Jens Vagelpohl wrote: > On Jan 16, 2009, at 18:25 , Hanno Schlichting wrote: > >> The concept of >> giving SVN repositories any kind of quality level aspect failed in the >> same way. Dependencies are specified in the setup.py and egg metadata. >> Quality is judged by who has written some code, number of tests, test >> coverage, amount of releases and so on. > > This is partly right, but one aspect is missing. Developers who know > these metrics (tests, coverage, release history) can apply them, > correct. But non-developers don't really have anything to go by but > the package name, title and description. That's how they end up > incorporating bad packages with disappointing results.
If you don't know anything about cars and just buy one by the sound of the name it has, that is a poor way of choosing. You get professional help or ask someone whom you trust for advice. If you don't know how to choose an open-source software package, the same applies. Package names are labels that don't mean anything, in the same way most other labels don't mean anything. We tried to give them meaning at some point, but that attempt has failed. > Even though there is no official "dictator" for each of those common > namespaces like zope, z3c, plone, archetypes, etc I do see value in at > least attempting to be careful when choosing the namespace. The choice > of namespace probably does impart some kind of feeling of quality > level, and also of sensible grouping. Personal example: for me the > "zope" namespace sounds like a place where only those packages land > that are actually part of Zope 2 as delivered at that point in time. > "z3c" is for community-contributed add-ons, "plone" and "archetypes" > are related to Plone and Archetypes. And what about zope.agxassociation, zope.bforest, zope.bobo, zope.generic, zope.ucol, zope.wfmc and zope.xmlpickle to name a few of the more than 30 packages already in the zope.* namespace which are neither part of any Zope release nor are likely to ever be? Hanno _______________________________________________ Zope-Dev maillist - Zope-Dev@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )