On open source and naming conventions...

First on naming conventions...
Recently a series of posts caught my eye ( via Bil) on Coding in an Igloo that went on and on about code naming conventions. This guy looked at the various naming options and conventions most of us use and then gave his $.02 on what he used and why. he covered SQL Server objects, UI controls, classes, interfaces, properties, fields, local variables, methods, etc... quite a good read. I've never worked somewhere that had a set in stone coding style guide, but I've tried to create my own guide to follow. A while back I stumbled across IDesign's C# Coding Standard and found my style fell in line pretty close to their recommendations, not to mention finding a few additional items that I picked up. So I guess if there's anything I officially follow, it's theirs.

Anyway, if you're interested in reading the series on Coding in an Igloo, check out his "TOC" post with links to each post in the series:

» Code Naming Conventions, The Series

On open source...
Earlier today I noticed a few posts on open source recently syndicated on Phil Haack's blog. He first questioned if Community Server is really open source, as Dave recently stated. Before reading Phil's post, I always considered a project who's source code was available fell into the open source classification... but now I think there's definately more to it. Phil makes the point, very well I add, that it's not enough to give the source away to call something open source; your license must also allow for people to fork the code. He cites Karl Fogel's point (from his book Producing Open Source Software - How to Run a Successful Free Software Project) that:

...the threat of a fork is what keeps the leader(s) of an open source project from being tyrannical. It is this threat of a fork that motivates and requires open source projects to be well run.

» Is Community Server Open Source?

Good point Phil!

Also, yesterday seems to be the official day NDoc died... at least that's how just about everyone is stating it (via everyone). So the brains behind the outfit is quitting... ok... I understand that, and it's his call. But it's an open source project... so why is it dead? Can't ~anyone~ else pick it up? Heck, the guy behind it, Kevin Downs, even offered up control of the SourceForge project to anyone who's interested! Dead... seems a bit premature... and with a tool that's so widely used and popular, I don't think it's dead,

posted on Friday, July 28, 2006 12:57 AM

Feedback

# re: On open source and naming conventions... 7/27/2006 8:41 PM Joe Brinkman

Your last paragraph Andrew is right on the money. That is a distinction that is lost on many who say that Community Server is Open Source. If Telligent drops support for CS on ASP.Net 1.1, then it is dead. Nobody else can pick it up, keep making mods and redistribut it.

# re: On open source and naming conventions... 7/28/2006 1:07 PM John Holliday

By the way, the "sandcastle" blog is up (http://blogs.msnd.com/sandcastle/) and has a nice PowerPoint presentation that gives a high-level overview of the new SandCastle documentation compiler from Microsoft.

Even if NDoc continues to live on, it looks like SandCastle will be hard to beat - 2 documentation compilers plus a nifty Visual Studio Add-in. Microsoft is already using it to generate all of the docs for the .NET Framework.

# re: On open source and naming conventions... 7/28/2006 8:34 PM Marshall Harrison "the gots

I think that the other series on Starting up a User Group (http://gotspeech.net/blogs/marshallharrison/default.aspx) were better.

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