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> The answer to quality problems in software engineering is not less libraries, it's more and better libraries. In the same way that the high-quality civil engi
by tomlagier 6y ago
> The answer to quality problems in software engineering is not less libraries, it's more and better libraries. In the same way that the high-quality civil engineering the author admires is not achieved by having one person do everything themselves, but by the successful collaboration of a large number of skilled and specialised subcontractors.
I think one of the fundamental problems with our industry is that there is no funding mechanism for those subcontractors. The "base" that we build on is either unpaid volunteers, or tailored to a specific companies needs and goodwill.
If free software was not the norm, I think we'd see a lot of investment and enterprise around producing high quality libraries.
- woliveirajr 6y agoAnd would those libraries suffer from piracy, as other answers pointed out... Even developers are willing to "not pay" if a library costs a fortune, with fortune being any point above $50
- anchpop 6y agoI recently wrote about this problem here [1]. I think "free" software should still be the norm, but companies who use it should have to pay into a fund that distributes the money to where it can be used most productively to make new and more useful libraries. Otherwise there's no sustainable way for most people to contribute to open-source and be paid for it. [1]: https://blog.andrepopovitch.com/complement-collution-paradox/ https://blog.andrepopovitch.com/complement-collution-paradox...