Valve Handbook for new employess. A tour through Valve, a world-class video-game and distribution company with a flat structure.

Why you should read the source if your shop sells custom apps on top of a framework. HN original post. Related: The costs of going it alone & Working with upstream: an interview with Lazslo Peter.

¿El resultado? El gobierno español y 10 de las 17 comunidades autónomas declaran tener algún tipo de iniciativa. También dos grandes ciudades (Barcelona y Zaragoza) y cuatro medianas (Badalona, Lérida, Gijón, Córdoba). Parece tiempo de recordar a Sterling y su visión sobre la ciudad como unidad política básica. Parece tiempo del impulso de las ciudades medianas.

• Na dieta española, típicamente, a alimentación planifícase por semana -o luns peixe, o martes pasta, etc. Pola contra, na xaponesa, cómese multitude de elementos de tódolos tipos nunha mesma comida: o ciclo de planificación é diario.
• Na práctica do fútbol profesional, exercítanse varios aspectos: físicos, técnicos e tácticos ou psicolóxicos. Un entrenamento soe consistir en varios minutos de carreira continua (para entrenar os aspectos físicos),  para logo realizar exercicios técnicos e estratexia (lanzamento de córner ou saídas con balón) e finalmente charlas de preparación psicolóxicas. A metodoloxía da periodización táctica que exercitan Rui Faria e Mouriño levan a cabo un entrenamento integrado, con varios exercicios que potencian tódolos aspectos ó mesmo tempo.
• Na industria da creación de software, ata hai unha década, os productos concebíanse con ríxidas fases de producción, típicamente “análise > arquitectura > desenvolvemento > test > documentación”. Coa chegada do movemento agile, emerxe a idea de que é posible crear productos con ciclos máis curtos e iterativos onde se realicen tódalas fases simultáneamente.

O que me chama poderosamente a atención é ver como nos 3 casos se potencian os ciclos pequenos de actividade que alimentan os ciclos grandes. E dame por pensar si ése actuar fractalmente marcará diferencia algunha no éxito ou fracaso.

Non se perdan a historia dos indianos e irmáns García Naveira. A principios do século XX, impulsaron en Betanzos un modelo educativo e capitalista diferente. Ademáis de construir un parque enciclopédico precioso e de envexa mundial para a época:

Our intention (Fran and me) when this paper first poped out from our heads was to foster debate on the best practices around a free software project. While at CartoLab, we presented the idea to Alberto; he encouraged us to work on it and gave the time and resources needed; also in the later stages he contributed to polish the trends and conclusions. I’m deeply grateful for all his patience and empathy.

I’m very proud of the work we have done: the first study of this kind in the GIS arena, and somehow a picture of 10 years of FOSS4G software development (for the desktop side). I hope the study is worth the effort and it continues to create debates on how to better work together.

Is it something we could extrapolate from the data there?

This indicator gives us some sense on how the leadership changed and how the knowledge transfer was done in every project. The paper elaborates a bit more the points of turnover and integration of new blood in the project (highly correlated with this indicator) with statistics of top 10 developers.

All that will give us some insights on every project:

GRASS

• The charts and data depict how a new generation took over the leadership from 2005 onwards. The process seems to be happened in a very organic way -in the sense that people grew its skills at a steady pace for a long time- and also deep to the roots: from the top10 only 4 out of 10 people continue collaborating with the project.
• The data also shows how the top3 represent half of the work in the project, which suggest that several developers are highly involved with no one having too much influence (actually, the top contributor during 2010 means 40% of work).

gvSIG

• The charts and data depict a highly distributed team with a high rate of turnover. Top3 is responsible for less than half of the contributions, being top10 around 60%. The change of leadership happened very quickly around 2007 and only 2 out of 10 contributors from top 10 kept working in 2010.
• Besides, the top10 shows a homogeneous involvement in terms of number of contributions, which may reflect that all of them had a similar role and impact in the development of gvSIG.

QGIS

• The charts and data depict a project dependent of its top3 with a contributions-friendly culture. Top3 activity means a hight rate of contributions over total but seems they have integrated well new blood as 9 out of 10 most active developers working in QGIS have started in different years and continue involved.
• Top10 people have different ratios of involvement, ranging from 6% to 50%, which may reflect the heterogeneity of its core developer base (from volunteers to full-time developers).

Is it something we could extrapolate from the data there?

This indicator is intended to give us some information on the patterns of behavior of contributors. Specifically, we can track how is a typical week for the core developers in every project: the timeline shows when the integration happened, don’t reflect the time in which the work was done; so it’s telling us the history of people with commit permissions, what we know as the leaders.

Let’s try to extract some information from there:

GRASS

• Internationalization: the hourly chart represents a gauss bell centered on 15h GMT, which in most European countries would be after lunch, being morning in the Americas. That could reflect that both continents represent the vast majority of core commiters. Nevertheless, the work is relatively well distributed along different hourly zones.
• Volunteers: the daily chart shows a light drop of work during the weekend, likely due to hired developers or people who likely make contributions mostly within their working hours. Nevertheless, there is still a high rate of contributions being integrated during weekend, which may be a sign of a well stablished volunteer base of core-developers.

gvSIG

• Internationalization: almost all the integration happens in a journey from Monday to Friday, with a hourly range from 09:00 to 20:00 GMT. That is strongly correlated to the hours of opening of a typical shop in Spain and reflects the nature on how the application was built in that period: led by a public body which contracted development to Spanish firms.
• Volunteers: seems that volunteer work in core was reaching to none, which reflects the original nature of the project in that period.

QGIS

• Internationalization: the hourly chart is nearly to a plain rate of contributions, which is a strong sign of a highly distributed leadership along the world. It’s even difficult to suggest which zones would be the prominent in terms of developers.
• Volunteers: the daily chart reflects a steady work along the week, with no signs of falling during the weekend, which may be related to a strong base of volunteers core commiters.