“Starting with Eric Raymond’s groundbreaking work, “The
Cathedral and the Bazaar”, open-source software (OSS) has commonly
been regarded as work produced by a community of developers. Yet,
given the nature of software programs, one also hears of developers
with no lives that work very hard to achieve great product results.
In this paper, I sought empirical evidence that would help us
understand which is more common – the cave (i.e., lone producer) or
the community. Based on a study of the top 100 mature products on
Sourceforge, I find a few surprising things. First, most OSS
programs are developed by individuals, rather than communities. The
median number of developers in the 100 projects I looked at was 4
and the mode was 1 – numbers much lower than previous numbers
reported for highly successful projects! Second, most OSS programs
do not generate a lot of discussion. Third, products with more
developers tend to be viewed and downloaded more often. Fourth, the
number of developers associated with a project was positively
correlated to the age of the project. Fifth, the larger the
project, the smaller the percent of project administrators…”
Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.
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