Open Source Developed by Individuals, Not Large Groups

AlainRoy writes "A new article was just published in First Monday, which suggests that most open source projects have rather few developers." He excerpts from the study, done by Sandeep Krishnamurthy: "Based on a study of the top 100 mature products on Sourceforge...most OSS programs are developed by individuals, rather than communities. The median number of developers in the 100 projects I looked at was 4 and the mode was 1."

first post

[hummassa]

I think the problem with the study is the use of SourceForge as the source :) for the data.

no pun intended?

FP, anyway...?

...but...

[FortKnox]

How many projects were BASED on other open source projects?

Isn't that more of the point?

Re:How does this rationalize "More Eyeballs"

[Anonymous Coward]

If something is useful and Used, then more and more eyes start looking over it. If it is not heavily used, then it withers. Basically, the eyes will go to where the heaviest use is. Which is the way it should be.

Re:Not Surprising

[John Hasler]

"I can see where a large OSS project could get unwieldy really quickly with 100's of hobby developers scattered across the globe. As the number of "free" developers involved goes up, I'm sure the number of problems skyrockets."

I guess that's why Debian is a total failure.

Count Accuracy

[fidget42]

I do some work on FlightGear and the number of people contributing to that Open Source project is greater than the number that SF shows. I know that when I submit changes, I send them to one of the people on the SF list and they commit the changes. I would venture a guess that many programs are like this.

Re:And isn't it amazing...

[Mr_Silver]

...that the OSS always seems to turn out better than commercial software?

(emphasis mine)

Always? Why is it that when everyone says this they can only quote about 3 or 4 projects?

Just because Apache is better than IIS doesn't mean that every commercial product is inferior to the OSS version.

Please don't delude yourself. The majority of the time commercial stuff is better than OSS because they have the time and resources to get people working on it.

I still find OpenOffice poorer than MS Office, GIMP poorer than Photoshop and so on.

Yes there are exceptions (such as Apache) but generally OSS is of a slightly poorer quality than commercial - but more than makes up for it by the fact that it's free and doesn't come with restrictive licencing agreements.

Explains a lot

[Anonymous Coward]

This very nicely explains why OSS projects as a general rule aren't as usable and polished as most commercial programs. Whether the self-described "hackers" thorughout the OSS community like to admit it or not, making truly usable software is very difficult and very time consuming. Itty bitty projects just don't have enough people to add new functions, fix bugs, write docs (assuming they write any at all, that is), and also concentrate on usability.

Re:Mythical Man Month

[xphase]

I currently work on a project that is CMM Level 4 rated, and we will be going for Level 5 next year. Our software is not what you would call widely used(not for consumers, but for Govt.). The main thing that using the CMM model does for us is in finding software defects.

With the number of reviews and the incremental development lifecycle, we catch most of our bugs way before the software is shipped to the customer. This is a very good thing, because the software is not very easy to upgrade or patch once in the field.

If our customer suddenly asks us to use an older version of the software to test certain features on hardware(An older version which has no extra code, so testing the hardware is easier), we can go and get the exact version that was shipped, apply any necessary fixes, and deliver in almost no time.

The main thing that CMM forces you to use is a process. Everything is based on processes. How to build the software, how to report a defect, how to note the fix in the CM database, how to keep track of versions, how to ship, etc. Everytime you do anything you follow the process. It's annoying at times, but it allows everything to be repeated exactly. By optimizing the process we can "speed" up development time(our ship dates are known years in advance, so it just means that we make deadlines). It also means that when customers are looking for a company to provide them with a solution, they see that if we have created successful projects in the past, then we probably will be able to repeat the success on a new project.

I think that some things in the CMM are very good, but I also don't see them as being able to apply very well to the open source world, primarily because it requires large amounts of time to make sure the processes are correct, time that developers don't want to spend(Thank goodness for managers).

YMMV,
xPhase

Re:Not a good place to look

[unconfused1]

Exactly!

And the article also seems to go out of its way to make some unfounded slams too. Such as:

"The median number of project administrators was 1. In fact, the largest number of developers in a project was 42 - a far cry from the high numbers reported previously."

Previously to what? Where is the link to the previous report or findings?

"Others have pointed out that Torvalds essentially did not have a life and spent considerable number of hours rewriting code submissions by others."

If he enjoyed what he was doing, who are they to say he didn't have a life?

I would personally say that my own meager involvement with Sourceforge has been to learn by experiencing at least some of the open-source collaboration. I'm glad it is there, regardless of this apparent negative press about open-source developers numbers.