starting to worry about open source code

[dilletante]

sure, if you don't have data on a conversion rate for a particular currency, it's probably fine to silently assume it trades with the euro at 1:1, instead of throwing an error. it's just money, right? people don't get very picky about money.

Comments

[chienne_folle]

Wow. What a mistake to make!

What was the currency in question?

[dilletante]

the currency? bitcoin. but from looking at the code i was complaining about (the default currency conversion module that ships with virtuemart, a reasonably successful open-source shopping cart), the behavior i described is the deliberately-programmed default for any case of a currency that isn't in the data provided by the source (an xml file published by the european central bank).

i don't think this is the right default.

[moominmolly]

Simply amazing.

[ceo]

That's going to have kind of unfortunate results in the case of, say, yen.

[dilletante]

yen is unfortunate for the seller, bitcoin is unfortunate for the buyer. in neither case is it a good idea!

though i suppose with btc the sale just won't go through when the buyer says "that's not right." whereas with yen you'll have lots of sales as every prospective buyer says "hey, i'll take 100!"

yen is of course covered by the database. maybe zimbabwean dollars...

[twoeleven]

you're just starting to worry?

[justinjs]

The difference here between open source code and closed code is of course that with the open source code it is possible for a concerned observer like yourself to discover such problems.

[dilletante]

well, it's easy to discover the problems without looking at the code. the difference with open source code is the urge to write "you lie like a rug!" after every comment block.

[darxus]

Ack. You reported the bug, right?