Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

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The Comfort of Open Development Processes

OpenOffice.org Delays Version 2.0 Release.  As a bystander in the promotion of the OASIS Open Document Format (OpenDocument), I have been startled by what seems a dangerous rush associated with positioning and framing on the degree of ODF readiness for mandated adoption. 

I’m concerned because I see people who apparently haven’t lived with the legacy preservation of documents and formats under-estimating the challenges.  I am disturbed by signs of belief that it is a simple matter of programming and throwing a switch to introduce a newborn “standard.”   I haven’t seen much concern for the serious heavy-lifting involving conformance testing, test-document cases and other activities related to assuring interoperable implementations (in that they are in effect substitutable) and successful, defined interchangeability of documents for the critical cases: preservation of documents and their provenance as records that remain accessible for an indefinite and long time; round-trip preservation of fidelity in collaborative work.  These are the boundary cases and it takes work and considerable dedication to span them.   Moving to a public format is a promising step in that laborious journey.

Also, there is already a major legacy case — we all know what it is — and I find the downplaying of the importance of that case as another cause for concern.  I don’t want to see the civilians (all the users of you-know-what) as necessary collateral damage in the ideological posturing that colors the undertaking.

I’m pointing at the delayed release of OpenOffice 2.0, and the introduction of an additional beta not to say “I told you so.”  This delay is good news. It says something about the deliberateness of the development, release and deployment process for a major ODF-compliant fixture.  I take that as a good sign.  It reflects some grounded reality and a standard of care.  That’s reassuring to me.  It says to me that there will be more to come.

I also notice that there is something comforting about a visible development process.  We can see the bug lists and the build and test process if we choose to observe it.  The code is available for inspection once you figure out how to navigate the site, something a bit more complicated than your everyday SourceForge project.  It takes effort to find the bits, but they’re there.   (E.g., I went there to find the present current Document Type Definition that is referenced in the XML files produced by the software but apparently not available at a global URL).

The existence of an open and unrestricted invitation to inspect, to participate, and to contribute is very welcome.  It is also valuable to see the degree of narration of the project and how that supports newcomers.  It is usual to see that QA, Documentation, and other activities following on a little later, but I take it that these activities are also taken seriously.  Many projects never cross that speed bump.

There’s no way to avoid having to comprehend a considerable amount of toolcraft, even to simply observe and follow-along at some level of detail, and it appears that the OpenOffice.org project recognizes that and provides more than the typical guidance.  Ordinary open-source projects — and closed-source counterparts — tend to have their toolcraft assumptions buried under a mound of tacit understanding.  This project provides more exposure than that.

We are thereby privileged to observe how this and other projects work toward providing matured, deliberate releases that lead to stability and trustworthiness in use.  We also have the opportunity to see how cultivation of development and adoption communities can be achieved in this approach to software development and delivery.  I find that fascinating, admirable, and worthy of emulation.

posted by orcmid at 10/13/2005 08:24:46 AM