ODT Today
Danyl Strype <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.org.user-groups.linux.dunedin.general |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <CAHE=x=mCzJvy4ET+XkoP6QbLzgrd6CqOTeH5zM=s_usZFLOobA@mail.gmail.com> |
Kia ora koutou On 16 April 2014 10:13, Thomi Richards <[email protected]> wrote: >> The argument that open source software makes all bugs shallow is fine in practise, but unless you have a considerable amount of attention on your code it's rare that this actually works out (in my experience, anyway). << Benjamin Mako Hill gave an excellent presentation at LibrePlanet on this and related topics, called 'When Free Software Isn't Better': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er1pM9suxvE Thomi: >> By my count, there are 42 individuals with at least one commit in openssl. Robin: > That's not really a good metric though, as getting a single patch or two isn't a sign that you're doing more than fixing that one thing that bothers you. In the past twelve months, five people have had ten or more commits, and only three have more than ten. I think that's possibly a better way of looking at active development for something that's bigger (usage-wise) than a personal/small project. < This reminds me of another good talk given at TED by Clay Shirky, on 'Institutions vs. Collaboration': https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_collaboration Shirky graphs the edits on Wikipedia, and commits on a major free code projects, and in both cases of 'crowdsourcing', about half the total work is done by regular contributors (the 3-5 people in the OpenSSL example), while the other half is done by people "fixing that one thing that bothers you" (the other 37-39 people committing code). It would be interesting to know if "Shirky's Law" (to coin a phrase) holds in the case of OpenSSL. Hei kōnā S -- Daniel Strypey Bruce Community Developer Disintermedia.net.nz/strype "Geeks are those who partake in our culture." - .ISOcrates "Voting... is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge is, of course, giving your opinion to a pollster, who will get a version of it through a dessicated question, and then will submerge it in a Niagra of similar opinions, and convert them into - what else? - another piece of news. Thus, we have here a great loop of impotence: The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing." - Neil Postman, 'Amusing Ourselves To Death' _______________________________________________ DunLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ethernal.org/listinfo/dunlug DunLUG Wiki - http://dunlug.kallisti.net.nz/