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TL;DR - no. And that's before considering the validity of their data collection method. The general OSS project tend to start when someone has an itch to scrat
by casca 15y ago
TL;DR - no. And that's before considering the validity of their data collection method.
The general OSS project tend to start when someone has an itch to scratch. They build something which solves that problem and upload the source somewhere. The next step is determined by 2 questions:
1) Does the developer keep having the same itch?
2) Does the developer get support from a company or someone else who has the same itch?
If not, the code becomes part of the Sourceforge wasteland of unmaintained, unused code.
Github is an interesting attempt to keep the itch-scratching alive by making forking easy, but when there are 10 different forks for similar functionality, all by people of unknown coding ability, rewriting or reforking becomes the safest option.
- bunderbunder 15y agoExpanding on that - Independent FOSS developers are also doing it for fun. I don't think that detail gets enough credit. It means that by default most FOSS developers aren't going to be nearly as interested in making significant contributions to an existing project as they are in starting their own project. For most of us maintaining existing code, fixing other people's bugs, and dealing with project politics are sure-fire fun killers. So getting involved in an existing project would defeat the purpose. On the other hand, the fact that my from-scratch project may not ever be useful to anyone else is at best a remote concern.