Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Open Source Project Management Lessons

Posted by timothy on from the herding-cats dept.

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.

6 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. I bet... by macshune · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  2. Compilation time bounds productivity? by BreadMan · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!
  3. An excerpt by Call+Me+Black+Cloud · · Score: 5, Funny

    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...

  4. Re:Great, I would love to read all about it by rvr · · Score: 2, Funny

    well, what about

    pr0xy av01dance

    start something new. ummm, i guess something old.

  5. Re:"C/C++ is no longer a viable development langua by dmeranda · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  6. Re:"C/C++ is no longer a viable development langua by nuntius · · Score: 3, Funny

    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".