Former MS Employees Explore OSS

Roberto Andressi writes "A few former Microsoft employees have launched a Web site that evaluates open-source projects. The site is intended as a way for first-time OSS users to 'get their feet wet' before diving into the large community of open source projects out there. The site, Ohloh, will provide background information on a prospective project. The folks behind the site even plan to include a lexicon of terms for very new users. " From the article: "'We collect from the infrastructure the open-source community uses to develop the software,' Ohloh co-founder and CEO Scott Collison told CNET News.com. 'It also serves as an open-source directory. You can find open-source projects and compare them, and gradually find one that's right for you.' The site could appeal to developers who are frustrated by the number of open-source projects that lack clear explanations. Ohloh also seeks to help developers make a build vs. buy decision by offering code analysis, said Collison, who along with co-founder Jason Allen, previously worked at Microsoft."

Bill got em...

Thanks slashdot.. Here I try to visit the site and see what it's all about, but it's obvious that Microsoft saw this news before me and has already squashed the site.. What a way to start a Monday...

Why link to ZDNET Asia?

This link is much faster (that is if you are in the USA, of course): Web site that evaluates open-source projects [zdnet.com].

Re:Why link to ZDNET Asia?

The big problem with a lot of OSS project sites is the lack of basic information about what the software even *IS*. A lot of open source project sites feature build information, lists of patch fixes, etc. on their main page--all without ever explaining the basic info that people (esp. non-technical people) need to know. The are so into explaining the "how" of the software that they negelect to explain the "what" and "for who."

The lack of documentation on OSS projects is bad enough without having to spend an hour just trying to figure out what the software even DOES.

-Eric

Re:Why link to ZDNET Asia?

It's ironic (considering this new site) that Microsoft has plenty to say about what their software is but lack in useful documentation. It's literally the opposite of OSS. Microsoft provides pleny of marketing to make sure everyone knows what they offer, yet for the technical they offer little help.

Re:Why link to ZDNET Asia?

That's not really true. I use sourceforge a lot, for instance, and use their search. That narrows it down a bit, but then you want to make sure the software is right for you. The little synopsis doesn't provide enough detail. So I go to the project's home page, and I'm at a loss to tell you what the program actually does or what platforms it runs on; all I know is it has something to do with the something that I was looking for. Sure, sourceforge can narrow it down some, but it's not always accurate - and it doesn't really let you know that the Windows version differs from the Linux version which differs from the MacOS version...

Sure, you can usually find out what you need to know if you do enough digging, but the home page of a project, I'd think, should be almost like a brochure. If people are really involved with the project and don't want or need to see that sort of thing, they can link directly to the nightly builds or release notes or something. I just don't think the home page of a project should be the release notes.

I know a lot of open source programmers have a "take it or leave it mentality", because they've done it for free on their own time and to their own specifications... and that's fine, but you'd think they'd want to give potential new users an idea of whether or not the application fills their need. Even though you don't cry if someone decides not to use your work, it's still better to have more users than few users if you want your project to have any relevence in the long run... after all, if you've worked that hard on a project and release it for free for everyone to use, it's usually because you want other people to use it.

Re:Why link to ZDNET Asia?

The big problem with a lot of OSS project sites is the lack of basic information about what the software even *IS*.

Hence sites like freshmeat.net [slashdot.org] - my first port of call if I know the kind of application I want, but not which one (or even what the available options are.)

Maybe I'm getting cynical, this has the distinct smell of astroturf. How "Ohloh" can you go?

A reminder for all companies

Treat your employees well. They will still be around for a long time after they leave your company (unless, of course, your company is the mafia)

Term that they should have added

Slashdotted

This is what happens to a site when Slashdot links to it on their front page.

The irony of course is that no one would be able to read it when a Slashdotting occurs...

Not to be outdone...

Larry Ellison has announced a new web site where he evaluates the benefits of PostgresQL and DB2! ;)

-a.d.-

Open Theft

In related news, the start of a new project at Microsoft to figure out exactly how much code needs to be changed to patent OSS ideas and inline them into Vista. The lawyers say 80% of the comments need to be altered. The QA testers say 51% more bugs need to be added. And the developers say that you just need to change all the names of the variables, make pointers to everything you can, and cut-n-paste inline assembler code before the linker kicks in.

As Ackbar would say:

"It's a trap"

Only kidding, I am sure that a Microsoft employee could turn from the darkside. (I think thats enough starware references for this week)

Is this any different to any other open source sites out there - is it especially for windows users. (if not, I am not sure of the reference to an ex-microsoft employee)

Re:As Ackbar would say:

It's very slow, but I have managed to look at a couple of pages on the site.

There's a line or so of information about each project (e.g. for Apache Ant it says "Apache Ant is a Java-based build tool", which is not very helpful). And then there's an estimate of the total cost of the project, based on an estimate of the number of man-years that have gone into the code, costed at $55k per man-year.

WTF is that all about? Are these people perhaps trying to suggest that open-source software is valuable, and that its developers should charge for it?

Years of work

That is interesting. But what I'd really like to know is how they determined the time. I've never seen an OSS project which publishes how many hours of work when into writing it. It must be pure speculation. Since they're targeting the OSS illiterate too many people are going to believe these made-up numbers.

Newbies guide to opensource

Gettin' your feet wet' before diving into the large community of open source.

Step 1:

All Open source projects have weird name like "Ohloh"

Redemption

"Scott Collison!" I exclaimed. "But.. you left Microsoft!"

"Collison?" He appeared pensive. "Yes... That's what they used to call me. Scott Collison. That was my name." He smiled.

"Scott..?" I asked, confused.

"I am Collison the White," he proclaimed, with a twinkle in his eye. "And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide."

I wonder why ...

I'm having a hard time with this. I get the feeling this is a case of "If we (i.e., M$ employees) build it, they will come." Since ohloh has been slashdotted, I cannot tell if this is just a freshmeat knockoff (with a little sourceforge and krugle thrown in).

The site is intended as a way for first-time OSS users to 'get their feet wet' before diving into the large community of open source projects out there.

I got as far the frontpage (hehe), and I think newbies will be afraid to stick their feet in much less dive-in.

Sorry, but I may not be seeing clearly through these suspicious eyes of mine. If so, my apologies to the ohloh folks. Also, welcome and aloha.

The Oh in Ohloh

Well, when you leave M$, might as well go do what you want...

New terms...

The folks behind the site even plan to include a lexicon of terms for very new users. Do they mean terms like: security, robustness, community, help, freedom.....?

it's a typo

Oh-noh!!

del.icio.us clone

Looks like a market targeted version of del.icio.us to me. Which in itself is not a abd thing as the tagging metaphor works quite well for this type of application. It will be interesting to see if this project has any success.

SIgn me up!

I'm most excited about a central place that does code reveiw of open-source projects. That's really a tedious process when you're wading around in sourceforge trying to find a shared lib for your project. Usually you can tell by the level of polish applied to the project's website how organized the code will be, but I'm certain some well-engineered software gets passed over if this is your only criteria for quality. Someone designing an open-source product shouldn't need to design a flashy website to promote it.

If there were a comprehensive site I could visit that had evaluated (albeit briefly) some of these packages, that could be a big time-saver.

Ohloh?

I would have thought these former Microsofties would have named the site "Ohnoh", pronounced with an appropriate amount of dismay.

--Rob

Freshmeat

It's hard to tell since their server's cactus, but it looks like it's imitating http://freshmeat.net/ [freshmeat.net] (Disclaimer: another part of the nefarious OSTG network). Freshmeat is;

• "searchable by project name or keyword, results in a list of suggested software."
• "has a profile, beginning with a brief synopsis of what the software does."
• "lists the licenses held for the open-source project, as well as a link to the full text of each license."
• "offers information such as when the project was started, how many developers are actively working on it"
• "the languages it uses"
• "links to the project's home page"
• "a breakdown of current activities"
• etc

and has done for donkey's years. These guys have learned MS techniques well...

ho | Ho

Reverse the name to get the true meaning:

Ohloh -> ho | Ho

Ex MS employees "helping" FOSS with a project called "ho | HO" (backwards)? Do I need to polish my tinfoil hat, or is that suspicious?

Opportunity cost

I think that the most interesting piece of the story has been missed. Ohloh is looking to create a paid service that will assess proprietary software for organizations. Combined with their open-source project DB, I see them building a set of tools that would enable IT managers to assess the relative costs & risks of different solutions far more easily. I would be looking for two developments to make this a reality. First, Ohloh would need to create an estimator of risk for each project based on the available data (a 'risk score'). Second, they would need a way to estimate the cost of customizing existing solutions (open-source & commercial). If they get both of these, they could provide a standardized, risk-adjusted measure of the opportunity cost associated with each development/deployment option. Really hope they are heading this way.

Many important projects missing.

I couldn't find OSS staples of Java development: Tomcat, Hibernate, Rhino, Spring, Xerces, Xalan, JSON, Jakarta Commons, etc. I wonder by what criteria projects were initially included.

where is the evil?

i can *smell* the evil, but i can't see it yet.

Propietary cost

Did you noticed how they estimate what it would cost to develop this software if it was propietary?

Because I don't remember seeing that anywhere else

Overheard at Ohloh...

CEO: Good news guys, the web devs have completed the search facility and our website will go live next week.
Lowly Ex-MS Employee: So what domain name have we chosen?
CEO: Good question, I'll let our CTO answer that one.
CTO: ahem, well as some of you know, we registered ohloh.org, ohloh.com & ohloh.net through "Proxy" registrars before the final decision was made. In the conference call with Bill we had last week we made our decision.
Lowly Ex-MS Employee: and?
CTO: Well the decision was made that "ohloh.org" would be ditched... it's simply to difficult to masquerade as a .org organisation - after all, we clearly want to profit from OSS some way or another. The .com address, well we decided that it should re-direct to the .net address. For Marketing purposes we will use the .net address as it is sufficiently vague as whether it is a profiteering company of open source ideals or an open source organisation without profit aspirations.
CEO: I think you'll all agree that this is an ingenious idea.

ohloh.net whois entry [godaddy.com]
ohloh.com whois entry [godaddy.com]
ohloh.org whois entry [dnsstuff.com]

Will this be useful?

I did a simple search on the site to see how it performed. The results are interesting, but I'm not so sure about the utility of this system.

Search entry

First of all, the searches are very simple. I can only enter a topic to search for. I cannot restrict the search by language, environment, license, or platform. Grouping of search terms does not seem to be possible. Searching for project management software returned results for volume and database management as well as project management.

Search Ordering

There does not seem to be any ordering in the results. The ordering does not seem to be alphabetical, by activity, by language, or by relevance. When 200 entries are returned at approximately 24 per page, some ordering would be nice. Only a dedicated searcher would move past the first three or four pages.

Individual Results

There are a lot of problems with the entry for a particular software package. Here are a few (in no particular order.

• Advertisements are mixed with content and have no distinctive styling
• Start date is not given - only a statement that the project was started n years ago
• Code costs are interesting, and how they computed it is anyone's guess
• Developer activity graph means that most people delete and add the same number of lines?
• Code contribution graph means that most people delete and add same amount of code?
• There is no mention concerning the last update of the package
• The home page for the project is at the bottom of the web page in small type
• Factoids are inconsistent. A potential licensing conflict in one project is not mentioned in another project with the same licensing issue.

Comparison

Labeling software as abandoned is not positive or informative. For example, one software project was labeled abandoned even though the developer considered the project ready for production.

Here are some other issues.

• The summary information is not sorted in any meaningful way.
• Advertisements are interspersed with content but have no clearly differentiating style
• The graphs are confusing.

Summary

The site is still beta. However, there are a lot of issues that make this site less than useful. These issues are.

• Poor search definition
• Unordered results
• Undifferentiated page layout which makes key information difficult to find
• Home page of a project at the bottom of an entry
• Comparison metrics are not useful

Interesting math in their metrics

http://www.ohloh.net/opensource/software/coppermin e [ohloh.net]

Project Started 2 years ago
Active Developers 2
Codebase 189,002 LOC
Effort (est.) 49 Man Years

2 x 2 = 49. Hmmm.

MS & Open Source fit well

It's a good thing that stakeholders of MS and open source are finding how they can coexist. In addition to site like Ohloh.net and CodePlex, there are more emerging open source applications for the .NET platform. To avoid IP issues, a BSD license may be preferred by the MS crowd, and is featured in applications such as DotNetNuke [dotnetnuke.com] and ListRing [listring.com]. The idea that it is MS versus open source as a whole is simply not valid as more for-profit organizations get into the mix. It is simply a matter of finding which approaches to open source fit best.

two other sites already

I think some folks are already doing this, and not just Freshmeat either as some of the previous postings have said. (1) See Alex Boxworth's Swik [swik.net], which is a wiki about Open Source software projects. (2) Also see Business Readiness Rating [openbrr.org] which is a framework for evaluating open source software.