Identifying Issues

Identifying the Issues

We are still trying to sort out how to work in these new ways.  I look at projects like Drupal and see a thriving and vibrant community of developers, and yet it is also a huge frustrating mess with each successive version creating significant compatibility issues with the prior modules and versions yet still not correcting simple, fundamental things (like adding possessive forms to people’s names with “ ‘s “ even when their name already ends in “s”).

• How many OSS projects get pulled in multiple directions by people with different goals such that they fail to serve any of them well?
• How many projects have good ideas, and people who want to build them, but get stalled because of an inability to incorporate ideas and participation effectively?
• How often does a project get forked into a new one (the old one left to die) so that people can bypass political hurdles?
• How much redundant work is done on similar projects while there is no way of recognizing compatibilities of code?