How can development metrics help to take decisions about free software?

Talk at Zentyal Summit, Zaragoza, October 4th 2012. On development and community metrics, how and why they can be useful, and some examples from the work done by Bitergia.

Transcript

1. How can development metrics help to take decisions about free software? Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona jgb@bitergia.com http://identi.ca/jgbarah http://twitter.com/jgbarah Bitergia GSyC/LibreSoft, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Zentyal Summit, Zaragoza, October 4th, 2012 Jesus Gonzalez-Barahona (Bitergia) How can development metrics help to take decisions about free software? Zentyal Summit 2012 1 / 14
2. c 2012 Bitergia Some rights reserved. This presentation is distributed under the “Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0” license, by Creative Commons, available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Jesus Gonzalez-Barahona (Bitergia) How can development metrics help to take decisions about free software? Zentyal Summit 2012 2 / 14
3. Free software is (in many cases) special Source code available Open development model (usually) Many details about the internals of the development process Intense use of tools for coordination Lots of information is tracked, and available Developers & users communities are important sustainability pooling of resources innovation Jesus Gonzalez-Barahona (Bitergia) How can development metrics help to take decisions about free software? Zentyal Summit 2012 3 / 14
4. Metrics, metrics, metrics Information about code, community, development can be retrieved, organized, analyzed Jesus Gonzalez-Barahona (Bitergia) How can development metrics help to take decisions about free software? Zentyal Summit 2012 4 / 14
5. Who benefits Quantitative, objective data: facts, not opinions Specific questions can be answered Even simple analysis may help stakeholders: Developers: Understanding, improving development processes Users, integrators: Long-term sustainability, evolution, reaction to issues Investors: Attraction of external resources, growth rate Jesus Gonzalez-Barahona (Bitergia) How can development metrics help to take decisions about free software? Zentyal Summit 2012 5 / 14
6. Analyzing Zentyal (basic analysis) Source code management repositories: git: git://git.zentyal.org/zentyal From: 2005-06-27 To: 2012-09-10 Mailing lists: Development Users Announcements http://lists.zentyal.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ From: 2010-09-01 To: 2012-09-30 http://blog.bitergia.com/2012/10/03/basic-analysis-of-zentyal/ Jesus Gonzalez-Barahona (Bitergia) How can development metrics help to take decisions about free software? Zentyal Summit 2012 6 / 14
7. Zentyal: Git repository (parameters per month) Jesus Gonzalez-Barahona (Bitergia) How can development metrics help to take decisions about free software? Zentyal Summit 2012 7 / 14
8. Zentyal: Mailing lists (Developers, Users) Jesus Gonzalez-Barahona (Bitergia) How can development metrics help to take decisions about free software? Zentyal Summit 2012 8 / 14
9. Who is developing OpenStack? Core projects / all projects (Folsom release cycle, 2012) Jesus Gonzalez-Barahona (Bitergia) How can development metrics help to take decisions about free software? Zentyal Summit 2012 9 / 14
10. How is KDevelop closing tickets? Time 0.99 (black) / 0.95 (green) / 0.5 (red) / 0.25 (blue) 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2 3 4 5 6 Time in minutes, log 10 scale Jesus Gonzalez-Barahona (Bitergia) How can development metrics help to take decisions about free software? Zentyal Summit 2012 10 / 14
11. Sidenote: the history of OpenOffice.org / LibreOffice [Very preliminary, as found in the LibreOffice repository, 2000-2012] Commits Committer 0 Month 200 400 600 800 1000 50 100 150 0 0 20 40 60 80 [Contributions of more than 1,000 commits trimmed] Jesus Gonzalez-Barahona (Bitergia) How can development metrics help to take decisions about free software? Zentyal Summit 2012 11 / 14
12. In summary FLOSS development repositories have a wealth of information Their analysis is potentially interesting to any stakeholder Getting the data out of the repository is not that difficult... ...but analysis may be We’re interested in deep analysis We’re interested in working with developers, managers, users What would you like to know about your pet project? Jesus Gonzalez-Barahona (Bitergia) How can development metrics help to take decisions about free software? Zentyal Summit 2012 12 / 14
13. Bitergia: an spin-off Started operations in July 2012 Builds the experience of LibreSoft R&D group Offering professional products and services Focused on: Metrics about software developent (including community metrics) Specialized support for development forges (including metrics for projects) http://bitergia.com Jesus Gonzalez-Barahona (Bitergia) How can development metrics help to take decisions about free software? Zentyal Summit 2012 13 / 14
14. This is the end Have you learned something useful? [I would love to know what interested you the most] [...and the least] Jesus Gonzalez-Barahona (Bitergia) How can development metrics help to take decisions about free software? Zentyal Summit 2012 14 / 14