OSS Experience

This post will be on my review on a Java-based Open Source System. My overview is based on the Three Prime Directives which are:

Prime Directive 1. The system successfully accomplishes a useful task.
Prime Directive 2. An external user can sucessfully install and use the system.
Prime Directive 3. An external developer can successfully understand and enhance the system.

Overview

The open source package I chose to evaluate for use for my software engineering course is java2HTML. This package can be downloaded at http://sourceforge.net/projects/java2html/.
The objective of this application is to provide a simple-to-use tool which converts Java Source Code into a colourized and browsable HTML representation.


Prime Directive 1

This package successful meets the Prime Directive 1 by accomplishing the task of converting Java Source Code into an easily readable HTML code which can be uploaded as a simple method for none HTML/CSS coders to share code they have developed on the web.


Prime Directive 2

This package meets Prime Directive 2 as it can be successfully installed as a stand alone application without task more complex then setting the proper directories.


Prime Directive 3

The package meets Prime Directive 3 as an external developer can successful understand and enhance the system with basic Java knowledge up to the point of being able to ulitize a jar file.

The package does provide sufficent documentation to utilize all of its functions without reading any of its code.