Subject: RE: [hackers-il] "Shrinkwrap" vs. In-House Software

From: Chen Shapira <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 16:09:00 +0200

> Open-Source and Redmond software both belong as Shrinkwrap. Mercury's
> in-house SCM is internal software. Making it shrinkwrap would 
> take a lot
> of effort, which is often not worthwhile. I.e: Mercury would 
> rather say:
> use BitKeeper/Aegis/Arch/Subversion and leave us alone.

I'd like to point out that my posts don't represent any "official" 
mercury view. I didn't ask anyone about the official OpenSource
policy, nor did I ask about the SCM division. 
I was merely guessing.

> Putting Internal Software into the wild many time results as
> Consultingware: a software that requires so many consultants and
> contractors to install properly and show you how to run it, 
> that it seems
> it does nothing except that.

I disagree.
Consultantware has to be better than internal stuff.

The software still needs to be very stable, it can't crash infront  
of a customer. It needs to support all kinds of platforms and OS 
configurations. It has to support the security standards of your 
customers. Also it needs to be configurable and scriptable.
In-house software can have many things hard-coded.
It also need to be independent of things you have inhouse, but
can't expect the clients to have.

I recently had the happy job of adapting inhouse software to 
consultingware, and then visit the client as the consultant.
Not a happy experience (although the client was in down-town
San-Fransisco). The said client, a large bank, nearly fainted
when I asked him to insert his DB password into our configuration
file in clear-text. I agree with him, but when it was inhouse, it
didn't seem that important.

Anyone here has any experience from the client side of consultingware?

Thanks,
Chen.