[gdal-dev] (article) social organization of the open source R project

[Michael Sumner]

Hello,

I thought this article would be of interest to the gdal-dev community:

See page 5, "Aspects of the Social Organization and Trajectory of the
R Project".

http://journal.r-project.org/archive/2009-2/RJournal_2009-2.pdf

In particular I found this interesting:

"Many open-source projects, such as the Linux operating system, have
strongly hierarchical structures, and some, such as Perl, revolve
around a central individual. . . . Although I haven’t formally
surveyed the many existing open source projects, the R Project is
apparently unusual in its flat formal organization of independent
volunteers. This structure has attracted a remarkably talented and
competent group of individuals, but, as I will argue later in this
aper, it poses challenges for moving the R Project forward."

Regards, Mike.