[IGDA_indies] open source survival

[Brian Hook]

Most open source is worthless, but that's because most anything is 
worthless.

There are a TON of open source projects that don't suck, or at least 
their suckitude is lower than their marginal utility.

zlib, ijg, libpng, python, lua, enet, SDL, subversion, unison, OpenAL, 
the list goes on.  I have two small open source projects of my own:

http://www.poshlib.org (Portable Open Source Harness)
http://www.bookofhook.com/sal (Simple Audio Library)

Just because something isn't perfect or isn't appropriate for YOU 
doesn't rule it out for everyone else.  Your attitude towards Python 
seems to be, uh, very well known, and a lot of people disagree.  I 
don't think Python is very good, but for what I need it's better than 
anything but Pike or Objective-C, neither of which are robustly 
supported on Windows.

SDL is a very well proven architecture, and while it's long in the 
tooth, it also happens to be VERY well proven.

> rule of thumb is if the project doesn't have a VC++ .sln or .dsw
> file, they aren't serious about Windows compatibility.

I vehemently disagree.  Integrating open source into a project is 
never going to be a drop in, there is always SOME level of project 
management that has to occur, be it as simple as updating header files 
or as complex as actually adding all the files of a project into your 
own.

The important thing is the level of documentation.  I don't care if 
someone has a DSP file, but I DO care if they at least acknowledge 
that users exist by having competent documentation that describes, 
quickly, how to get that project up and running as quickly as 
possible.

I have an article on my Web site devoted to open source developers:

http://bookofhook.com/Article/GameDevelopment/TipsforOpenSourceDevelop
e.html

Most of my beliefs are encompassed in there.

Brian