I was project coordinator for Fit (but not the creator—that was Ward Cunningham). Ward and I made the decision to shut it down together. Happy to answer any questions people might have.

I fell in love with that framework back in the 00s so much that I bought the book, but pragmatically unless the domain expert is willing to write the tests, or specify requirements, it's a non-starter. I also think that Cucumber and its derivatives are the modern version of Fitnesse, but suffer from the same "requirements aren't Agile" problem for sure

Also, it took an inordinate number of clicks to find the modern source code, which has an unusual license: https://github.com/unclebob/fitnesse/blob/master/LICENSE.txt ("Common Public License Version 1.0"); a cursory search seems to imply it's the precursor to the Eclipse Public License, but I still can't recall the last time I saw CPL in use

That’s the FitNesse source code, which is built on top of Fit. Fit is licensed under the GPL. You can find it at fit.c2.com.

Edit: The source code was hosted at SourceForge, which looks like it may not be a thing any more. I’m on mobile and can’t easily check. If anybody’s interested, I should be able to dig up the source code for the C# version at least. The Java version was the original, but I’m not sure if I still have that one.

COBOL was designed to help BAs write code. Kinda.

Fit/Fitnesse/Cuke were designed to help them write tests. But only sorta.

What we really need is a framework for them to do UX . . . just kidding!

Let's just keep BAs (or PMs or POs or . . .) far away from any code. We can do that and still be "agile" and involve them. right?

I think it's great. Fit keeps them safely in Excel land and they are able to specify the tests but not necessarily write the framework.

Cucumber is getting them into a form of programming and that gets wacky. It seems too specialized.

I've tried FitNesse professionally. I think it comes short in many regards.

To be clear, I think integrated/integration tests in their own only add value if you have a couple of them (meaning <5).

Otherwise, they're red and no one knows why. And they take a whole lot of time to execute.

JBRainsberger has an nice talk on them [1].

Pactflow have implemented a Contract/Collaboration framework called Pact [2]. I haven't used it professionally but I love the concept.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDfX44fZoMc

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U05q0zJsKsU