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What Happens To Code From Failed Projects?
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sat Dec 06, 2008 10:21 AM
from the great-compiler-in-the-sky dept.
from the great-compiler-in-the-sky dept.
Idzuna writes "With the somewhat recent announcement of Tabula Rasa shutting down, I have been thinking about what will happen to the Server/Client code. Does it get used as a guide for other projects? Does it get destroyed? Or does it just sit there on a hard drive somewhere in storage? The same question applies to many other failed creations. I know the likelihood of the code being distributed freely is next to nil, as most companies probably recycle code. If a vulnerability was found in old code, it could be applied to other products that the company has released. But wouldn't it help development of different projects if such a resource was available?"
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Games: <em>Tabula Rasa</em> To Shut Down 244 comments
NCSoft announced today that it will be closing down Tabula Rasa on February 28th. The sci-fi shooter-flavored MMO struggled for quite some time, despite recent attempts to draw in new players by announcements of new features, price reductions, and using Richard Garriott's trip into space as a promotion. We discussed Garriott's departure from NCSoft a couple weeks ago. This is NCSoft's second failed MMO, and apparently layoffs are in the works. They seem to be making an effort to make the game's last few months as fun as they can for their remaining players, though. "Before we end the service, we'll make Tabula Rasa servers free to play starting on January 10, 2009. We can assure you that through the next couple of months we'll be doing some really fun things in Tabula Rasa, and we plan to make staying on a little longer worth your while."
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Code Heaven (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Code Heaven (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Code Heaven (Score:4, Informative)
And why wouldn't it?
Parent
Re:Code Heaven (Score:5, Funny)
And here I was thinking that GOTO was a bad thing.
Parent
It's recycled (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's recycled (Score:4, Interesting)
I know at least one other company that GPL'd a product that was nice but didn't excite enough monied clients : Solsoft GPL'd Net Security Master, an application-level proxy.
http://www.hsc.fr/societe/produits/index.html.en [www.hsc.fr]
I worked for Solsoft at the time :-)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
most likely because modern 3D engines are flexible enough that they can be reused in multiple projects, and the game logic is mostly strapped onto that.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's recycled (Score:5, Insightful)
The code is used for other projects by the same company.
No, that's just what some delusional PHB or sneaky coder tells the decision makers at the company. In reality it just sits on a CD or in a version control repository until it gets lost or deleted. (Or until somebody needs a new version for some lingering customer that is still using it and wants to pay for a fix).
I'm sure many a coder has told management that they will "re-use that big pile of obfuscated spaghetti code written by the owner or long-gone suspender-wearing senior coder"[1] until management believed it and left them alone so they could build something much better from scratch.
[1] - Please note that anything not written from scratch by the current set of coders falls into this category.
Parent
Re:It's recycled (Score:4, Insightful)
The code is used for other projects by the same company. Few companies release their old/failed code -- id being the only game company I know of that does so (GPLing their old code).
For games in particular, this is true. Sometimes it's just retired entirely. The code is often such a nest of intellectual property issues that publicly releasing the source is just not going to be an option for the development company.
Parent
Old code never dies . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
. . . it just fades away.
The developers (Score:3, Interesting)
all have copies at home.
we do. (Score:5, Funny)
We recycle code. We have to separate it ourselves though. There are code bins for C, Java, Javascript, Perl, and Python. It's pain though! Every semester some intern puts Javascript code in the Java bin and the other way around!
But it beats having the code end up in a landfill!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:we do. (Score:4, Funny)
Well they both have the word "Java" on it, probably easy to get confused.
Tell me about it. I've seen C# codes in C++ folder, probably because they all start with a C and # is just two pluses overlapping.
I'm only grateful the culprit didn't rename the C++ folder to C# thinking it was a typo.
Parent
Depends (Score:5, Funny)
That really depends, if it fails really badly then it gets buried [wikipedia.org].
Re:Depends (Score:5, Interesting)
Better link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial [wikipedia.org]
Parent
No one can really know for sure (Score:5, Funny)
Some have described a tunnel of bright light where the code executes in an infinite loop forever.
Others theorize an ultimate review where code structure is judged. Good code may branch anywhere at anytime with an infinite clock speed and infinite memory space regardless of pointer size. It is said that in the code afterlife, even vista will run quickly. Bad code, say like MS BOB, will spend eternity in some embedded device like a clapper or firmware that controls a japanese toilet.
Re:No one can really know for sure (Score:5, Funny)
Some have described a tunnel of bright light where the code executes in an infinite loop forever.
As opposed to an infinite loop which doesn't last forever? :-)
int main(void) {
int i = 0;
while (1) {
if (i<10) {
doSomethingTenTimesInAnInfiniteLoopButNotForever();
i++;
}
doSomethingForever();
}
return 0;
}
Parent
Re:No one can really know for sure (Score:4, Funny)
-Lee
If you post anonymously, you aren't supposed to sign your post.......
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You just haven't waited long enough.
Re: (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:5, Interesting)
I took the opposite approach at my current job. After computing the cost to maintain a line of code (around $10/year,) the logical solution was to delete all unused code. The payoff was great: no more worrying about breaking compatibility, smaller, cleaner codebase, etc.
Another plus was that shelved code tends to be bad code: if it didn't suck, it would still be in use. Maybe it had some useful gems in it? Possible, but doubtful: usefully gems should have been in a common library, not a cesspool application.
A final benefit was that it made paying the programmers much easier. The author of 10K lines of code that were being used got paid a lot more than the author of 20K lines of code that were deleted.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
So... 10K used lines gets paid more than 20K unused lines...
return 0;
Here we have one line that is used frequently! That'll be $4 million. I accept paypal.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess I didn't express myself well. I don't care about KLOCs, I want problems solved.
I get very annoyed at programmers who claim they are productive because they wrote 20K lines of rubbish. So, I fire them and give the freed-up money to the guy who wrote 10K lines of useful code.
And, yes, I do understand that some things are one-shot projects (e.g. data migrations.) Using my super-manager powers, I explain we will get paid for getting the job done, not for writing pretty stuff.
Re: (Score:4, Interesting)
I was lucky enough to have a 10+ MLOC codebase, plus version control history on 500+ developers going back 10 years. After writing a shredder/hasher to look for cut and paste programming, was pretty easy to divide commits into new development vs "maintenance." This gave rough $/line numbers.
Then asked a number of developers to estimate their time spent checking/maintaining compatibility with existing code. Numbers mostly agreed with the version control numbers.
Finally, went to some managers and asked how much they would pay to have 1K, 10K, 100K LOCs removed. Again, numbers matched reasonably well.
I don't claim science here: estimates varied from $1 to $100 per line, but $10 was a number most people were comfortable with.
Parent
Yucca Mountains (Score:2, Funny)
Recycled Code (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never worked on a project like this, but on other things I've done, I've used it as a learning experience. We always learn how to do things better over time, even if they're not the same type of project.
Depending on the project, I've either kept a copy of my code somewhere safe, or I've just remembered "oh, it took this to do it well", and then do it again but better next time.
I've known people who recycle their code directly. Unfortunately, that makes their errors follow them, and they reuse bloated libraries over (and over and over). On some, I've had to clean up, where I've found multiple things that do the same or almost the same things, and many things that were simply unused and had no application in the new project. Why should you have 10,000 lines of code, where only a couple hundred do the job. Sometimes the leftovers contained subtle but exploitable bugs. Is it worth saving a little time to leave a potentially dangerous bug in place?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Apologies to Langston Hughes (Score:3, Funny)
What happens to a code deferred?
Is it ignored
with no more patches to come?
Or sit there, abandoned --
and never run?
Does it become obsolete
Or turn into freeware --
to become something sweet?
Maybe it's reused
To spawn newer code.
OR DOES IT EXPLODE?
it goes to code heaven (Score:2, Funny)
how do you think they got cloud computing off the ground?
if its really bad code it goes to code hell
most pieces of malware, for example, are zombie pieces of code stitched together from pieces of netscape and aol. the code devil himself is composed of the evit bit and the piece of code that confused imperial units and metric units and caused the mars climate orbiter to crash
Code is Cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
To paraphrase the old saw about decisions:
Writing good software requires experience, and experience comes from writing bad software.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I make a mistake and don't make it again.....
A sentence ends in a single period.
my code is some of the best in the company
I bet you're an excellent driver, too.
I know this one! (Score:5, Funny)
Pet Cemetary (Score:2)
It's how Quake III rose from the dead to become Star Trek: Elite Force.
It Gathers Cobwebs Till Nobody Left Remembers It (Score:5, Interesting)
In my observation at a commercial software firm:
1. Product is canceled / killed
2. Developers that know anything about the project are axed or leave
3. The source control repository sits untouched for year(s).
4. SCM admins decide the project really is dead, and it can stop wasting prime reliable/backed-up-/offsite storage. Project is archived to offline media.
5. Now the project is not online, people that worked on it are gone, and managers that worked with it don't want to remember. After another few years people barely even remember it existed.
6. What's happened to the code? It literally is sitting on physical media gathering cobwebs.
-Malloc
Re:It Gathers Cobwebs Till Nobody Left Remembers I (Score:3, Interesting)
This jives with what I've seen. Although I'll add the additional, final step:
7. Someone decides to clean out that closet full of accumulated crap, asks everyone if they know what the "FooBar_02" project was all about, and hearing nothing, throws it away.
If it's stored on hard drives, tapes, or other reusable media, somebody might at this point grab them out of the trash for re-use at home, but if not they just go to the landfill with the rest of the garbage.
Maybe at some point in the future, archaeologist
Sloppy Code Bad for Company Reputation (Score:2, Informative)
I imagine that if you saw into the heart of your typical code developed entirely for internal use (i.e. not for distribution without being compiled first), you would find only rot, stink, and generally a very scary place. You don't want your clients seeing that stuff.
Corporate Asset (Score:5, Informative)
Not stellar news (nor surprising), but the one pseudo-official response I have ever actually seen. And it does make sense, to me at least.
Re:Corporate Asset (Score:4, Insightful)
One, access to the code (source, libraries, decompilable libraries, whatever) for a fully functional MMO would be a huge leg-up for competitors attempting to enter the field.
Given some of the in-house code bases out there, it seems just as likely to me that releasing it could sink competitors as they spent months trying to turn a giant WTF-bomb into something that they could actually work on.
My business rule of thumb is that application code bases generally have zero or negative cash value unless they come with the people who wrote them. I'm sure there are some exceptions. But over and over I've seen people take on code bases that had no continuity of personnel, and it seems like they always spend more time rummaging and fixing than it would have taken just to write things again from scratch.
Parent
Not just code, what about... (Score:2)
I often wonder how great it would be for new (or smaller, or hobbyist, or cash-starved, or early in SDLC, or whatever) developers if more companies open-sourced these assets.
Who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
Code is easier and more fun to write than it is to read. The first hurdle in front of this magical "re-usable resource" is that no one even wants to take the time to read it and decide if it's any good; the natural inclination is to write your own.
Secondly, programmers are just as crowd-driven as anyone else; re-using code from a failed project is swimming upstream, just like writing code in an unpopular language.
Third strike -- potential legal encumbrance. On the off chance that your project is successful, who know who might come out of the woodwork with a potential claim against it? Look at the SCO Linux lawsuit; even if the claims against your project are totally bogus, they'll still suck years out of your life.
Based on my experience... (Score:3, Interesting)
Freespace 2 (Score:5, Interesting)
Beyond The Red Line [game-warden.com] (BSG conversion with Newtonian physics)
Blue Planet [hard-light.net]
The Procyon Insurgency [hard-light.net]
The Babylon Project [hard-light.net] (Babylon 5 conversion)
It is deservedly buried? (Score:5, Insightful)
People who don't write code seem to think that it's like a made thing, which, once made, has some level of intrinsic value. This is not true. Poor code can have actual negative value (it can even be destructive to a company). Even good code which solves the wrong problems can be a huge hindrance. Failed projects and companies seldom fail simply because they were technically excellent. [I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I am saying that it doesn't happen all that often, and it's often impossible to divorce code from its context.]
I still get requests to open-source a package I wrote 18 years ago for an OS which hasn't existed for 10 years. I wrote the original version of the package while I was a fulltime college student, in the two months before finals. I certainly went on to put another 3 or 6 months of fulltime work (spread over years) into improving it, so there's certainly some value I put into it. I don't think requesters really understand me when I suggest that if they were REALLY capable of using my code as a starting point, they would easily be capable of simply starting from scratch. There's maybe 10% of the code which really has value, but anyone talented enough to be able to pick that 10% out and repurpose it would probably have no desire to do so. I know that if I were tasked with solving the same problem, I'd just start over.
file it away (Score:2)
It's practically forgoten (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to work in four different companies. From my experience, the code will be forgotten for good.
As a first, software products are typically poorly documented. Typically, some documentation is written *after* the project. If project has failed, the chances are that even post-mortem documentation would never be written. Without documentation, there are small chances that someone will be able to use the code.
Technologically speaking, code reusability is generally very low. Except if it is some framework (which by default means that it is for reuse), sometimes even small changes in business logic may lead to significant changes in code (if it affects some assumptions that are made early in project). Different project would probably require too much change.
Even if the same programmer needs to be swapped to the new project, very few code will be taken to it. But he will transfer his experience, which is not a small asset.
I will give you one small example. I had to write a TCP stack simulator. I was contracted to write a TCP over ATM simulation. My plan was to give a code as GPL after the release (no legal problems there). Project started very well, with nice OOP architecture and everything. As project went further, I noticed some errors in design, but it was too late to change them. The closer we were to the deadline, there was more and more bad code inserted. Not that there were many bugs, but it was not that elegant as it was in the beginning. Finally, no matter that simulation worked quite ok, I was not that impressed by idea to give it to the public. Simply, code was in a need of a refactoring; documentation was almost non-existant; I had no time or motif to work on any more.
That project was a success, but would there be any real benefit of giving that code to someone else to use it? Now imagine if that was a failed project - same thing but with bugs and without any results. Who would ever like to use that?
Places like this, if they're lucky (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.oldsoftware.com/old_parts.html [oldsoftware.com]
I don't know how one can run a business selling junk like this, but all those old CD's wind up at the bottom of the food chain.
Of course, you may need to broaden the term 'failure' to include 'shipped, but failed to sell'.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Right, but even Larry Ellison can't buy every software company out there.