Open source and code sharing (2)

Second rant on this topic (I hope the last one... for now).

Let's make some simple assumptions:

1. You're developing something. It's experimental code about research stuff.
2. Some colleague politely asks "May I use your code? It would really benefit my research".

You are, of course, going to release the code as Open Source soon™, so what's the point of keeping it private?

Well, there are a number of reasons. Just to name a few:

• The code is not ready. It contains bugs, or poorly modelled parts, and you don't want that other people could mistakenly take the results for good ones, while they're wrong.
• You spent a LOT of time on that code, and you'd like to use it first.

Those are two compelling points. The fist one is, basically, originating from the incredible amount of dumb people in the world. They can take a simulator like ns-3, and assume that everything is bug-free. Then they launch a simulation, find some interesting data and they can publish them. All this without the doubt that the data are, indeed, the result of a bug rather than something real.
Don't underestimate dumb people, they can find a valid reason for about anything, even if it's unreal. I could even name (and shame) some scientific papers. And they are cited too (sadly not to point out that the authors are dumb).

The second point is all about your work. You did that code for a reason: to do some research and publish it. Isn't it? However publishing a paper isn't that easy. Sometimes papers get stuck, sometimes they're rejected because the reviewers are funny guys (like the one that asked why we didn't cite Shannon's paper... sure, let me cite also P.Artusi, I used it yesterday). Anyway, it's not easy or fast to publish, and papers are one of our major outcome (more rants on this in the future).
As a consequence, researchers are more keen on "opening" their software once some papers have been published. Before that... not very much.

Said so, what you'd do ? You'd give access to your code or not ?
Yes, you do. Because the people asking are from a well-known research centre, and because it could open new collaboration possibilities.

... and then they disappear. You told them that the code may be bugged. You told them that you really hope to have feedbacks, like bugs, code improvements and so on. You told them that you'd like to collaborate and share. Gone, like tears in rain.

And now ? What to do ?

Simple. You wait for the next big code change. You collect the bugs and you do NOT fix them. Not on the repository you gave them access to. Then you revoke the permissions and you keep working, Hoping that they'll get stuck in a terrible bug and that they'll loose their faces when they'll try to use your bugged code. Because bugs are there, and you know.

And the lesson is: when you use an Open Source project, remember to contribute to it. Anything, even a small thing, is the sign that you respect who worked on it before you. Do not take anything for granted, Open Source isn't "someone was dumb enough to give me his time". Those developers might be dumb (in your eyes), but they can be evil as well, and they do remember. Everything.