From owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Dec 1 01:31:25 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4001016A4FD for ; Wed, 1 Dec 2004 01:31:24 +0000 (GMT) Received: from vhost109.his.com (vhost109.his.com [216.194.225.101]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DB1A743D66 for ; Wed, 1 Dec 2004 01:31:23 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from brad@stop.mail-abuse.org) Received: from [10.0.1.2] (localhost.his.com [127.0.0.1]) by vhost109.his.com (8.12.11/8.12.3) with ESMTP id iB11VK8a078680; Tue, 30 Nov 2004 20:31:21 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from brad@stop.mail-abuse.org) Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20041130171047.5eed9a65.cpressey@catseye.mine.nu> References: <20041129024602.GA23324@turingmachine.mentalsiege.net> <1101748454.41ab58e61eb88@imp2-q.free.fr> <1101788709.41abf62519b57@imp2-q.free.fr> <20041130002603.692153b7.cpressey@catseye.mine.nu> <20041130145130.0aa893f1.cpressey@catseye.mine.nu> <20041130230214.GA39964@xor.obsecurity.org> <20041130162403.567a4e39.cpressey@catseye.mine.nu> <20041201005139.GA71572@xor.obsecurity.org> <20041130171047.5eed9a65.cpressey@catseye.mine.nu> Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 02:29:55 +0100 To: Chris Pressey From: Brad Knowles Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: The beastie boot menu. X-BeenThere: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Non technical items related to the community List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 01:31:25 -0000 At 5:10 PM -0800 2004-11-30, Chris Pressey wrote: > OK. I'm certainly open to a better method for evaluating the direction > of open-source projects. Did you have one in mind? If you want to use your backout request metric, then at least calculate that on a per capita basis. Count the number of committers, and then count the number of backout requests in a given period of time. Then compare per capita numbers with other projects. This won't give you a true apples-apples comparison, because this issue is almost certainly not really scaled linearly, but at least it's closer than what you seem to have done so far. I'm sure that others can come up with recommendations that are even better. This was just off the top of my head. > Except, as noted, the current mission > statement for FreeBSD is so vague (basically "provide software with no > strings attached") that comparing activity with it can't tell you > much, if anything, useful. Remember, these two items are not necessarily directly connected. You could easily have a group of people who are doing all sorts of things and everyone is a happy camper, with little or no mission statement at all. OTOH, you could have an excellent and very specific mission statement and a group of people who do no real work and all they do is bitch and fight all day. You might be able to do some research to show that there actually is a correlation between these two, but you're going to have to do a lot more than just pull that claim out of your hat. If you want anyone to believe you, then you need to substantiate your claim. Furthermore, even if you can prove that they are correlated, you then have to go further to prove a causal relationship, before you can definitively say that the lack of a good mission statement is causing all this developer confusion, and therefore we need to have a proper mission statement created. > Which is precisely why I'm suggesting that FreeBSD would do well to > publish one with more substance. You're trying to hit escape velocity before you've even shown that you can crawl. You've got a lot more homework you need to do before you can convince us of your claims. -- Brad Knowles, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755 SAGE member since 1995. See for more info.