Upgrade to Pro — share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …

David Faure Breaks The Law!?

David Faure Breaks The Law!?

Talk given at Akademy 2014, Brno.

Paul Finlayson Adams

September 07, 2014
Tweet

More Decks by Paul Finlayson Adams

Other Decks in Technology

Transcript

  1. The Legend Is Born… <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <log> <logentry revision="5958">

    <author>dfaure</author> <date>1998-03-10T00:41:11.000000Z</date> <msg>Added missing Makefile.am Think of changing them whenever adding a .po file </msg> </logentry> </log>
  2. A Bit Like This… dfaure • Yes, a circle
 •

    Other KDE hackers look similar
 • In fact all Free Software hackers are circles
 • And we link them when they “work” together
  3. Brooks’ Law • Posited in 1975 by Fred Brooks in

    The Mythical Man-Month: • “adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” • Two issues to consider: ramp-up time, communication overhead
  4. Conway’s Law • Posited in 1968 by Melvin Conway in

    Datamation: • “organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.”
  5. Contributors Contribute… Stuff • Documentation • Artwork • Sound •

    Code • Bug Reports • Intangible “Things” ! ! ! And (almost) all of these things have associated (measurable) metadata.
  6. In Case You Don't Believe Me (Plone) Chapter 5. Joining

    A Project: Reassessing The Role Of Brooks’ Law 76 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 Cohesion Developer Count Weekly Data
  7. In Case You Don't Believe Me (Evince) Chapter 5. Joining

    A Project: Reassessing The Role Of Brooks’ Law 77 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 Cohesion Developer Count Weekly Data Figure 5.4: Coordination Cohesion in Evince
  8. In Case You Don't Believe Me (KDE) Chapter 5. Joining

    A Project: Reassessing The Role Of Brooks’ Law 75 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 Cohesion Developer Count Weekly Data
  9. Who Is This Dude? That’s me! With Donald Knuth. Wearing

    a “Knuth is my homeboy t-shirt.” What do I do? • Community management (I’m not a master manipulator of social media) • Study, expose, react. • 10+ years of Free Software (business) management experience
  10. We’re Off The Path… KDE project that has acted as

    the catalyst for this improved coordination cohesion. In order to test this, the same weekly coordination cohesion data can be plotted in chronological order to see if growth in coordination cohesion starts at a particular point in time, rather than when a particular size in the contributor community is reached. This new plot is shown in Figure 5.5. 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 01/01/1997 01/01/1998 01/01/1999 01/01/2000 01/01/2001 01/01/2002 01/01/2003 01/01/2004 01/01/2005 01/01/2006 01/01/2007 01/01/2008 01/01/2009 01/01/2010 Cohesion Date Weekly Data
  11. A Thought Experiment Income to KDE eV somewhat correlates with

    cohesion over time (about 1 year lag). ! Potential for causality?
  12. • In short: we lost focus. • “After” KDE 4

    we lost: • One repo, kdesvn (and not an increasing number or ever-smaller repos where we do not collaborate). • Shared technical vision (and not an increasing level of independence between components). • Shared tone (and not increasing confusion about what KDE “is”). Say What, Now?
  13. How To Be Like dfaure • Do: Have fun
 •

    Do: Work hard (at being better)
 • Do Not: Forget we have a mission and users who need us to deliver This has been another questionable presentation by Dr. Paul J. Adams:
 • [email protected] • www.baggerspion.net • @therealpadams