Copy or Reuse

[Robert Terry]

Hi,

We operate a software reuse library on the WWW.  In our arena the notion 
of reuse has been around for some years now.  Actually, its been promoted 
as a major solution for high costs of developing new software and the 
high demand for quicker response times to do same.  As one educator said 
at a recent working group, maybe we should grade our students on how few 
lines they had to write in order to accomplish an assignment.

My point, is that thought, albeit, programs, are better shared than to 
have people constantly re-inventing the wheel.  This is being highly 
promoted in our field and the better reusers are highly commended.  In 
the past most of our holdings (i.e. Math routines used on ICBMs) came 
from publicly funded projects, and they are own by the public.  Lately, 
we have included resources available on the WWW (rather than storing 
everything here).  We are constantly getting these notes from said 
resources that we need to do this or that if we wish to reference them.  
What a pain in the maintenance activities this all becomes.  Our current 
impression is that if its publicly available, we can reference it.  If 
the owners wanted to not share they should have kept it behind a firewall 
or on their intranet.

The opinions are my own, etc., etc., but do feel free to come and visit 
our library and flame away, if you find resources without correct 
visitation rights in their metadata.


Bob Terry
Software Market (all is free, maybe some day we will sell access :-)
http://rbse.mountain.net/mpcs/