

Ask HN: When is your side project 'production-ready'? - paulbjensen

I had a call with someone who wants to use a tool I built in their profession (medical). They asked me if the application was production-ready. I was confident in saying yes (the app has been running in production for months, and has tests at unit, functional, and integration levels), but I pondered if I could call it production-ready based on that.<p>How would you deem your side project as production-ready, especially when used in a mission-critical environment?<p>PS - The project in question is Dashku: https://github.com/Anephenix/dashku (also hosted at https://dashku.com)
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fencepost
You should make it very clear to the person asking that while you've been
using it in non-mission-critical production scenarios for some time, it is
still an incomplete and actively developed project with changes and fix bugs
on a regular basis and that you provide no warranty or guarantee of fitness
for any particular purpose (this is in the MIT license that you're using, but
you don't want to promise anything beyond what's in the license which is "we
promise nothing.").

Basically, Dashku is "incorporate at your own risk" software, with the
additional note that the hosted version is absolutely not for mission-critical
use, that it may become unavailable at any time for any reason and for any
duration.

Basically, you want to be sure you're shielded from someone in a "sue
everyone!" mindset coming after you just because you wrote a piece of software
that was later incorporated into someone else's package where you have no
control over how they use it, whether they apply bug fixes, whether they make
changes, etc.

There's a reason that an awful lot of commercial software EULAs out there
include language specifically referring to the software not being suitable for
mission-critical, failure-critical, medical, etc. purposes.

~~~
paulbjensen
Thanks for your advice. I didn't realise that commercial software EULA's had
clauses for things like that. I guess it means that there is a market for, or
should be commercial support for the app.

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bennyg
Have you had a lot of people that aren't you try to break the living hell out
of it? Especially those not familiar with the usual workflow? Especially those
that take pride in destroying things?

If it can pass that, and you're confident going forward from there, then I
would think it's ready.

~~~
paulbjensen
In terms of traffic, lots of individuals have tried it, but in terms of trying
to make it break, no. That is a great idea, thanks for the suggestion.

~~~
bennyg
No problem. A couple buddies and I take turns trying to wreak havoc on each
other's software when it comes time to ship. It's quite fun and very good for
ensuring interface and codebase stability.

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logn
You might want to fix the readme link to the MIT license, as it's broken. Why
not paste in the full text? They have that warning about no liability and no
warranty which might be really important for you.

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codenesium
Just fyi that the screenshot on the github page has the word 'nigga' on there
from someones comment.

~~~
paulbjensen
Ah, Thanks for pointing that out. I'll scrub the word out from the screenshot.

