Re. using third-party solutions [was Re: Producing Unicode-only characters]
Re. using third-party solutions [was Re: Producing Unicode-only characters]
- Subject: Re. using third-party solutions [was Re: Producing Unicode-only characters]
- From: has <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2005 14:09:46 +0100
Shane Stanley wrote:
>There's also a responsibility angle. If a client's script fails because
>Apple broke something, or Adobe or Quark or whatever, I can explain that
>(well, sort of). But if it's a third-party item, it gets more complicated.
>Suppose it is one of has's libraries: I can't very well tell him to fix it
>pronto, and that sort of thing can be hard to explain to an irate client.
[To continue using me as the example...]
No, but you can ask sweetly, emphasise the urgence of the matter, and maybe throw some pennies in the guilt jar to grease the wheels of progress extra well. You'd be surprised how often this does the trick. But you know what? This isn't really important.
Here's what is important: almost everything I've released is Open Source Software. This means that even if I'm in a bad mood or get hit by the proverbial bus, you can still take the original source code and fix it yourself, or pay another programmer to fix it for you. Try getting that sort of flexibility from Apple or Adobe or Quark. Not only are they unlikely to provide a solution particularly quickly, if indeed they provide one at all, but there's no guarantee that the solution they do supply can be retroactively applied to your existing software base either (and we all know how nervous publishing folks can be about doing upgrades).
I can understand being leery of closed-source third-party resources, because if the worst ever happens and support for them fails then you're stuffed. But you're hardly alone, and avoiding this sort of trap is one of the major reasons the whole open-source software movement exists. OK, it's still not particularly fun if/when a project's current maintainers decide to stop supporting it themselves because transitions are never fun, but at least you have viable options for dealing with this, including adopting it yourself. Heck, even Apple, that original bastion of the Not Invented Heres, is now happily using OSS when it suits them. And if it's good enough for them...
To summarise: the other issues you mention are fair considerations, but when it comes to the 'responsibility' concern your options aren't nearly as restricted as you think.
has
--
http://freespace.virgin.net/hamish.sanderson/
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