[kwlug-disc] Continued: OpenSource Me!]

[Paul Nijjar]

--- On Tue, 12/23/08, Dave Cramer <davec at visibleassets.com> wrote:

> Oscar is one of the worst run open source projects. Please
> don't use it as an exemplar

I agree that the project management is not that good (by which I mean
that it is pretty frustrating). What I find interesting, however, is
that a demographic that we would expect to be ignorant about open
source (namely doctors and the medical profession) has embraced it,
and is developing a project with multiple committers as a result. 

You'll get no argument from me that the execution is poor, but the
fact is that several doctors do use the software, and that it works
well for them (probably because they freeze at one version and then
never upgrade again). 


> That is not a java/tomcat problem, that is the projects
> problem. There are
> many ways to make this run "out of the box"

I agree wholeheartedly. I expressed myself poorly -- I meant to say
that Oscar has been hideous to get running, not that Tomcat was a poor
choice of platform. 

I wish that somebody had the inclination and
skills to make this easier to use, with good upgrade paths and stable
releases and a consistent place to look for documentation. Maybe the
CAISI project is filling this gap, but honestly I don't know enough
about the ecosystem to understand this for sure. 

- Paul



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