At 06:44 12/4/01 -0700, Craig R. McClanahan wrote:
>> >Gump doesn't solve these problems. Peter Donald has outsmarted it.
>>
>> I haven't outsmarted it. I solved the problem that was presented. You have
>> failed to pose any other problem that would make me adjust my position - I
>> want low cost of entry.
>>
>> Have a look at all the projects under apache umbrella. Now rate the
>> activity of each project excluding people who get paid to directly work on
>> products. Now correlate this with cost of entry (of which jars in CVS is a
>> factor). Excluding ant for the moment what do you see? ... Which ones have
>> more community behind them? Which ones store binaries in CVS?
Coincidence?? ;)
>>
>
>This paragraph begs for multiple responses, from different viewpoints (not
>necessarily building on each other):
>
>* How are you measuring "activity"?
developers rather than users. Community is sustained/defined by developers
rather than users.
> I would guess from your statement
> that you are talking about developers doing commits
not just commits, any communication - code, questions, patches whatever.
> By that measure, I would submit
> that Tomcat is far and away the most active Jakarta project, followed by
> Ant, followed by Struts, followed by everything else. (Check download
> counts and -USER list subscriptions and activity for corroborating
> evidence).
Thats interesting - I would have assumed ant is downloaded more frequently.
Is there an apache page that lists hits by category/month - or do I resort
to grep/sort/wc ;)
>* There seems to be a theory that only people who build from source can
> contribute patches and enhancements. That is not borne out by
> experience on the projects I'm involved in, because the source code is
> there for examination anyway -- very large percentages of patches come
> from people who are just looking at the "src" directory included with
> the binary distributions.
I haven't seen evidence of this in any of the projects I am involved in -
not sure.
>* Your exclusion of "people who get paid to directly work on products"
> in measuring activity doesn't sit well with me. Is my contribution to
> Tomcat *illegitimate* because I'm paid to do it?
The fact of the matter is you would contribute to it even if you had to
pass the 12 heculean tests of power, jump tall buildings at lunch and beat
deep blue on your breaks ... why ? It's your job. Most of the rest of the
community does not have that privlidge. Putting obstacles in their way is
one way of reducing the possibility of a community ever developing outside
those paid to do work.
>* Finally, to show that I can be just as elitist :-), I'd say that being
> able to build something like Tomcat from sources (by following the
> directions included in the README) is a pretty good first level filter
> for people worthy of being committers in the future :-).
It's not about understanding directions - it is about work.
Cheers,
Pete
*-----------------------------------------------------*
| "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, |
| and proving that there is no need to do so - almost |
| everyone gets busy on the proof." |
| - John Kenneth Galbraith |
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