[gentoo-dev] Re: Gentoo activity graphs

[Duncan]

Marco Matthies <marco-ml@×××.net> posted 44AFA193.9000503@×××.net,
excerpted below, on  Sat, 08 Jul 2006 14:14:11 +0200:

> Alin Nastac wrote:
>> Until a year ago, the number of active devs was linearly rising, but in
>> last year we seem to hit a ceil (175)
>
> Was it on planet.g.o where i read something about Dunbar's number[1]? A
> highly interesting subject and it might be possible that the
> "Monkeyspheres" of Gentoo devs do not overlap sufficiently.
>
> There is only one solution to this problem: You need to go out and get
> drunk together! ;)
>
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

'Twas on this list IIRC, perhaps a week ago.

An interesting observation was that of all the FLOSS projects, perhaps
only Debian had successfully crossed the line from "medium" to "large". 
It does seem common around here to criticise them for constant politics
and being almost stuck, sometimes, but that's one thing they've done that
few others have managed.  Whatever their problems, they must be doing
/something/ that works.

That of course leads to the question of when and how they did it.  It was
before my time in FLOSS I believe, but perhaps something can be learned by
going back and examining the Debian history at that time.  Did they nudge
it for awhile and then something changed and they were suddenly able to
expand, or did they cross the 200 developer line as if it wasn't there? 
If the former, perhaps we can learn from what changed.  If the latter, it
might be tougher.

Then there's the question of whether it's even worth it on the merits. 
Certainly, it would seem Gentoo has a higher efficiency level, doing with
<200 roughly what it takes them >2000 (I believe) to do.  Sure, they
aren't as limited, but >10 times?  Hardly!



-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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