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Piers Cawley (pdcawley@mendeddrum.org)'s status on Thursday, 11-Sep-2025 01:18:40 JST Piers Cawley

Speaking as occasional perpetrator of Free Software, you can fuck all the way off with this idea.
https://hachyderm.io/@mattly/115175297091436936
In conversation about 5 months ago from mendeddrum.org permalink
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  Matthew Lyon (@mattly@hachyderm.io)
  
  from Matthew Lyon
  
  I said this when I first started getting into electronics and I’ll say it again: software libraries need something akin to Datasheets. A technical document which lists facts about the operating parameters and intended uses, meant for a technically-minded person to evaluate “is this suitable for my use case?” and “what all would be involved in integrating this into my product?” in my experience too much of this material for software reads like marketing fluff, making empty promises about ease or scale or whatever without any context under which those promises apply we talk about software “engineering” and this sort of technical document strikes me as fundamental to that practice
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  Matthew Lyon (mattly@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 11-Sep-2025 01:37:51 JST Matthew Lyon
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  @pdcawley I don’t think the ideas are mutually exclusive: https://hachyderm.io/@mattly/115180975941931026
  In conversation about 5 months ago permalink
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    Matthew Lyon (@mattly@hachyderm.io)
    
    from Matthew Lyon
    
    so what I’m trying to get at with the software datasheet idea, which seems to be in conflict with “I am not a supplier” (which I am a wholehearted believer in and lost a friend over my thread about such a year ago), is about changing the way we think about evaluating software components to integrate into larger projects as someone who’s published over a dozen small utility libraries that I put out there because someone else might find them useful, yes, I the author don’t owe you a single goddamned thing the people who are providing commercial projects & products for integration, by contrast, rely mainly on marketing fluff. Emoji-laden bullet points and empty promises. “this product will magically make you better” with nothing to back it up or even help me understand if it’s the right thing the people who want software to be a supply chain aren’t acting like fucking suppliers this is not exclusive to “i am not a supplier”; those ideas can co-exist https://mendeddrum.org/@pdcawley/115180672961569538

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