Re: [ecf-dev] Re: [osgi-dev] Best practice to decouple remote technology

[Scott Lewis <slewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Eugen,

Eugen Reiswich wrote:
> Hi Scott,
>
> Thanks for your detailed answer. As I have already used ECF now for 
> about one year I see the advantages of this technology. But I do also 
> have to convince my project lead and other colleagues of the 
> reliability and sustainability of ECF. 

Well, I think there are a few things to say about this (these are my own 
biases of course)

1) Reliability:  My own opinion about this is that reliability of 
implementations is only achieved over time...with usage, and a variety 
of use cases not considered in the original implementation.  Frankly, 
after more than 20 years in software, I just don't believe corporations 
(or anyone for that matter) when they say they've produced something 
'reliable' that's new.  In other words, I think that reliability only 
comes through creating a community...and open implementations (and open 
projects) make communities much more efficient at improving 
implementations (IMHO).   To me, this is one of the key user advantages 
of open source efforts.

2) Sustainability:  The thing that I believe makes open source 
maintainable is that there are no secrets.  That is, everyone can not 
only get/review the source, they can also fix bugs, add features, and 
contribute these back to the community (and project).  Another thing to 
say about sustainability is that it's my belief that as a project we 
(ECF) are perhaps *more* sustainable than many commercial ventures, 
because our involvement with ECF is not based upon commercial success.  
That is, we will continue working on the project, and the project goes 
forward...no matter what happens with commercial 
usage/adoption/competition.  As you can tell from examining other open 
source projects, commerical organizations can sometimes be 'fickle' when 
it comes to sustaining such efforts.  This will not happen with ECF.

So, although like I said above, I'm admittedly biased, I actually think 
open source projects in general (and ECF in particular) has advantages 
on both Reliability and Sustainability. 

My $0.03.

Thanks,

Scott