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Measuring the Size of a Developer's Community?
Travelr9 asks: "I am engaged in a project where upper management is deciding whether to use Linux or Palm OS on a new device. Leaving aside the technical merits of each [in the context of this decision, either could work well] a key question is the size of the developer communities (for both OS and applications) of Linux vs. Palm. I have searched for info on this topic, and have come up blank aside from vague assertions. Is anyone capturing real numbers and stats? This also brings up an interesting conceptual question -- how do you measure the size, quality, impact, etc., of a developer community? Number of bodies isn't enough. Number of apps? Number of lines of code? Frequency of major releases in core application or platform categories? Can you measure a concept like 'quality of developer community' usefully?"
And Palm has always had the largest and most dedicated development communtiy. So in this case I would go with them hands down. PalmOS also has a Graphical User Interface. I (and many others that I know) would much rather use a Graphical User Interface over the Command Line Interface of Linux. Also, PalmOS will run on devices with as little as 512k of ram, Linux would probably be rather sluggish on those devices.
Does size matter?
The development community could be fairly large for a platform that has been around for a long time. However, this platform may be about to be superseded by a new upstart with a smaller yet growing community
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Maybe SourceForge's stats could help in this case... Not the whole truth, but something still.
.: Max Romantschuk
I wasn't sure until I read some of your other posts. You seem to be rather good at the "I might not be pulling your chain..." trolls.
I suppose everyone has to have a hobby.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. Have you considered stamp collecting as a less anoying alternative?
By no means will you come up with accurate results but you should get a decent idea of the relative sizes of the two development communities. Bonus points for weeding out the people who have simply used either platform.
FWIW+IIRC, Linux weighed in at 9x the WinCE community.
Bleh!
Perhaps an easier thing to judge would be the quantity and quality of development tools to facilitate the community. I for one liked the idea of using Visual Basic on my WinCE device because it's so easy to create quick and dirty applications to meet a particular need. I never found such an easy tool for palm.
How come nobody else has pointed out the glaring typo in the headline of this article? Cliff wrote "community" when he obviously meant "penis."
Twirlip (because too much karma is boring)
I write in my journal
I assume from the context that the new device you mentioned is PDA-like? I think that what you should not forget in the case of Linux is that you do not only have to look at the Linux PDA developers community. A big percent of what is done by the "desktop linux" developer's community can be utilized easily also in PDA -like environment. I can show you no hard facts, but I believe this is a big difference in favor of Linux. I guess, you should try to see your device and the applications & other software you fancy running on it taking this aspect into account as well.
So what other industries have done for decades and hire a MARKETING firm. Now I know that the term marketing is loaded with negativity these days, especially in a community such as /. BUT when you get down to it that is what you are looking for, marketing data, your market being developers.
I don't know what data is already available from current sources that a good marketing firm could use to do analysis but they may find it as an enticing agenda and do the leg work for free, only charging you for the analysis (which of course is what you need to tell them when you propose this).
Market analysis is simply crunching numbers in a statistical manner with datasets representing your target audience or constituency, yours being developers. I can't recommend a firm but you should definitely find one with what they refer to as "Domain Experience" in technology and specifically software.
Good luck.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
You can tell the size of a developer's community by the kind of car he drives.
If your going for handhelds, palm is the way to go cause it's stable and standardized and entrenched. Linux on the handheld is newer and can come in many varieties. The palm OS is the same where ever you go.
It seems to me that the best measure would be to determine how many usable apps there are for devices like yours in each camp.
www.palmgear.com and www.freewarepalm.com are good places to find collections of Palm software. Bear in mind that maybe ninety percent of this is either poorly implemented, too specialized, small hacks, or buggy.
The ten percent or so of this software that is useful to a significant number of "normal" people would be the measure of the effectiveness of the Palm development base.
You'll have to use your own resources to determine how much software is available/usable for a small Linux platform.
When the first versions were written they didn't really plan for the future. As a result, their API is a pile of kludges. Avoid.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
There's only one obvious way to measure the size of a developer community; ask google.
...but just because one is more widely used doesn't mean that it's liked
Linux v. PalmOS
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
It's not the size of your community, it's what you do with it.
For example: /. has a huge community. Yet, every time a matter of social importance comes up, most /.ers expend no more energy than it takes to click "+1,Bandwagon" while sipping some Dew. As as a result, no social matters are affected by the /. community in the way that /. would like.
In the same vein, a developer community could be large, but if their actions are poorly planned, poorly executed, or (following the /. tradition) nonexistant, then it doesn't matter how many of them there are.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Ty: I never keep track of the number of downloads, Judge.
Smails: Well, how do you measure yourself against other developers then?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.