Ohloh shows scary decline in open-source project commits • Hacker News Board

Re: Ohloh shows scary decline in open-source project commits

#21

Post by nakkiel » Wed, Oct 13, 2010, 5:26 PM UTC

ciupicri wrote: post #17

davidu wrote: post #12

Are they tracking commits made to github?

They're tracking any open source project that's registered on their website. If you have or know about an open source project that's not on Ohloh, you'll have to register it and specify its repositories (and branches).

Well, then a possible explanation is that people don't submit much projects to their website anymore and thus there are only "old" projects that are getting more and more mature and thus needing less commits.

I couldn't find any figure to back this though.

But I do remember that Ohloh used to be quite popular and I'm sure as hell that it's not anymore.

Re: Ohloh shows scary decline in open-source project commits

#22

Post by there » Wed, Oct 13, 2010, 5:33 PM UTC

ciupicri wrote: post #17

davidu wrote: post #12

Are they tracking commits made to github?

They're tracking any open source project that's registered on their website. If you have or know about an open source project that's not on Ohloh, you'll have to register it and specify its repositories (and branches).

Ohloh shows scary decline in open-source project additions to Ohloh

Re: Ohloh shows scary decline in open-source project commits

#23

Post by febeling » Wed, Oct 13, 2010, 5:52 PM UTC

there wrote: post #22

ciupicri wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're tracking any open source project that's registered on their website. If you have or know about an open source project that's not on Ohloh, you'll have to register it and specify its repositories (and branches).

Ohloh shows scary decline in open-source project additions to Ohloh

That the most probable explanation, I believe. But did you find a real figure somewhere? I couldn't.

Re: Ohloh shows scary decline in open-source project commits

#24

Post by sprout » Wed, Oct 13, 2010, 6:01 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #9

sprout wrote: post #5

Seems to shadow the recession. I wonder how this compares to closed-source commits.

One theory: programmer utilization at companies has increased with the recession, so there is less time for open-source commits. Another theory: a huge fraction of open-source in recent years is written by programmers paid by companies to work on it. The recession has caused these programmers to be pulled off and put on projects where their time can be billed directly. Third theory, there is more use of distributed v…

Well, in contrast to the second theory, there's the possibility that open source commits and closed source commits look pretty much the same. They're mostly done by people looking to get a paycheck, and without a paycheck the quantity drops. People aren't necessarily being pulled off open source to work on closed source, they're just being laid off (which seems supported by the unemployment stats.)

Re: Ohloh shows scary decline in open-source project commits

#25

Post by CedriK » Wed, Oct 13, 2010, 6:37 PM UTC

You did the graph for C. Common!

Should add C++ and C#...ain't much of a decline.

Re: Ohloh shows scary decline in open-source project commits

#26

Post by amujumdar » Wed, Oct 13, 2010, 6:49 PM UTC

wingo wrote: post #2

NumPy: -157,525 lines of code, mostly written in Modula-2. http://www.ohloh.net/p/numpy

That's an embarrassing error in our processing. We just acquired Ohloh and are working hard to identify all such issues and fix them. Stay tuned!

Re: Ohloh shows scary decline in open-source project commits

#27

Post by amujumdar » Wed, Oct 13, 2010, 7:05 PM UTC

We at Black Duck noticed it too. So far, looks like the decline is largely because, lately Ohloh - a) hasn't kept up with discovering new projects. b) hasn't paid needed attention to keeping existing projects up to date.

We'll provide more details once transition is over (we just acquired Ohloh from Geeknet).

Re: Ohloh shows scary decline in open-source project commits

#28

Post by twymer » Wed, Oct 13, 2010, 8:19 PM UTC

What about the possibility of the emergence of distributed version control? Perhaps this is causing less actual commits to the actual project, but not necessarily less code being written.