Software Solutions Section - Special Rules

Clarification on the board rules as they apply to the Software Solutions area

Several behaviors are not acceptable in the software solutions area.

The following are off topic and may be infracted as such under rules 1 & 2:

• Responding to help requests with unsolicited suggestions of other programming languages, environments, or IDEs.
• Implying or stating that someone else's chosen laguage, envoronement, or IDE is inferior
• Requesting to be paid for help.

The following have long been prohibited under rule 5:

• Asking for copies of non-freeware non-open-source software.
• Asking for proprietary code.
• Posting code you are unwilling to share.

It is fine to:

• offer to pay for help. It is fine to respond to such requests.
• to ask for commentary on specific software, and to suggest alternatives if it's clear alternatives are in scope of the discussion.
• to discuss the merits and flaws of specific languages, environments and IDEs.
• to post bug reports on traveller related software
• to point out known incompatibilities of specific environments when in scope.

Some ethics - Not binding, but suggested

• If you use code someone else posted, they should be credited in the project and product.
• If you want to suggest alternatives to a language, environment, or IDE that someone is asking for help with, do so in a separate thread.
• If you don't know the language, environment, or IDE, make it clear when offering suggestions.