Sunday, 8 November 2009

How do you tell if an open source project is successful

After a bit of musing, I came up with the following metrics:

Good structures
version control system for code
bug tracking system
documentation for developers and users (might be in a Wiki or similar)
mailing lists or equivalent
discussion fora or equivalent

Active Developer Community
traffic on developer mailing list or forum or similar
high rate of code commits to VCS
low bug fix latency
high bug fix rate
high new feature rate
full release calendar (lots of releases are being made)

Active User Community
traffic in user fora/mailing lists
download rate of installers
output produced (type depends on project)
professional support services
job openings for skilled users
Can you think of any others?

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