Re: [Webmacro-devel] Voting on the ContextTool issue?

[Brian G. <br...@qu...>]

> ...then how do we explain all the people flocking to Velocity instead of 
> WM? It's not just the PR and better docs, IMO.

More visibility (Apache)
Better docs
More contributors
Larger user base
More understandable license
More understandable community dynamics

add this up, and it spells

Network effect.

> A lot of people who use open source will check out the source,
> especially if they are "precious" people about code quality. You are
> probably one of these people, and I am pretty sure Eric is.

I would really love it if the world worked that way!  But it doesn't.
I think you WAY overestimate the effect of this among the general
population.  I would expect that "size of user base" is a much more
commonly used metric for how safe it is to use a particular package of
code (and also, easier to evaluate -- just look at the number of
distinct poeple posting on mailing lists.)

People want code that works, and want to know that if it doesn't work,
someone will fix it.  99% of users of open source software have no
intention to EVER modify it.

That said, if I had to list our problems (oh, wait, I did), code
maintainability would not be anywhere near the top.  And, with the
recent "cull out the dead stuff", it got much easier.  

That's not to say that we should not try to write maintainable code --
its jsut that I don't see a maintainability problem as being anywhere
near our top priority.