Open Source project management is still project management.
Many, many closed source projects fail because of bad management, so it shouldn’t be shocking that many, many open source projects fail because of bad management as well.
You just don’t see the leftovers of the closed source ones.
Open source, by it’s very nature, has to leave it’s corpse laying around when it dies.
There are a boatload of new-gen open source tools nowadays. http://launchpad.net/ is amazing compared with the dark days of CVS and a listserv. It’s basically an open source project management workflow system, with integrated source control and bug tracking. But the workflow is the key thing there, as it sets up a loose set of project management tools – because that’s the key problem that kills most open source projects. Combined with the nature of a distributed vcs – that any individual hacker can branch the code, and have their own branches hosted on launchpad beside everyone elses – is a huge, huge step forward.
Things are getting better, so stop with the hand wringing.
Jeff,
Whenever you discuss open source you make it sound like good programmers should be drawn to open source projects like moths are drawn to light. Open source is a great concept and I’ve contributed a few things over the years, but donating time to programming projects is out of reach of most people who have families to support (and spend time with).
The other issue you seem to have overlooked about OpenOffice and other open source projects is the 80/20 rule. When a programmer has gotten his code to the point where most things function correctly (he’s proven it can be done), going the final mile and fixing all of the bugs usually requires someone very dedicated to the project or $$$$$$$.
Going back to the subject. I think the problem with OSS and paid software is similar to differences between scripting languages and compiled languages.
OSS is free and if you want you can hire people to fix it. But is it cheaper to hire people or to but the software and support? How is it similar to scripting and compiled languages? It may take you longer to write software with compiled language but do you actually save the time? Using scripting language requires more testing than using compiled language.
Lower participation in a large open source project may be an indicator of a much larger trend: lower interest and participation in programming in general.
Ever since programming was commoditized and market was flooded with programmers with road-side training, earning a decent living with coding became a bit more challenging.
Since I do not live in my parent’s basement, I have to spend considerable amount of time working (billable time) and networking (with potential clients).
Rest of the time is dedicated to my family. Open source is a great idea but since it came closer to a concept of working for free (as in commoditized), it’s appeal suffered as well.
You can argue that this view is completely wrong but consider that even the loudest proponents of open source contribute relatively little (except for their blog posts about open source).
Healthy open source projects, such as FreeBSD and Mach, have not only support in the community but also in the industry.
OpenOffice looks cool but it is really not necessary. If you want a free word processor, Google Docs will probably work. If you are serious about writing, you probably own a Mac which has iWork. Similarly, you can get MS Office for next to nothing (when bundled) with a PC.
`Josh: incidentally, the Ubuntu Developer Week (which has just ended yesterday) is focused on teaching newcomers, using IRC. You can find the logs at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDeveloperWeek . But I agree that there’s still need for much better tutorials to guide a newcomer’s first steps.
Yeah, i’ve been using google docs just fine… it works decently well to read .doc files, and you can convert them reasonably to pdf’s with that… and edit everything online with it.
Otherwise, i’d just use latex and some wysiwug latex editor.
I have visited America once and I was really amazed that a supermarket employee puts your bought goods in your bags.
The amount (gallons) and different kinds of ice cream are really amazing too. And the vegetables are kept wet with little showers. When you hear ‘I’m singing in the rain’ a little shower starts and wets cabbages.
Steve-O on January 23, 2009 11:12 AM touched on what could be the real issue here. Maybe Open Office is good enough. I appreciate this may sound like heresy to software engineers, but the idea that people need to buy a new word-processor every three years has been invented to keep the money rolling in. Open source doesn’t need to play that game.
if anything those lines took longer than the two open clerk-served registers.
True, self service lines at Walmart do take longer than they do at places like Target. It’s the clientele. Unfortunately, the majority of people in my area that shop at Walmart are the lowest of the low. They can’t figure out how to open an automatic door let alone how to use an automated checkout machine.
It pains me to watch the countless fatties at Walmart lean on the scale wondering why the system is asking them to please remove the big honkin’ half side of beef that they must have forgotten to scan.
Sorry to be so mean, that literally just happened to me yesterday. The lady in front of me was about 300lbs, yacking on her cell phone, and too stupid to realize that she was supporting herself by leaning on the scale. Ridiculous!
OOo is a failure because the concept of word processing is stupid.
Everyone is buzzing MVC (rails/django/catalyst/symfony…) and no one ever thinks of the stupidity of mixing style / presentation / processing in a single application.
Computer power is amazing and typography rules are still poorly respected even though they ensure a better readability. Fonts are poorly drawn, and printing of a doc varies greatly from computer to computer. Word processor is the obvious shame of computer science because it has never and willl never do properly what it is designed for ! It is the shame of UI, because it gives a misleading feeling of comfort with the pityfull What You See Is What You Get while it should ensure that you will get what you MEAN.
That is the reason why I am coming back to latex. It might not be sexy, but
You want to use it because its cheaper, pass some of that saving on at the till and maybe I’ll consider it. until then I’ll use the staffed checkouts. if there is no benefit to me I’d rather pay the same amount and provide employment for someone.
plus never yet found one that just worked a problem on a staffed checkout may be a problem, but it isn’t my problem.
only time I tried to use one it got to the point the watcher said I needed to start again since it had voided the whole list. told them no thanks and walked out. until they have my card details, not my stock, not my problem.
also abandoned a trolley or three at a local supermarket when its packed like a zoo with only 25% of the checkouts open. sorry my time is worth more than the few quid I’ll save there, got the bits I actually needed (as opposed to wanted) from a local shop on my way home. net effect? the amount spend on food that week halved and I still had decent food
as for open office, well running OSX if I want to use the legit version of office 2003 pro I have I can always fire up a virtual machine, generally use open office though. good for basic document editing. needs to be 100% compatible with macros though
The most irritating experience in open-source is when you submit a patch for a bug, and the patch gets rejected because the project’s administrators don’t think the bug really exists (or for other, political reasons). This happened when I submitted a patch to fix a SIGSEGV bug in Cscope. To this day, Cscope (except my personal copy) crashes if it reads a source file that contains a NUL byte.
I’d be careful of reading too much into Michael Meeks’s analysis. When you realize he’s working on a a href=http://planet.go-oo.org/fork/a of the OO.org project, you understand that he’s trying to write a eulogy for OO.org. Numbers on Go-oo are surprisingly absent.
Jeff, the fact that you completely mangled his end quote completely undermines your creditability here. He didn’t link to openoffice.org, but to the fork his group started in response to a perception. This adds an entirely different nuance to the analogy.
When the self-service station at the Sun supermarket was too slow and crappy, they started their own store using the blueprints with the city.
This is the epitome of the supermarket chain mentality. The technology in the picture looks like it should be out of a 1970s PARC promotional shot. It’s a touchscreen, one-armed bandit coin counter and some scales. What are they smuggling underneath the conveyor belt? Gold bullion?!
These self-service things don’t scale either, at least they can’t until the manufacturers start combining the three separate machines inside them into something, oh I don’t know, the size of a PC. Then you could have more than two of them in a 1000-customer-capacity supermarket.