effort investment anything, you generally want it appreciated. It is easy to see how the core developers of a successful project become essentially unimaginative toward it. The willingness of someone to contribute back any kind of artifact boosts the overall project motivation. The project team no longer feels that they are working toward something that has already become a lost cause. However, there are also implicit contributions made to open source projects.
The mere public knowledge that a large corporation is using any given open source project is probably worth more to the project than anything tangible the corporation would be willing to contribute. People within large corporations didn't decide to use a particular open source solution for the good of their health. They use it because it does what it is supposed to do. This should be very motivating. I'm always impressed by the fact that I use a programming language NASA considers useful.
What about when large corporations complain loudly and thoroughly about a open source project? Well, this does two things for the project. First, it demonstrates that corporation is using the software otherwise they would never take the time to complain about it. Second, it sets the stage for the project. The corporation does all the leg work by pointing public attention toward the flaws in the software. Now all eyes are on the project. All that's left to do is fix it quickly deliver in front of everyone. It seems that there isn't too much damage that freeloading can do to the open source software industry.
When you have put a significant time and effort investment anything, you generally want it appreciated. It is easy to see how the core developers of a successful project become essentially unimaginative toward it. The willingness of someone to contribute back any kind of artifact boosts the overall project motivation. The project team no longer feels that they are working toward something that has already become a lost cause. However, there are also implicit contributions made to open source projects.
The mere public knowledge that a large corporation is using any given open source project is probably worth more to the project than anything tangible the corporation would be willing to contribute. People within large corporations didn't decide to use a particular open source solution for the good of their health. They use it because it does what it is supposed to do. This should be very motivating. I'm always impressed by the fact that I use a programming language NASA considers useful.
What about when large corporations complain loudly and thoroughly about a open source project? Well, this does two things for the project. First, it demonstrates that corporation is using the software otherwise they would never take the time to complain about it. Second, it sets the stage for the project. The corporation does all the leg work by pointing public attention toward the flaws in the software. Now all eyes are on the project. All that's left to do is fix it quickly deliver in front of everyone. It seems that there isn't too much damage that freeloading can do to the open source software industry.
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