Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Re: Numbers of devs working on LibreOffice and AOO

On 19 May 2012 10:22, Italo Vignoli <italo.vignoli@gmail.com> wrote:

> Jean Weber wrote:
>
> > Please note that Apache OpenOffice also has active developers who have
> > not yet been granted "committer" status, so the numbers are not
> > directly comparable. I don't know how many non-committer developers
> > there are at AOO. They submit patches which, if approved, are then
> > committed by someone with the relevant authority.
>
> Most of these hidden developers are coming from IBM China, and they will
> not get the committer status before graduation, as otherwise it would be
> clear that AOO is a hidden IBM development project as the "diversity" of
> the developer base is missing (IBM developers would be well over 80%,
> while now they are around 40%).

Apache committers do so on an individual basis but it is inevitable that if
many of them are from a single organisation, that organisation has
potential influence. In that sense it is not really different from Sun in
the earlier days of OOo. In that context, ASF is more like the Foundation
many people wanted for OOo in those days that never happened.

What makes me nervous, is that all this is done with the complacent
> supervision of ASF mentors, who perfectly know the situation and hide
> the issue with statements about a "diverse" development project.

All mentors can do is apply the "Apache Way" in the particular
circumstances. PPMC members vote in committers and many, probably the great
majority of current commiters are nothing to do with IBM. They could vote
against IBM staffers becoming committers but I don't think that is likely.
Most will see that the value of the additional engineering resource coupled
to the Apache Way out-weighs any disadvantage of having potential influence
on the direction of development from IBM. Anyone is free to fork the code
base produced.

Anyway, as soon as AOO will graduate, we will know the number of these
> hidden developers. What does not change is the number of commits.
>
> We should stick with Ohloh figures, because they are independent from
> both projects, and reflect the actual reality.
>
> I would also avoid speculations on AOO hidden developers, because this
> is their problem and not our problem.

The only real problem is a splitting of resources into 2 code bases so
quite a bit of overlapping duplication of effort. That is just a fact of
life since it seems impossible to resolve the licensing issues. Personally
I hope both projects can maximise the number of developers because within
the internal political constraints it provides the most resource into the
FOSS ecosystem.

> -- Italo Vignoli - italo.vignoli@gmail.com mob +39.348.5653829 - VoIP
> 5316436@messagenet.it skype italovignoli - gtalk italo.vignoli@gmail.com
>
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