Hi,
marc fleury wrote:
> Organizing Open Source development is the tougher thing I have ever done.
> Forget development of the kernel (even though that is no walk in the park
> either).
Yes, the "Beehive" analogy below is not bad.
Them bees are all around, and it is next to
impossible to control them. Sometimes one of
them may even sting you for no apparent
reason.
> I am now in a "management" position where I usually work 15h a day, just
> talking to people and trying to organize stuff. Communication on the
> website, organization of the new doco, 2.1 stabilization, lawyer papers,
> possible deals, recruitment of new members, board communication, news,
> patches, egos it is all a big pot of "stuff" that I need to do.
That's IMHO too much, and it will probably get
worse as JBoss gains popularity. Please try to
slow down. IMO this project is better off with
a leader that is a little slower than a leader
that is burned out.
OSS development is supposed to be self-organizing,
but in case of unresolvable dispute between
developers, some kind of "benevolent dictator"
is nice to have to take the final decision.
I guess that is the main purpose of the board.
> So how does it work? well I understand that OSS is a "Beehive" people come
> and go, I get about 2-3 "I want to help " messages *per-day* of these maybe
> 5% really stay on. Should I make more efforts to bring that number up? I
> could.
I don't think you should. Saying "I want to help"
is a lot easier than actually doing it. If 5% of
those who say "I want to help" actually do submit
something helpful, that is probably a high ratio
for OSS. And if just 1% of the "I want to help"
people enter a long-term commitment as a JBoss
developer, that is IMO fine.
IMHO the key here is self-organization.
Laziness is a natural thing, so if organization is
done for the developers, they do not organize
themselves. But if nobody does the "organize"
thing for them, they _have_ to organize themselves.
But that also has a downside: Whenever some
developer leaves the project, part of the
organization is lost and needs rebuilding from the
other developers. And if new (not yet organized)
developers are added at too fast a rate, the
organization might become less stable.
However, a project like JBoss is (or will be) IMHO
too big for any single person to organize
everything.
Self-organization scales practically beyond limit.
> BUT UNDERSTAND MY POSITION, I need to find "self maintaining" (IE SCALABLE)
> ways of managing that crazy beehive, we are creating something new as I
> believe we are outgrowing the "linux model" (modular is NOT enough).
Yes, even hierarchical organization has scalability
limits.
> No
> modular is not enough, obviously we need more following, more management,
I'm not sure about "more management". There is a
risk that it might lead to less self management,
due to the natural laziness of people.
> more "TODO" lists,
This might be a good idea. Bugzilla is probably
not the right place for TODOs. Could be one big
TODO list, or seperate TODO lists for subprojects
with a "list of TODO lists" as a focus point.
> more "STATUS" lists,
Also a good idea. In particular, I would guess
that users would like a WHATS NEW list with
every release.
> more "HELP NEEDED" lists, etc etc.
That would probably be the subset of non-assigned
TODOs on the TODO list.
Best Regards,
Ole Husgaard.
