Jeff Moden (5/23/2009)
ta.bu.shi.da.yu (5/23/2009)
Well, bare in mind I'm talking about organized projects, not little snippets of code. Look at the Samba project - they're about to get to the point where you can replace a DC in a Windows domain. Then look at the Postgres project, they're doing amazing work also.Well, bare in mind that you made no such stipulation to begin with. 😉
A fair point - sorry about that.
I agree that well thought out projects can usually be a real benefit in open source environments. The problem is that many people add code that just shouldn't be called "code" even in such well organized projects.
Look at MySQL... I don't remember what the function is called but they have a function to create a numbered "table" on the fly. Last time I tested it (years ago now), it took a really, really long time just to generate a lousy million numbers. It was part of such an organized project and the code is terrible.
I'm not a huge fan of MySQL, ever since I read the following blog post by its founder. However, I think it probably does scale, given that Wikipedia use it for their backend database.
As with anything else, there are pros and cons to things like open sourced code.
Absolutely! I'm just saying that I think that open source projects are more influencable or are quicker to implement changes than closed source companies. My $0.02.