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Re: [LUG] The sustainability of open source project development

 

On Sun, 10 Oct 2010 18:35:10 +0100
John Horne <john.horne@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Sat, 2010-10-09 at 20:39 +0100, tom brough wrote:
> >
> > Putting a Managerial hat on for one moment (yuk) I could
> > understand how nervous management would be to take a product that
> > looked like it was not being developed or moved on.
> >
> Agreed. I was asked by one of our managers a few weeks ago to look at
> an (open-source) project to see if it would do what they wanted, and
> if it was 'alive'. He didn't want something that had no support, and
> wasn't being used or maintained by anyone.

In ManagementSpeak:

Past experience is no guarantee of future performance.

I would venture that these are the same people who have tracker
mortgages and index-linked pensions, so the phrase should be instantly
familiar to those management types.

Even if a person or group are active today, nobody can guarantee
that this happy condition will remain in place tomorrow.

> (A simple look at the mailing list archives for 'users' and
> 'developers' seemed to indicate that it certainly was used by others,
> and was actively/currently maintained by a team of people. I reported
> back as such, and they will look into it further.)

Real life has a habit of calling time on any "under-a-bus" situations
and if people take the same attitude with this as is often seen with
the insurance risk assessments in local government re conker trees, it
is their own fault for not understanding the word *volunteer*.

(The "bus-problem" is shorthand for all those areas where there is a
single person amongst a group upon whom everything and everyone
actually relies and who then goes under a bus or whatever. The size of
the group is no insurance from the "bus-effect" - it is much more a
factor of group complexity, flexibility and redundancy.)

Hundreds of thousands of people rely on volunteers worldwide (think
charities) and paying people a salary is not a sure way to ensure
productivity either.

There are no simple measures suitable for a simple-minded audit of
these things. Education is the key. Deal with the complexity because
your understanding will ensure the provision you desire.

Risk aversion must be balanced by the benefits of exploration and
progress - or there would not be any satellites in orbit and no man-made
relics on the moon.

-- 


Neil Williams
=============
http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
http://e-mail.is-not-s.ms/

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