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Definitive statements are easy to pick apart, but I think he's basically correct. Pretty much all the open source we use are made by a tiny handful of people. I
by sonnyblarney 8y ago
Definitive statements are easy to pick apart, but I think he's basically correct. Pretty much all the open source we use are made by a tiny handful of people. It makes sense because most software works this way anyhow, and when there are large groups involved it takes intense coordination.
The more existential question is: are those 'peripheral' additions critical? Because maybe that 'last mile' is superfluos, i.e. minor bugs and 'nice to have' features, but it's possible they are key contributions.
It's possible that the 'key contributors' are like 'managers' or 'curators' of the project, bringing in the work of others, making decisions about it, possibly borrowing ideas from the community and 'implementing it themselves'.
- ghaff 8y agoYes. And a lot of projects these days emphasize "casual contributors" who work on small external modules, documentation, management (which, as you suggest, isn't explicitly factored into the stats), etc. As the piece suggests, it may be wrong to view open source through a lens of free, happy, and democratic community contributions but it would be equally wrong to say that it's just like proprietary software development.
- trumped 8y ago> It makes sense because most software works this way anyhow What does that mean?
- prepend 8y agoIt means most software projects are actually written by small teams of under 10. When you don’t count all the project staff, testing, operations, user support, etc. Softwareis typically just lots of small components linked together. Especially super generalizable stuff like popular open source.