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Advogato: Free Source Project Management

“Project management and engineering is a largely neglected
aspect of free source development. Monty R. Manley addressed this
issue in his article Managing Projects the Open Source Way. He
proposes a much more formal style of software development for free
source (my term for the union of free software and open source)
projects, along the lines of traditional commercial development. I
absolutely agree about the need for better engineering practices.
What I think we need to do, though, is recognize how free source
operates, extract the best practices from it, and from that try to
find engineering practices that mesh well with the culture.”

“Manley’s article is very thought-provoking, and prodded me to
give some thought to issues that have been at the back of my mind
for a while. As a free source project lead myself (for gimp-print),
I’ve had to face a lot of these issues. In my professional career,
I’ve frequently been both a developer and release engineer, and
I’ve developed some insights from this experience.”

What I’d like to do is explore some of the issues Manley
raises, analyze how they apply to the free source community, and
come up with some suggestions, or at least points for future
work.

Complete
Story

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