[OSGeo-Discuss] scale of FOSS projects

[Landon Blake]

Jo,

 

You wrote: " I really enjoyed the recent discussion here about
non-developers contributions to open source projects and communities.
Writing documentation and tutorials and maintaining translations, in
particular. That code-jockey primacy attitude is potentially alienating
to people wanting to contribute this kind of hard work."

 

It is interesting that you bring this up. Almost all of our
documentation and translation work at OpenJUMP is done by
non-programmers active in the community. In fact, I even take care of
commiting updated translation files to the SVN for one of these users.

 

Without these efforts, we might not ever get anything documented. :]

 

You wrote: " At least Autodesk, for example, saw this and made bona fide
effort to "build community", rather than dropping millions of lines of
undocumented, hard-to-configure code onto the net, hoping an imaginary
"open source community" would sprinkle pixie dust onto it, as Sun did at
first - as if the time and goodwill of potential contributors were
inexhaustible."

 

Excellent point. It takes more than pixie dust to build a healthy
community around an open source software project.

 

Landon

 

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of jo at frot.org
Sent: Friday, May 09, 2008 7:27 AM
To: punkish at eidesis.org; OSGeo Discussions
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] scale of FOSS projects

 

On Thu, May 08, 2008 at 05:14:40PM -0500, P Kishor wrote:

> On 5/8/08, Schuyler Erle <schuyler at nocat.net> wrote:

> >  is that the number-one sine-qua-non of *any* potentially successful

> >  software project is *shipping working code*.

 

> >  Until a developer does that, the discussion of whether or not
his/her

> >  project needs or deserves institutional/organizational support

 

That is not what this discussion is about, though. (And the point

seems self-evident, given this is a discussion about open source

software projects, defined by having working code "in the wild")

 

> Steve Coast (OSM) echoed the same sentiment very elegantly -- "Real

> artists ship. For everyone else, there is wanking."

> After a short hesitation, I have really come to appreciate it. Yup,

> unless there is working code, everything else -- sponsorships,

> organization, standards, committees, mailing lists -- is pointless.

 

I really enjoyed the recent discussion here about non-developers

contributions to open source projects and communities. Writing

documentation and tutorials and maintaining translations, in

particular. That code-jockey primacy attitude is potentially alienating 

to people wanting to contribute this kind of hard work. 

 

For many it is easy to write software. There is a lot of code out there,

a lot of abandon-ware, projects that are "free" by a legal definition

but with none of the supporting infrastructure that helps them to get

used and to acquire a client base. 

 

At least Autodesk, for example, saw this and made bona fide effort to

"build community", rather than dropping millions of lines of

undocumented, hard-to-configure code onto the net, hoping an imaginary

"open source community" would sprinkle pixie dust onto it, as Sun did

at first - as if the time and goodwill of potential contributors were

inexhaustible.

 

There is this cultural pressure on "standards" to be marketing tools.

Because of the government and military context for GIS, this pressure

is particularly intense for us. It starts to loop back on itself

somewhat like this, http://frot.org/on_standards/statements.html 

 

This does have a countereffect on innovation in software and it also

probably does prevent "bona fide" standards developing in a natural way.

As well as creating this terrific and largely justified backlash

against some of the in-a-vacuum work done by OGC, ISO. (GeoDRM anyone)

 

However the process of working things out by rough consensus and running
code 

takes longer, business process says, "first to market -> "natural
monopoly|

de facto standard". 

 

It is unfortunate, because proper interoperability can be such a force
for

good - cf MetaCRS, and the future time and hassle that is going to be
saved

for many people, once the inevitable initial round of talking is done.

 

I know, this argument has gone round and round in the past, and many

are impatient with philosophising. I hope that philosophising can

sometimes provide energysaving insight, or i wouldnt engage in it. But

repeating "without code, you are nothing" grates on the nerves after a
while.

 

 

jo

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