5 ms·

Ohloh shows scary decline in open-source project commits

28 points by devmonk 16y ago

wingo 16y ago
NumPy: -157,525 lines of code, mostly written in Modula-2. http://www.ohloh.net/p/numpy http://www.ohloh.net/p/numpy
- amujumdar 16y ago
  That's an embarrassing error in our processing. We just acquired Ohloh and are working hard to identify all such issues and fix them. Stay tuned!
technomancy 16y ago
I suspect it has more to do with the mechanism by which commit volume is measured than the actual commits themselves. It's possible people are just moving away from verbose languages like C and Java and thus just needing to write less code, but I'm not sure I have enough faith in the human race to believe it.
- Corrado 16y ago
  Another possible reason is that as systems become more mature they require less maintenance. I know the 2 or 3 projects that I am involved with are pretty mature right now and we are mostly just fixing bugs.
shurik 16y ago
The decline is in C, dynamic languages are on the rise. May be everything that had to be written in C has already been written?
- stcredzero 16y ago
  It looks like the dynamic languages have been declining as well, though C's drop is much larger both percentage-wise and in absolute numbers.
  - joeuser12 16y ago
    No they haven't. The only one that is dropping is Perl: http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?measure=commits&percent=&l0=erlang&l1=perl&l2=php&l3=python&l4=ruby&l5=javascript&l6=-1&commit=Update http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?measure=commits&p...
sprout 16y ago
Seems to shadow the recession. I wonder how this compares to closed-source commits.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  One theory: programmer utilization at companies has increased with the recession, so there is less time for open-source commits. Another theory: a huge fraction of open-source in recent years is written by programmers paid by companies to work on it. The recession has caused these programmers to be pulled off and put on projects where their time can be billed directly. Third theory, there is more use of distributed version control "offline", which would not be detected by Ohloh.
  - sprout 16y ago
    Well, in contrast to the second theory, there's the possibility that open source commits and closed source commits look pretty much the same. They're mostly done by people looking to get a paycheck, and without a paycheck the quantity drops. People aren't necessarily being pulled off open source to work on closed source, they're just being laid off (which seems supported by the unemployment stats.)
thingie 16y ago
You'll get totally different picture if you remove C (even if you just replace it with C++) and Java. So, hm?
- Corrado 16y ago
  For the lazy: http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?commit=Update&l0=-1&l1=html&l2=-1&l3=php&l4=python&l5=ruby&l6=shell&l7=xml&l8=-1&measure=commits&percent=true http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?commit=Update&l0=...
  - nakkiel 16y ago
    No. And no. The initial link was in Values, not in Percentage. When you click Update, the graph shown is switched to Percentage. Here is your link in Value: http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?commit=Update&l0=-1&l1=html&l2=-1&l3=php&l4=python&l5=ruby&l6=shell&l7=xml&l8=-1&measure=commits http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?commit=Update&l0=...
  - joshhart 16y ago
    This is because it switches to percentages by default. See http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?commit=Update&l0=-1&l1=html&l2=-1&l3=php&l4=python&l5=ruby&l6=shell&l7=xml&l8=-1&measure=commits http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?commit=Update&l0=... Everything is going down.
nakkiel 16y ago
Hum. The App Store opened in mid 2008 and the Android Market in late 2008. There might be a link. Also, there is a growing quantity of proprietary Web Apps which might have helped shift interest of many users and programmers along. I'm not all that surprised as it has been one of my concern lately. The Open Dream might come to an end with the make-it-all-online meme.
davidu 16y ago
Are they tracking commits made to github?
- ciupicri 16y ago
  They're tracking any open source project that's registered on their website. If you have or know about an open source project that's not on Ohloh, you'll have to register it and specify its repositories (and branches).
  - nakkiel 16y ago
    Well, then a possible explanation is that people don't submit much projects to their website anymore and thus there are only "old" projects that are getting more and more mature and thus needing less commits. I couldn't find any figure to back this though. But I do remember that Ohloh used to be quite popular and I'm sure as hell that it's not anymore.
  - there 16y ago
    Ohloh shows scary decline in open-source project additions to Ohloh
    - febeling 16y ago
      That the most probable explanation, I believe. But did you find a real figure somewhere? I couldn't.
- klync 16y ago
  I wondered what exactly was being measured here too. I checked around the site quickly but found no answers. Bah. Might as well be made up numbers as far as I'm concerned.
cliffchang 16y ago
HTML, JS, CSS, PHP, and Python all have steady increases, and ruby is mostly stable. It could just be that focus is more on the web (HTML in particular seems to have taken a biggish jump mid-2009 - related to HTML5?) http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?measure=commits&percent=&l0=html&l1=javascript&l2=php&l3=python&l4=ruby&l5=xml&l6=css&l7=-1&commit=Update http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?measure=commits&p...
- nakkiel 16y ago
  Same link but in Values, not Percentage: http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?commit=Update&l0=html&l1=javascript&l2=php&l3=python&l4=ruby&l5=xml&l6=css&l7=-1&measure=commits
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
CedriK 16y ago
You did the graph for C. Common! Should add C++ and C#...ain't much of a decline.
amujumdar 16y ago
We at Black Duck noticed it too. So far, looks like the decline is largely because, lately Ohloh - a) hasn't kept up with discovering new projects. b) hasn't paid needed attention to keeping existing projects up to date. We'll provide more details once transition is over (we just acquired Ohloh from Geeknet).
twymer 16y ago
What about the possibility of the emergence of distributed version control? Perhaps this is causing less actual commits to the actual project, but not necessarily less code being written.

28 points by devmonk 16y ago

wingo 16y ago

NumPy: -157,525 lines of code, mostly written in Modula-2. http://www.ohloh.net/p/numpy http://www.ohloh.net/p/numpy

amujumdar 16y ago
That's an embarrassing error in our processing. We just acquired Ohloh and are working hard to identify all such issues and fix them. Stay tuned!

technomancy 16y ago

I suspect it has more to do with the mechanism by which commit volume is measured than the actual commits themselves. It's possible people are just moving away from verbose languages like C and Java and thus just needing to write less code, but I'm not sure I have enough faith in the human race to believe it.

Corrado 16y ago
Another possible reason is that as systems become more mature they require less maintenance. I know the 2 or 3 projects that I am involved with are pretty mature right now and we are mostly just fixing bugs.

shurik 16y ago

The decline is in C, dynamic languages are on the rise. May be everything that had to be written in C has already been written?

stcredzero 16y ago
It looks like the dynamic languages have been declining as well, though C's drop is much larger both percentage-wise and in absolute numbers.
- joeuser12 16y ago
  No they haven't. The only one that is dropping is Perl: http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?measure=commits&percent=&l0=erlang&l1=perl&l2=php&l3=python&l4=ruby&l5=javascript&l6=-1&commit=Update http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?measure=commits&p...

sprout 16y ago

Seems to shadow the recession. I wonder how this compares to closed-source commits.

stcredzero 16y ago
One theory: programmer utilization at companies has increased with the recession, so there is less time for open-source commits. Another theory: a huge fraction of open-source in recent years is written by programmers paid by companies to work on it. The recession has caused these programmers to be pulled off and put on projects where their time can be billed directly. Third theory, there is more use of distributed version control "offline", which would not be detected by Ohloh.
- sprout 16y ago
  Well, in contrast to the second theory, there's the possibility that open source commits and closed source commits look pretty much the same. They're mostly done by people looking to get a paycheck, and without a paycheck the quantity drops. People aren't necessarily being pulled off open source to work on closed source, they're just being laid off (which seems supported by the unemployment stats.)

thingie 16y ago

You'll get totally different picture if you remove C (even if you just replace it with C++) and Java. So, hm?

Corrado 16y ago
For the lazy: http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?commit=Update&l0=-1&l1=html&l2=-1&l3=php&l4=python&l5=ruby&l6=shell&l7=xml&l8=-1&measure=commits&percent=true http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?commit=Update&l0=...
- nakkiel 16y ago
  No. And no. The initial link was in Values, not in Percentage. When you click Update, the graph shown is switched to Percentage. Here is your link in Value: http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?commit=Update&l0=-1&l1=html&l2=-1&l3=php&l4=python&l5=ruby&l6=shell&l7=xml&l8=-1&measure=commits http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?commit=Update&l0=...
- joshhart 16y ago
  This is because it switches to percentages by default. See http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?commit=Update&l0=-1&l1=html&l2=-1&l3=php&l4=python&l5=ruby&l6=shell&l7=xml&l8=-1&measure=commits http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?commit=Update&l0=... Everything is going down.

nakkiel 16y ago

Hum. The App Store opened in mid 2008 and the Android Market in late 2008. There might be a link. Also, there is a growing quantity of proprietary Web Apps which might have helped shift interest of many users and programmers along. I'm not all that surprised as it has been one of my concern lately. The Open Dream might come to an end with the make-it-all-online meme.

davidu 16y ago

Are they tracking commits made to github?

ciupicri 16y ago
They're tracking any open source project that's registered on their website. If you have or know about an open source project that's not on Ohloh, you'll have to register it and specify its repositories (and branches).
- nakkiel 16y ago
  Well, then a possible explanation is that people don't submit much projects to their website anymore and thus there are only "old" projects that are getting more and more mature and thus needing less commits. I couldn't find any figure to back this though. But I do remember that Ohloh used to be quite popular and I'm sure as hell that it's not anymore.
- there 16y ago
  Ohloh shows scary decline in open-source project additions to Ohloh
  - febeling 16y ago
    That the most probable explanation, I believe. But did you find a real figure somewhere? I couldn't.
klync 16y ago
I wondered what exactly was being measured here too. I checked around the site quickly but found no answers. Bah. Might as well be made up numbers as far as I'm concerned.

cliffchang 16y ago

HTML, JS, CSS, PHP, and Python all have steady increases, and ruby is mostly stable. It could just be that focus is more on the web (HTML in particular seems to have taken a biggish jump mid-2009 - related to HTML5?) http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?measure=commits&percent=&l0=html&l1=javascript&l2=php&l3=python&l4=ruby&l5=xml&l6=css&l7=-1&commit=Update http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?measure=commits&p...

nakkiel 16y ago
Same link but in Values, not Percentage: http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?commit=Update&l0=html&l1=javascript&l2=php&l3=python&l4=ruby&l5=xml&l6=css&l7=-1&measure=commits

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

CedriK 16y ago

You did the graph for C. Common! Should add C++ and C#...ain't much of a decline.

amujumdar 16y ago

We at Black Duck noticed it too. So far, looks like the decline is largely because, lately Ohloh - a) hasn't kept up with discovering new projects. b) hasn't paid needed attention to keeping existing projects up to date. We'll provide more details once transition is over (we just acquired Ohloh from Geeknet).

twymer 16y ago

What about the possibility of the emergence of distributed version control? Perhaps this is causing less actual commits to the actual project, but not necessarily less code being written.