Re: VCL Improvements - the Linus way ?
- From: "Chris Pattinson (CodeGear)" <cpattinson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 3 Jun 2007 08:37:25 -0700
m. Th. wrote:
Mat Ballard wrote:
It seems to me that Codegear has all the disadvantages of
open-sourcing the VCL (ie: all your competitors can see the source
and learn from it) without the advantages of a wide community
working on its improvement.
Perhaps Codergear can contemplate some way in which the Delphi
community can submit fixes and enhancements, which can incorporated
into the VCL in the same way that Linus and his deputies
incorporate changes to the Linux kernel ? In this way Borland will
always retain control of the VCL, but have the advantages inherent
in open source.
We've already seen the start of this in the form of FastMM - and
look how successful that little exercise has been.
Codegear, are you listening ?
The approach which is the already successfully one, is using
dedicated open-source teams, helping (and rewarding) them, and
integrating their work in Delphi.
JEDI
FastCode
Indy
Firebird
TNT Unicode controls (okay, now this isn't open sourced anymore)
www.qadram.com (now known as D4PHP)
all the above are very successful open-source projects which helped a
lot the Delphi world and now all of these projects play a core role,
every project in its area. Perhaps is better for CodeGear to help
them more, work closer with them, and integrate more things from
them. As for new issues, CG can create a new 'task force' assign some
CodeGearers, some hosting (or SourceForge.org if is appropiate), help
in Delphi internals, some tools and some rewards (for ex. a SA for
the Architect line - this is nothing for CG, very much for each one
of us). For example, I think now at two-three areas of work in this
way: - ECO (making it to work the same on native and .net) - VCL
(in this area the JEDI has many to offer, IMHO) - Mobile/PDA
CG (Nick) what do you say?
On the QA side, we're working a lot more with partners to integrate
projects and controls in internal testing. We do have partners where we
have fairly open code and development sharing. Most of our partners,
for example, are on the field test and can provide feedback on upcoming
product changes. They get early builds of product, and for the QA team
- they have been very helpful in providing source code for us to test
'real world' projects and scenarios.
Now, as to community recommendations for code fixes and taking changes
- we need to get better that that. We've had several long time
customers with already code reviewed and tested fixes that they propose
to merge into CG products.
One 'blocker' here may be the IP ownership ones - resolved in both
parties signing an appropriate agreement clearly defining ownership of
code. For stability and reliability sake, any code changes CodeGear
puts into it's codebase must be owned by CG. Last thing you want is
someone suing or claiming ownership on a critical section of code that
millions of developers rely on.
--
Chris Pattinson
CodeGear QA Manager, Delphi/C++ Developer Studio
.
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