[OSGeo-Discuss] Open Source development metrics

Wed May 28 15:09:16 PDT 2008

Landon,

on the other hand, following that logic, if forking is advisable, it will keep on growing, with new forks, new forks-of-the-fork, and so on. The energy needed to keep all that project "forkhood" somehow synchronized is not only honest, but discouraging and efectiveless.

I don't see neither how a user can simply make a proper decission among a fork-hood. Not everybody is expert enough to understand differences, or has enough time to download several forks and compare them (continously in time).

Are really all the differences among forks impossible to reconcile, using that 'honest effort'? ;-)

Miguel

________________________________

De: discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org en nombre de Landon Blake
Enviado el: mié 28/05/2008 16:27
Para: OSGeo Discussions
Asunto: RE: [OSGeo-Discuss] Open Source development metrics

Bruce,

I agree with Puneet. In this scenario it would make more sense for the organization to maintain their own fork of the code to which improvements can be made. This really doesn't cause problems for the parent of the fork as long as there is an established process and some honest effort made to integrate the best of the improvements back into the parent code base.

This is actually how OpenJUMP works. There are only a handful of developers that actually work on the parent code base. Most of our contributors maintain their own fork, but siphon back improvements to the parent.

Landon

________________________________

From: discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Bruce.Bannerman at dpi.vic.gov.au
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 12:00 AM
To: discuss at lists.osgeo.org
Cc: Aust-NZ OSGeo
Subject: [OSGeo-Discuss] Open Source development metrics

IMO: 

An issue has come up recently on the OSGeo-AustNZ list that I'd appreciate some feedback from our wider OSGeo Community. 

The context of this issue is that we are exploring ways to support development of the GeoNetwork ANZLIC Profile. 

In particular, we're looking at options that allow permanent staff to contribute to ongoing OS development work outside of normal Project based development with its well defined deliverables and timeframes. 

In Australia within the public sector and also in many larger private organisations there is a Human Resources process in place that is based on Performance Management. This process allows either staff or managers to initiate discussions that allow for goal based work to be undertaken. 

In principal both parties agree to a set of goals. If the goals are met, it contributes to the employee's remuneration review.

What I'm trying to find are some examples of generic metrics that are meaninful to Open Source development methodologies. They must be 
specific, meaningful and measurable. 

For example, we could look at measures such as: 

"Get feature X accepted into the trunk of GeoNetwork by June 2009" 

However this is probably unrealistic  as to do this the developer will have to have existing credibility within the community and there may be good reasons why the community does not want to have 'product X' included. 

Does anyone have any examples that they use or thoughts on the above? 

I do understand that metrics can be abused, may be meaningless and may not be the best way to handle this, however we have to start somewhere. 

We have a window of opportunity to get some more developers working on OS projects as the Performance Planning cycle re-starts shortly and I'd like to help our developers get some constructive ideas to take into their sessions.  

Bruce Bannerman

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