Caveat Concerning Software from the OSDI Symposium
It is crucial to realize that most of the software
available through here is not anywhere close to
production quality, and is not expected to be! It is research
code. The majority of the authors have graciously responded
to the program committee's request to make their code available, and
their work should not be criticized for lack of documentation, packaging,
elegance, efficiency, or most other measures of quality.
There are four and occasionally five reasons to make this
code available:
- Makes it more feasible for other researchers to extend,
replicate, or disprove the results.
- Helps others understand what was done (hopefully!).
- Enables assessment of the complexity of the implementation, typically
ignored in most papers, which
is crucial to the work's practical applicability.
- May help others actually produce production software.
- In a few cases, the code might be production quality already and
usable more or less "as is."
Therefore, do not pay attention to the quality of the code,
which frequently was never intended to be publicly distributed,
but examine it for other reasons.
Karin Petersen and Willy Zwaenepoel, Program Co-Chairs
February, 1997