Updates from April, 2007 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Roberto Galoppini 8:33 am on April 11, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Jobs: open positions at ENST, a French Institute located in Paris 

    At ENST, a French engineering school and research institute located in Paris, France, we currently have two internship proposals to work on XWiki, a Free Software wiki. European candidates may apply. Interns will receive 800€/month. Contact me if you need more information.

    We also have fixed-term positions available (up to 18 months) on similar subjects (working on XWiki). Net income will be around 2000€/month. Do not hesitate to contact me if you are an European citizen and want to apply.

    Read the full post.

     
  • Roberto Galoppini 10:36 pm on April 10, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Community-based production: do they need a roadmap? The Debian case 

    The Debian Project yesterday announced the release of “etch”, the last version of Debian.
    The press release reported that it took 21 months of development to create this release. Whether you consider contributing to Debian a work or a joy, it would be interesting to know how much would have cost to develop “etch” from scratch.

    roadmapRoadmap by Pinocure

    Being based exclusively on volunteer contributions, Debian can’t grant the availability of all packages included in the previous version, as results from “Evolution of Volunteer Participation in Libre Software Projects: Evidence from Debian“. Packages maintained by volunteers who left the project become unmaintained (“orphaned”) and the probability that an orphaned package gets adopted by other maintainers is not 1.

    [..] maintainers who left Debian between July 1996 and December 2004 were responsible for 33.5% of the packages in 2.0, 67.5% of these packages can still be found in 3.0.

    The Constitution itself can’t help much when a volunteer decide to exit and no one is willing to take care of his or her tasks. It is worth to notice that within an hybrid production model paid employees are often responsible for less attractive tasks, as results from “GNOME, a case of open source global software development“:

    Paid employees are usually responsible for the following tasks: project de- sign and coordination, testing, documentation, and bug fix- ing. These tasks are usually less attractive to volunteers. By taking care of them, the paid employees make sure that the development of GNOME continues at a steady pace.

    Corporate production has to be on Time on Budget. The firm solves the problem of finding the efficient management of human resources through time not allowing the free entry and exit, and delegating production control to a manager.

    Community-based production on the contrary allows volunteers to enter and choose their tasks. Volunteers choosing what to do apply for tasks they like, and that they are likely to accomplish effectively. They can also freely exit from a project though, or not to end their tasks on time.

    How open source firms will approach the hybrid production model? Whatever is your guess, read the following (old) excerpt from the Debian Weekly News – December 2nd, 2003:

    Debian Roadmap? The project was asked if there was a roadmap for the Debian distribution, so that certification can be organised accordingly. Ben Collins pointed out that Debian hardly has release goals and Jonathan Dowland added that a smaller group of loose-knit volunteers has managed to agree on a roadmap.

    Technorati Tags: Debian, Coordination costs, Hierarchy, hybrid production model

     
    • Martin Michlmayr 2:42 pm on May 10, 2007 Permalink

      I believe roadmaps are gaining importance in free software development too. IMHO this is related to increased complexity found in many successful projects (both in terms of the size of the development community and the code base itself), which requires a higher degree of planning than in the past. For example, shortly after Debian 4.0 was released, the release managers contacted the maintainers of every large software package in Debian (e.g. the Linux kernel, KDE and GNOME) to obtain more information about the release plans of these projects. This information will be used to create a release plan for Debian. Furthermore, during the development cycle of Debian 4.0, release goals were defined in a much better way than this was done in the past. There was also a split into release blockers and release goals to make it clearer which work is absolutely needed before a release can be made.

      In summary, I don’t believe the absence of plans is something inherent with free software development. I believe there will be more planning as more projects gain considerable complexity and size, and to some extent we can see that already.

    • Roberto Galoppini 5:06 pm on May 13, 2007 Permalink

      Martin thank you to join the conversation. I agree with you, the absence of plans is not inherent with free software development.

      You mentioned GNOME and other projects where paid developers are on duty for unsexy tasks. Do you believe that the hybrid production model might be the third way?

      This way we might get the best of both world, but harmonizing contributions is not straightforward, though.

    • Martin Michlmayr 12:47 pm on May 30, 2007 Permalink

      There’s certainly a trend towards hybrid models, even though they are (or may be) associated with certain problems too. There’s a fairly good paper about the issue of control in the Netbeans community. The question there is who is actually in charge of the project – community or a company (Sun in this case).

      Reference:

      Jensen, Chris and Scacchi, Walt: Collaboration, Leadership, Control, and Conflict Negotiation in the Netbeans.org Community

    • Roberto Galoppini 3:07 pm on June 2, 2007 Permalink

      Thank you Martin, I didn’t read that paper before.

      The way a corporate actor open the development process to others can deeply affect results. Looking at Eclipse vs Netbeans popularity I wonder at which extent it is to be related to the way IBM and Sun backed their respective projects.

  • Roberto Galoppini 7:33 am on April 2, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Production: Time-based release management 

    Martin Michlmayr, a well known Debian developer and formerly Debian Project Leader, is completing his doctoral thesis at the University of Cambridge with a thesis entitled “Quality Improvement in Volunteer Free, and Open Source Projects: Exploring the Impact of Release Management“.

    Time Time by gastronauten

    I happened to know about his thesis reading an article on linux.com, and I saw also Matt Asay posted on the subject, so over the weekend I took my chance to read it.

    First I wish to public thank Martin to mention our paper “Capability Coordination in Modular Organization: Voluntary FS/OSS Production and the Case of Debian GNU/Linux“. He cited our findings talking about release management in volunteer teams and also about problem of organization when a coordination effort is required to accomplish complex goals.

    I totally agree with him when he states that the ‘release when it’s ready’ policy might heavily affects large (complex) projects, because:

    It can lead to delays, out-of-date software, and frustration, and it also means that users and vendors cannot plan, because nobody knows when the software will actually be released.

    I remember Mark Brewer, Covalent CEO, saying that, even if Covalent has about 40 software engineers involved with Apache, they can’t assure that a feature will be available at a certain date. He also did similar considerations talking about road-map’s decisions. No wonder though, that is the way it is when it comes to community-driven Open Source projects.

    Getting back to Martin research his abstract reports:

    This dissertation explores why, and under which circumstances, the time based release strategy is a viable alternative to feature-driven development and discusses factors that influence a successful implementation of this release strategy. It is argued that this release strategy acts as a coordination mechanism in large volunteer projects that are geographically dispersed. The time based release strategy allows a more controlled development and release process in projects which have little control of their contributors and therefore contributes to the quality of the output.

    I read some chapters of the paper, and I was impressed by the quality and the depth of his studies. I believe that the introduction of time based releases leads to a more controlled development, positively affecting the resulting overall quality. In his words:

    [..] the time based release strategy can be considered as an important means of quality improvement in FOSS projects.

    Kudos to Martin to honestly have highlighted that there are problems in Open Source projects, he also stressed the importance of Regularity and the Use of schedule. As a matter of fact the use of schedule claims a project management function (release manager), reducing somehow the degree of independence among contributors. Our research in this respect stated that:

    [..] a pure modular structure – that is one lacking of hierarchy, such as a market – embeds flexibility, but it lacks coherence, the ability to coevolve after adapting to change.(cfr. Langlois Richard “Do firm plan?” 1995)

    A hierarchy is a must, then, when you need to manage a complex activity coordinating many contributors, either volunteers or employees. Martin makes clear that policies and infrastructures are needed to support his release strategy.

    Reading the paragraph “Limitations and Future Research” I would suggest another question:

    Introducing time-based release management could move developers’ focus from software’s effectiveness to meeting release targets? How to balance the trade-off between time and quality?

    Technorati Tags: Open Source, Modularity, Hierarchy, Coordination costs

     
    • Simon 11:22 am on April 28, 2007 Permalink

      How to balance the trade-off between time and quality?

      I think this is the key question.

      GNOME has happily released versions with key features missing because they weren’t ready in time. This just isn’t viable for a commercial provider of desktops, who would then have to cover for the “failure” of the open source model, probably by not shipping that version of GNOME in their desktops.

      Ubuntu similarly has shipped releases with major holes in them, again something that the proprietary world would not do, because it would slow adoption, and defeat the commercial point of a release.

      Sure clearer time tables, and clearer planning may be good for organizing the work, but ultimately deadlines will go whoosh, if the work isn’t done, and that is how it needs to be if people depend on the product finally delivered.

    • Roberto Galoppini 7:29 pm on May 1, 2007 Permalink

      Simon,

      I totally agree with you, at the end of the day time-based release management can address few issues indeed, but it is not a panacea.

      In another post I mentioned that within an hybrid production model paid employees are often responsible for less attractive tasks, as results from “GNOME, a case of open source global software development”, also by Martin.

      Corporate production has to be on Time on Budget. The firm solves the problem of finding the efficient management of human resources through time not allowing the free entry and exit, and delegating production control to a manager.

      Community-based production on the contrary allows volunteers to enter and choose their tasks. Volunteers choosing what to do apply for tasks they like, and that they are likely to accomplish effectively. They can also freely exit from a project though, or not to end their tasks on time.

      Do you agree?

    • Jon 3:58 pm on March 3, 2008 Permalink

      I don’t see why dropping features to hit a target is necessarily a hallmark of F/OSS process failure. Consider Microsoft pulling WinFS from Vista.

      The company I work for will not consider using Debian for any server because of the lack of any kind of predictable release cycle. Indeed, having a commitment to (say) 12 month release periods, and missing that commitment, would be better than none at all.

  • Roberto Galoppini 1:56 pm on March 31, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Marketplace: SourceForge’s Long Tail and Blueprints 

    Savio Rodriguez in response to my post about the post about the SourceForge’s initiative, said that, being SourceForge the place where to look for if interested in OSS products, the idea of making a marketplace out of it sounds quite natural. Rodriguez addressed also other interesting issues.

    For emerging projects or for projects with a small development team/community, a majority of the 144,548 projects on SF (i.e. Longtail projects), getting included in the Marketplace would make a lot of sense. [..]
    Experience tells me that customers are cautious when it comes to spending money. When they do, they want to spend with vendors that have a strong future. So, for longtail projects on SF, I’m not sure that the SF Marketplace will change much of this customer behaviour.

    I just received SourceForge Update: 2007-03-30 Edition email, and in the top 25 projects’ list there is about no trace of large projects who already have support & services business attached. I know that is not easy to turn a user in a customer, but many are downloading packages that do need some work to be setup in a working environment.

    Blueprint Blueprint by sweetsexything

    Alex Fletcher commenting Savio’s post come out with some examples of the diversity of use cases for open source, showing how an open source package can be a key component within customized solutions, regardless if are developed in house or otherwise.

    Commenting the examples Alex wrote:

    The associated process involved much more than downloading and running an executable version, but did not entail the purchase of a commercial version or indemnification protection from a vendor. [..] This is exactly what needs to be standardized for open source products across the board.

    I do totally agree, but the construction of open implementation standards could be highly expensive. SMEs, creating and supporting most of the commercial open source products in the “long tail” are not going to do that, because too busy with daily activities. In this respect the previously mentioned Observatory of European SMEs finded that:

    Small firms have a short-term perspective and expect quick and concrete results.

    Could eventually SF help them to get paid to produce vertical, clear, good blueprints?

    Technorati Tags: Commercial Open Source, SourceForge, Marketplace, blueprint

     
  • Roberto Galoppini 6:27 pm on March 27, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Marketplace: SourceForge Marketplace about to launch 

    I just received an email from Sourceforge.net team, advising me about a new feature to buy or sell services for Commercial Open Source on SourceForge.net.

    forging Forging by stefmaxwell

    Dear SourceForge.net community member,

    As an active participant in the Open Source community, you may be excited to learn about a new feature that we will add to SourceForge.net in late
    spring/early summer. This feature will allow you to buy or sell services for Open Source software on SourceForge.net.

    Interested? Follow the link below and we’ll keep you updated as we move towards the official launch of this feature:

    https://ostg.wufoo.com/forms/marketplace-interest-list/

    Thank you for your continued support,
    The SourceForge.net Team

    Sourceforge’s marketplace apparently will be soon released, and I believe it is great time to, and no one is in the position to do it effectively as they are.

    They also opened a position for a Senior Marketing Manager, SourceForge.net Marketplace in Fremont, California. In the meanwhile they invite all SourceForge users to fill in a simple form, a sort of marketplace interest list.

    VA Linux’s quarterly report contains many forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. The software segment, focusing on SourceForge Enterprise Edition products and services, despite the increase in the number of customers, is of little importance nowadays, being less than 10% of the last quarterly results. It worth to notice that sales were primarily to customers located in US.

    Considering that their network of web sites serves more than 30 million unique visitors monthly I believe that they can easily open up new markets acting as the mediator.

    I wish them best of luck in the near future!

    Technorati Tags: SourceForge, Commercial Open Source, Marketplace

     
    • Andrew 1:49 pm on July 17, 2007 Permalink

      SourceForge has been a great forum and promoter of the OpenSource community for some time. I’m excited to see them get the exposure they deserve. I hope that “marketplace” won’t become synonymous with “giant sponser-driven site full of crap”, but that doesn’t seem to be SourceForge.net’s style.

  • Roberto Galoppini 12:07 pm on March 23, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Social Networks Business models: ASmallWorld CEO’s speech 

    ASmallWorld is a private high-trust social network by invitation only, designed by its founder, Erik Wachtmeister – a former investment banker – for people already connected to each other in the (offline) world. Erik has participated at the DLD conference and the video is available.

    I recently read an Eric’s post about the event, here a short excerpt:

    Social Networks have emerged over the past 3 years as a useful tool in creating and recreating networks, and establishing new unfettered distribution channels. The original idea behind aSmallWorld was based on the need for a large group of people with similar needs, to connect, reconnect, and exchange trusted information. It was not based on creating a free-for-all where anything under the sun and on the WWW goes. What is missing in almost every other social networking site is notion of Relevance and Trust. I believed there was a need for ASW because of the enormity and chaotic nature of the unlocked beast that is the Internet. MySpace and others have been feeding this beast and indeed creating exciting new forms of entertainment. Our goal, however, has been to come up with an alternative to the chaos, with endless “noise” drowning the “signal” we are searching for when we go on line.

    There is a lot of talk about web 2.0 and recently web 3.0. Web 2.0 is about connecting people with people and data, not WebPages. Web 3.0 is about connecting people with meaningful people and data. In that vein, aSmallWorld is all about filtering out information overload, spammers, scammers, stalkers, and irrelevant and unfiltered data that makes up 99% of what is out there. Add to this our over 100,000 trusted experts who can make our little world the most trusted place to go to online.

    I see a clear trade-off between unattended and open communities, like Orkut, and deeply controlled and closed communities like asw. I believe Eric is right saying that there was a need for communities like asw, just wondering if we might eventually see communities with an high level of trust democratically controlled by its own members..

    Technorati Tags: Social Networks, asw, DLD

     
    • Heidi P. Trabert 7:08 pm on May 6, 2007 Permalink

      Are you a member of asw? Or would you like to be one? And why?

    • Roberto Galoppini 8:39 pm on May 6, 2007 Permalink

      Yes Heidi, I am a member of asw. I believe that social networks like that, with an high level of trust are a viable tool. As a matter of fact I got useful travel tips, business contacts and I also met few interesting people.

      Does it answer your question?

    • Mirande 9:09 pm on June 3, 2007 Permalink

      Hi,

      My name is Mirande. I am an ex-model and also an attorney who has authored a number of publications. I run a group called Models (Women of Beauty and Substance). The group is geared toward attracting and promoting women with broad and diverse interests who can be viewed as both beauty and role models. I would love an invitation to join ASW. I believe that my group of beautiful and accomplished women would add value to the events that we frequent.

      I will gladly send you more information about me and my background if you e-mail me at mirande@modelsnyc.net. For example, all of my scholarly and professional literature is available and can be verified online.

      Mirande

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