[mgillett]

I just think that very much depends on the field and the problem domain. Taverna seems like it's more targeted towards academics that don't know how to code, and that most people that use it are comfortable staying within its limits. I mean, you definitely are going to have a level of project specificity that is much higher than say, that found in the web development world. In science, many people are searching for the existence of new problems, not just the answers. Why build a gem for email integration if the next best method of communication will likely come out next week? The problem with this thinking is that it perpetuates itself. I don't write the library that only you would find useful because I don't think it's worth my time. In return, I never receive anything useful because everyone else has adopted that same mindset. As some others pointed out, I think the problem rests in the lack of best practices and poor comp sci education among researchers. Teach proper library construction and test-driven philosophy, and I think you'll see a lot more people become comfortable writing and publishing libraries. Cobble together some basic documentation, keep an eye on its use, and contribute more accordingly. You're never going to escape writing custom scripts, but there are more well-defined problems out there that could use standard solutions.