TheOpenAnalyst » Code Contribution http://www.theopenanalyst.com Open Source | Open Principles | Open World Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:51:48 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.1 en hourly 1 Cracking the open-source community code for drive-by developers http://www.theopenanalyst.com/102/cracking-the-open-source-community-code-for-drive-by-developers/ http://www.theopenanalyst.com/102/cracking-the-open-source-community-code-for-drive-by-developers/#comments Sat, 13 Sep 2008 02:36:00 +0000 TheOpenAnalyst http://www.theopenanalyst.com/cracking-the-open-source-community-code-for-drive-by-developers/ Jack Repenning, CTO of Collabnet, takes issue with my complaint that contributing code to open-source projects is hard. Jack’s suggestion that “while community membership requires more than ‘casual contribution,’ you shouldn’t have to ‘become a key member’” in order to play a part is fair and spot-on. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really tackle the big issue.

Most would-be open-source contributors don’t have time to become anything more than casual contributors. This means that the vast majority of potential open-source contributions remain in their silos and never make it back into the common code pool.

Cracking the open-source community code for drive-by developers | The Open Road – CNET News

]]> http://www.theopenanalyst.com/102/cracking-the-open-source-community-code-for-drive-by-developers/feed/ 0 Contributing to open source is not as easy as it looks http://www.theopenanalyst.com/106/google-and-wii-for-me/ http://www.theopenanalyst.com/106/google-and-wii-for-me/#comments Sat, 13 Sep 2008 02:36:00 +0000 TheOpenAnalyst http://www.theopenanalyst.com/google-and-wii-for-me/ Giving code back to an open-source community can be like giving a gift when you don’t know the cultural rules: There’s always a chance your basket of code won’t be accepted. At the same time, fresh open-source projects can wither on the vine if not properly tended. Therefore, it is prudent for enterprise developers to set a clear path, both in and out, for code of all kinds.

Peter Vescuso, senior vice president of marketing and business development at Black Duck, said, “First, you have to get a handle on your own internal requirements uses. What kind of policies are you going to have internally around use and giving back?”

Contributing to open source is not as easy as it looks – SD Times On The Web

]]> http://www.theopenanalyst.com/106/google-and-wii-for-me/feed/ 0 The difficulty inherent in managing an open-source community http://www.theopenanalyst.com/112/the-difficulty-inherent-in-managing-an-open-source-community/ http://www.theopenanalyst.com/112/the-difficulty-inherent-in-managing-an-open-source-community/#comments Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:36:00 +0000 TheOpenAnalyst http://www.theopenanalyst.com/the-difficulty-inherent-in-managing-an-open-source-community/ I’ve heard the open-source search engine, Simplexo, come up twice in conversation this week, and so was interested to dig a deeper into what Simplexo offers. My own company, Alfresco, has worked with Lucene, another open-source search engine, for the past few years and has been both pleased and disappointed with its capabilities, but I’ve been particularly frustrated by how hard it is to contribute code to Lucene.

The Alfresco development team has put Lucene into serious production, and has found a range of areas in which it falls down. To remedy this, our development team has made a wide range of improvements and fixes to the Lucene code. At one time the team tried repeatedly to contribute the code back to the Lucene project, only to have it fall on deaf ears.

The difficulty inherent in managing an open-source community | The Open Road – CNET News

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