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Linux kernel, Rails, pretty much any high profile open source project is fully distributed, yet them maintain code quality that is world class relative to most

by aantix 10y ago

Linux kernel, Rails, pretty much any high profile open source project is fully distributed, yet them maintain code quality that is world class relative to most private projects?

taway_1212 10y ago
I'm guessing in case of these projects you get lots of high caliber, motivated volunteers. In case of a startup you just have a couple people, and they would probably rather hack on the Linux kernel as well rather than on the founder's technically mundane app :)
- watwut 10y ago
  That is basically saying that startups employees are irresponsible and lazy :). While some are truly like that, I think that majority really is not.
watwut 10y ago
There are only few such projects, majority of open source projects do not grow big. Plenty of them simply fail or die out after a while. Not every open source project has high code quality. Also, the project lead in such project don't pay that distributed team and is not responsible for their effectivity nor turnover, hiring, promotions, salary negotiations etc. Majority of Linux kernel developers are paid for development, but they are paid by various third party organizations.
nostrademons 10y ago
Both of those are in very well-understood domains, essentially commoditizing a market that's existed for at least a decade. You can build Linux with a distributed volunteer team, because people know how to build an OS, they started out just implementing the POSIX standard, and there's a large quantity of programmers familiar with OS fundamentals and recent research. You probably could not have built, say, AT&T UNIX with a distributed team. Similarly, web programming was over a decade old when Rails was started. You could build Rails as an open-source project. You couldn't build, say, LoudCloud, or Netscape, or Google, or ViaWeb, or any of the other web 1.0 companies where the process of building webapps was not well-understood. Virtually all profits in the tech industry are made by companies with a short-term monopoly on the technology involved. By the time a problem-domain is solved well by an open-source project, by definition, there is no money in it. Ergo, teams that want to make a lot of money will work on projects where communication costs make remote work very challenging.

by aantix 10y ago

Linux kernel, Rails, pretty much any high profile open source project is fully distributed, yet them maintain code quality that is world class relative to most private projects?

taway_1212 10y ago

I'm guessing in case of these projects you get lots of high caliber, motivated volunteers. In case of a startup you just have a couple people, and they would probably rather hack on the Linux kernel as well rather than on the founder's technically mundane app :)

watwut 10y ago
That is basically saying that startups employees are irresponsible and lazy :). While some are truly like that, I think that majority really is not.

watwut 10y ago

There are only few such projects, majority of open source projects do not grow big. Plenty of them simply fail or die out after a while. Not every open source project has high code quality. Also, the project lead in such project don't pay that distributed team and is not responsible for their effectivity nor turnover, hiring, promotions, salary negotiations etc. Majority of Linux kernel developers are paid for development, but they are paid by various third party organizations.

nostrademons 10y ago

Both of those are in very well-understood domains, essentially commoditizing a market that's existed for at least a decade. You can build Linux with a distributed volunteer team, because people know how to build an OS, they started out just implementing the POSIX standard, and there's a large quantity of programmers familiar with OS fundamentals and recent research. You probably could not have built, say, AT&T UNIX with a distributed team. Similarly, web programming was over a decade old when Rails was started. You could build Rails as an open-source project. You couldn't build, say, LoudCloud, or Netscape, or Google, or ViaWeb, or any of the other web 1.0 companies where the process of building webapps was not well-understood. Virtually all profits in the tech industry are made by companies with a short-term monopoly on the technology involved. By the time a problem-domain is solved well by an open-source project, by definition, there is no money in it. Ergo, teams that want to make a lot of money will work on projects where communication costs make remote work very challenging.