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The Social Structure of Open Source Development

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the house-of-cards-and-cigarettes dept.

HulkProtector1 writes "NewsForge has published an interview Tom Chance conducted with Andreas Brand, a sociologist who is studying the free software world. Read the full interview to learn more about Andreas' views on KDE's development model, volunteer recruitment and retention, motivation, work distribution and more. "

6 of 391 comments (clear)

  1. Re:While we're talking about the social structure. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Obviously, boys are smarter than girls.
    (This *is* meant to be flamebait -- and posted anonymously, so I don't ruin my chances with the girl who reads /. ... I know you're out there baby, and I love you!)

  2. Re:While we're talking about the social structure. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Maybe it's safe to draw an analogy to Family Guy:

    Lois: I guarantee you a man made that commercial.
    Peter: Of course a man made it. It's a commercial Lois, not a delicious thanksgiving dinner.

  3. Re:While we're talking about the social structure. by garcia · · Score: 2, Funny

    Obviously you're just the president of Harvard.

  4. Another idea for a fun project by dkleinsc · · Score: 3, Funny

    Determine the person at the center of the open source society, using a Erdos-style numbering scheme. e.g. Joe Blow worked on sendmail with Jane Smith who worked on zlib with RMS gives Joe Blow a RMS Number of 2.

    Then just find the lowest average number, and that person is the center of the open source social structure.

    --
    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
  5. Re:Slashdot has 76,000 female users! -- like me? by mgoss · · Score: 4, Funny

    In my CS classes, it's more like a 10:1 ration of guys to gals, but that's a fairly small private university.

    So, I'm female. I love computers, programming, linux, gentoo... hopefully in the future there will be more and more people like me.

    I mean, there's got to be some females to help pass on geekiness to their kids. But I just don't think my mom would understand an e-mail that said something to the effect of "emerging package baby, nine month compilation time!"

    By the way, geeky pick-up lines are the best. And I find all you guys very amusing.

    PS, no you can't have my e-mail address. :)

  6. Re:Slashdot has 76,000 female users! -- like me? by BigDogCH · · Score: 2, Funny

    "PS, no you can't have my e-mail address. :)"

    Street address would be fine.

    In all seriousness though, while your parents don't understand your field of choice, they surely call you every time they need help. I hate getting calls that start with "Hi, you don't know me, but I am your moms friends hamsters former-owners uncles sons 2nd best friend, would you fix my computer? It doesn't work good."