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Calculating the Truck-Factor of Popular Open Source Projects

Posted by timothy on from the keeping-linus-safe-from-assassination dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The Truck Factor describes the minimal number of developers that have to be hit by a truck (or quit) before a project is incapacitated. Wikipedia defines it as a "measurement of the concentration of information in individual team members. A high truck factor means that many individuals know enough to carry on and the project could still succeed even in very adverse events." The term is also known by bus factor/number. In this article, the authors calculate the truck factor for 133 popular GitHub applications. Spoiler, but unsurprising: Linux ranks near the top (meaning that it's highly resilient).

3 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. Re:morbid story is morbid by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think there are bigger issues going on than if an open source project dies if someone gets hit by a truck.
    Seriously, you guys think that some stupid piece of software is more important than human life...

    OK, if it makes you feel better, we'll call it the "Girl Factor". That's the number of developers who have to discover girls before the project is incapacatated.

  2. Re:Tragic, but not catastrophic by davester666 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Maybe next time, just ask him to explain his code instead of killing him and throwing him in the river.

    --
    Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
  3. Re:morbid story is morbid by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Funny

    OK, if it makes you feel better, we'll call it the "Girl Factor". That's the number of developers who have to discover girls before the project is incapacatated.

    Most of the developers that I know are more likely to get hit by the truck.