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Karen, you should post your notes from that break-out somewhere. Take your choice of on the listserv, on www.code4lib.org, on wiki.code4lib.org, on your own blog, wherever you think is appropriate. :) I think it's good that as a community we're starting to discuss these issues more, and learn from our experiences (which we have more experience to learn from). My concerns are still there though about having such an award with the code4lib name on it. Jonathan Karen Schneider wrote: > "It might be a good idea, but maybe not with the Code4Lib name. But I worry > in general we don’t collectively know enough about what makes good software > to give a Software of the Year honor reliably." > > On the one hand, I agree. On the other hand, just to note, there was a > breakout session at C4L where quality issues of OSS were discussed; I wrote > up notes and communicated them to one of the breakout mods who contacted me > post-conference. Obviously, it's a beginning, but it was an excellent > conversation. I can post notes here -- I wasn't sure what to do with them. > > I originally had Jonathan's response when Eric raised the idea (it was the > genesis of the breakout session, actually). I wonder if there aren't a > couple of awards: one for new ideas, one for projects sustained past a > certain point. There are interesting, important, cool ideas, and then > there's the stuff that survives the long hard slog--which is where a lot of > quality issues show up. > > I also disagree on the whole issue of forcing nominees to select the next > award. Could be a way of taking a project out of the running indefinitely! > Plus the library OSS community is incestuous enough without having competing > projects voting on one another. (Though, an interesting problem: if we > recuse people involved in projects, does that leave assessment largely to > folks unfamiliar w/ OSS?) > >