Posted on news:comp.object on 2002-12-08 - Jean-Marc Vanel
I can say like M.L. King : "I had a dream". Currently most free software is not reusable Object Oriented libraries or frameworks. It is often developped in C, or when it is in Java or C++, in most cases it is stand-alone applications, not directly suitable for re-use. Even when it consists in libraries, there is generally no UML documentation. And even when it has UML documentation, it is only images, not reusable designs.
Those of you who care for both Free Software and Object Oriented Software, don't you think it's time to change that?
It is time to leverage on existing freeware tools, like ArgoUML, Poseidon, Umbrello, Unimodeler, etc. It is quite easy to document existing projects using these tools, and publish on Internet reusable XMI files, alongside with the ordinary documentation. XMI is the OMG file format for UML diagrams and Models; it is XML. It allows to exchange UML designs between differents tools and different programming languages. Free Software is based on source code; it is a paradox that source code is not enough exploitable as such. It is to-day mostly machine-readable, not enough human exploitable. It is only when the sources will be easily reusable that the whole potential of Free Software will be unleashed.
Think of the number of combinations between 40000 reusable designs! This is the number of projects currently in freshmeat.net . We don't need right now a central repository site (although it would be nice!), we need XMI files. Lots of them! Design Patterns, business designs, generic reusable designs like Web portals, Content and Knowledge Management, Groupware, etc. The Web can be our repository, just need to search "Foundation.Core.ModelElement.name" . If you have some reusable XMI material under GPL license (even if very simple), please let me know, and I'll hyperlink them on my site.