Measuring the Health of a Free Software Project
Michael Meeks offering another take on the health of the OpenOffice.org developer community, using an analysis of code contributions:
[T]he statistics show a picture of slow disengagement by Sun, combined with a spectacular lack of growth in the developer community. In a healthy project we would expect to see a large number of volunteer developers involved, in addition - we would expect to see a large number of peer companies contributing to the common code pool; we do not see this in OpenOffice.org. Indeed, quite the opposite we appear to have the lowest number of active developers on OO.o since records began: 24, this contrasts negatively with Linux’s recent low of 160+. Even spun in the most positive way, OO.o is at best stagnating from a development perspective.
More broadly:
A half-hearted open-source strategy (or execution) that is not truly ‘Open’ runs a real risk of capturing the perceived business negatives of Free software: that people can copy your product for free, without capturing many of the advantages: that people help you develop it, and in doing so build a fantastic support and services market you can dominate. It’s certainly possible to cruise along talking about all the marketing advantages of end-user communities, but in the end-game, without a focus on developers, and making OO.o truly fair and fun to contribute to - any amount of spin will not end up selling a dying horse.
Ouch.
No one with knowledge can doubt Sun’s inept handling of its office suite project (although Sun’s extortion of $2 Billion from Microsoft in 2004 hardly falls into the ‘inept’ category).
That alone is enough to make OpenOffice development unappealing to software developers today.
Combine this, though, with the general impotence of Microsoft, the waning of the importance of the desktop as well as the certainty of better cloud apps and it makes non-networked alternative office suite development at this date simply & purely a waste of time.
OpenOffice has served its purpose.
I agree Sam, but … there’s no reason that a vibrant OOo effort couldn’t migrate to the cloud. E.g. I don’t think there must be anything but a fuzzy distinction between desktop and network.