Hi Louis, the comparison with Linux kernel and Chromium is a bit off:
Microsoft, Google and Samsung, as well as most Linux distros, Intel, various hardware companies etc. all contribute to the Linux kernel. In 2012/2013, there have been 3700 contributors and quite a few are even paid, by at least 200 companies... http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/09/google-and-samsung-soar-into-list-of-top-10-linux-contributors/ http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/04/16/linux-kernel-development-numbers/ Thousands of lines of code get added to Linux kernel each day. The average contribute writes roughly 10 000 lines of code. In the least "contributed" Linux version, "only" 400 people helped. The same question for Chromium: https://www.quora.com/How-much-of-chromium-is-developed-not-by-google - There were 42 Google people working on Chrome in 2008, more now - Nobody answers the question about other contribs on quora.com - File http://src.chromium.org/svn/trunk/src/AUTHORS has 480 lines Now compare that with FreeDOS: - http://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/svn/HEAD/tree/kernel/trunk/ has no committed changes after 2012, but Jeremy probably has a few things on his harddisk which he has not yet uploaded - http://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/svn/HEAD/tree/kernel/trunk/docs/contrib.txt lists circa 30 people who have worked on the FreeDOS kernel, over a period of roughly 20 years (first activity: 1993/1995, first non-patv CVS commits in 1999, slowly adding helpers...) So yes, you could have steering groups, voting, reviews and so on in theory. But in reality, you can be lucky to have any two digit number of developers :-) Even non-zero can be tricky ;-) For example, in kernel patches, the habit here was the people would discuss patches on the mailing list and then one of the few experienced kernel programmers would apply those for them. With sufficient experience, people could also get write access to the source code themselves. Patches were also sent by email triggers immediately on commit to another special mailing list. In more active times, there were a handful of experienced kernel connaisseurs thinking about incoming bug reports together. Maybe there even were 10 general FreeDOS programmers who would comment on particularily interesting kernel topics. But not 500 or 3700. Now that the kernel mostly "just works", very little development is going on. This holds for most components of FreeDOS: They are sufficient replacements of their MS DOS counterparts, and as you know, MS DOS development stopped circa 22 years ago. So there is no push towards new changes there. HOWEVER, there still is more and more modern hardware. People keep an eye on that and even a small group of low level programming experts write new drivers. This is one area where FreeDOS is still a bit active. There also is the area of packaging, distro and installers. And of course a place to add interesting new software to non-BASE sections of our distro always is waiting for new contributions :-) Regards, Eric > There's lots about this discussion that dismays me. But alas, I'll > focus on making this better. I suggest we look to other open source > projects for guidance and examples of successful processes. I'd throw > Linux Kernel and Chromium as examples of modern collaborative > workflows. Each assigns Code Reviewers/Approvers for various > specialty areas. On Linux, lines are drawn by CPU architecture, or > File System, or Scheduler, or Driver, etc. On Chromium, similarly, > CPU arch, JS Standard Libs, OS, etc. In this way, a contributor sends > a patch (or a pull request since both use git) to the appropriate > Approver for Review by attaching the code to a Bug Report or Issue. > If the patch is a Approved, then the Approver sends it up the chain > for integration into the mainline. On Chromium, there's usually > multiple Approvers per area. > How I see this working for FreeDOS, you assign Approvers for the > Kernel, BASE, UTIL, etc. Say, in BASE, there's FreeCOM, which is > super important, so it could have its own Approvers. > > Just a thought. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dive into the World of Parallel Programming. The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
