Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: Will Dr. OpenACS survive? Or why I stopped worrying and learned to love the .LRN consortium?

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26: Re: Will Dr. OpenACS survive? Or why I stopped worrying and learned to love the .LRN consortium? (response to 1)
Posted by Jeff Davis on 03/03/05 11:13 PM
How about some data: 
   Month | Users |    Lines
 2003-01 |    12 |    90841
 2003-02 |    10 |    24452
 2003-03 |    11 |    85862
 2003-04 |    10 |    14755
 2003-05 |    15 |    25375
 2003-06 |    18 |    20226
 2003-07 |    14 |    23313
 2003-08 |    15 |    65943
 2003-09 |    19 |    53634
 2003-10 |    21 |    43687
 2003-11 |    23 |    78636
 2003-12 |    19 |   165153
 2004-01 |    14 |    40731
 2004-02 |    18 |    41652
 2004-03 |    25 |    48118
 2004-04 |    19 |    12471
 2004-05 |    23 |    26610
 2004-06 |    22 |    34546
 2004-07 |    24 |    21309
 2004-08 |    20 |    10683
 2004-09 |    18 |    14363
 2004-10 |    23 |   105241
 2004-11 |    21 |    18463
 2004-12 |    25 |    24756
 2005-01 |    23 |    22949
 2005-02 |    21 |    19417
This is the number of unique committers to openacs.org and total lines changed by month. There isn't really anything it that data that says there is some crisis with retaining developers. Otoh, it does not show much growth either.

I don't think "marketing to developers" is that important although I do think making openacs install smoothly and have a shallow lead in to get people started working would make a difference in developer adoption.

I would like to see dotLRN spending it's money differently but I think the investment has been critical. The code coming out of e-Lane and other dotLRN project has been useful and the work on release/QA from Sloan has helped as well.

What I would like to see is more direct investment by dotLRN in QA/Release management. One problem is that Joel has gotten busy and he is *really good* at all the things most of the rest of us are bad at. I have said it before -- finding money to pay Joel to do QA/Release management would have tremendous ROI.

Another issue is that e-Lane is producing a lot of code but I don't see anything like the level of involvement in general quality improvements coming from them. I think in part that's a level of experience issue but it's something that the dotLRN and e-Lane members should consider.

I know it's hard to allocate Al's "hard dollars" to things other than projects with deliverables but to address the "Quality" issue the consortium is going to have to find a way to do just that.

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28: Re: Re: Will Dr. OpenACS survive? Or why I stopped worrying and learned to love the .LRN consortium? (response to 26)
Posted by Rocael Hernández Rizzardini on 03/03/05 11:56 PM
Yes QA/Release management is crucial in any project, and .LRN is aware of that. Of course, Joel is the right person, but while we don't have a paid person to handle that, .LRN will relay its product quality on random volunteering efforts or will never expand its functionality base.

BTW, the new version of the graphical installer is scheduled for the next week, and will be maintained for the next 2 years by the University of Reading, UK.