Open Source Project Management Lessons

cpfeifer writes "Paul Baranowski takes a moment to reflect on Open Source Project Management in his blog. His reflections are based on the first two years of the Peek-a-booty project." Interesting comments on media coverage, choice of programming language, when to release a project, and more.

Comments

I bet...

[macshune]

The peek-a-booty project is a lot less interesting than I would imagine...

Re:"C/C++ is no longer a viable development langua

[AndyRooney]

I remember him saying something in a bar once about Scheme. Man, I think he's trashing your language. Are you going to take that shit? Them's fightin' words, if you ask me.

Compilation time bounds productivity?

[BreadMan]

It requires compilation - as your code grows larger, the wait time to see if your code works increases.

Everyone knows that once your code compiles, it will work!

An excerpt

[Call Me Black Cloud]

June 14, 2003

Dear diary,

I have decided to record my thoughts on managing the project "peek-a-booty". The most important lesson I've learned is not to use booty in a project name!

Sure, it was funny two years ago after a few beers, but I swear the next person that makes a "booty" joke will die. I'm serious. "Dude, is it for peeking up skirts?" "Hey, if you integrate telephony you can call it 'peek-a-booty-call'"

In other news, I'm starting a new project to manipulate network traffic, this time using Java. I'm thinking of calling it 'jAck Off'. I like the sound of that. It will be good to get that whole 'booty' thing behind me...

Re:Great, I would love to read all about it

[rvr]

well, what about

pr0xy av01dance

start something new. ummm, i guess something old.

Release it

[Anonymous Coward]

When you want it to die a miserable death.

peek-a-booty? Open source management?

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about irony, isn't peek-a-booty one of those programs that allows everyone on the internet to (ahem) "open source manage" your computer for you? From the same people with the "system administrator tool" Back Orifice?

I fear Peek-A-Booty

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the perfect caption for the goatse.cx link.

Re:"C/C++ is no longer a viable development langua

[dmeranda]

Okay , you
dont't
have to
like using whitespace
so
others can actually
read your code, but
I like the
way
Python lets me
do the
right
thing.

Re:"C/C++ is no longer a viable development langua

[nuntius]

You over simplified. As he said, static bindings are both a blessing and a curse.

For example: Oops, sorry. Mozilla on Linux is now being compiled with gcc3.2 so you'll have to get the source and recompile to run on that older (gcc2) system... Also, your old plugins will need to be recompiled before you can use them with Mozilla on the new system - if you can find the source.

Compare and contrast:
Java - install the compatibility VM; use the same binary on all platforms
C - no VM; compile and distribute different binaries for each platform

As the number of platforms increases [3+ Windows code bases (9x, NT, newer), 3+ Mac bases (system ...X, with or without Altivec), N *nix bases (Sun, HP, IBM, Linux*M, BSD*3)*(2+ GCC versions) = well over 10 popular platforms], you either have to manage binary chaos or you have to start distributing your code as source.

But wait! Distributing code as source requires the end user to install the compiler, and this (setting up environment variables, binary compatibility, support libraries, ...) is usually harder than installing Java.

So, we're back to square 1.
Lose a turn; don't pass "Go".

Re:Huh?

[Chris Sontag]

Not so! SCO owns the core patents on Open Source design methods. Its sad to see that criminals like the author of this article continue to infringe on our patents. We plan to file a lawsuit against Mister "Baranowski" (if that is his real name) in the next few days. Try to understand, we're just trying to protect our intellectual property.