Can Third Party C++ Libraries Be Trusted?

[zb0S216C]

What are your thoughts?

Third party libraries for C++:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Third_Party_Libraries

[filipe]

For most interesting things you'll want to do with any language, you'll need one or more third party libraries. Without them, you'll just be reinventing the wheel over and over, instead of solving your own unsolved problems. So not only they can be trusted (the good ones, of course), they're also essential to a huge variety of programming tasks.

PS: so Second Life has a Second Wikipedia? What's the point?

[jsmith]

I recognize most of the libraries on that page. The amount of trust you can put in them is proportional to the number of users of the library. For most of those, I'd say the user count is fairly high. But good heavens... boost 1.32???? That is only 13 versions behind the current version, not including a couple of point releases of some versions in between.

[moorecm]

3rd party libraries offer some benefits that are hard to ignore. Particularly the more stable ones (and those with huge user-bases). Who wouldn't want free updates/bug fixes, better testing, and peer-reviews? Application code is easier (cheaper) to maintain.

For stability, one of my previous employers had a tendency to "clone and own." Meaning they would check in a specific version of the library and maintain it in-house from that point on. This approach is less than satisfactory in the long-term.

[chrisname]

If it's open source then it is almost certainly trustworthy. And if you're suspicious, well, you can audit it yourself. I don't trust closed-source libraries _at all_ except for ones provided by "reputable" companies like Microsoft. I don't trust Microsoft but I trust them not to put malicious code in software running on their own OS.

[firedraco]

PS: so Second Life has a Second Wikipedia? What's the point?

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Anime_and_manga_characters_with_superhuman_strength

Yeah...