πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί David Ross πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ is a user on mastodon.social. You can follow them or interact with them if you have an account anywhere in the fediverse. If you don't, you can sign up here.
πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί David Ross πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ @david_ross

"How do you measure the impact of your project? What value does your project provide to other projects? How is your project important within an open source ecosystem? Can you predict your project's using open source that you can follow day to day?"

opensource.com/article/18/5/me

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Bob Mottram πŸ”§ β˜• βœ… @bob@soc.freedombone.net
@david_ross When I was younger I was more interested in measuring things, but now I think a lot of the obsessions with metrics are misplaced. Often metrics are meaningless. Trying to measure the worth of a developer or the impact of a project is a fool's errand. I saw a few comically bad attempts to do this at my last company.

You can get a rough idea of how popular a project is by the number of bugs and feature requests. Trying to know who is using your software or for what purposes is difficult without resorting to spyware and a centralized mindset.
πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί David Ross πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ @david_ross

@bob I fail to see how bug tracking aligns with inderstanding the positive real impact of an open source project. They are totally different animals.

Bob Mottram πŸ”§ β˜• βœ… @bob@soc.freedombone.net
@david_ross It gives an intuitive sense of how much real engagement there is with the project. Someone has to care about the project to file a bug or even just a complaint.
Bob Mottram πŸ”§ β˜• βœ… @bob@soc.freedombone.net
@david_ross You can sometimes also look at the diversity of people submitting issues. Is it all people from one company, or a wider range? Things like that help to determine fake popularity from real impact.
ءفر @charlyblack

@bob @david_ross there are some similarities with the "quantified self" approach to well-being here, which imo suffers from the same flaws ;)

Bob Mottram πŸ”§ β˜• βœ… @bob@soc.freedombone.net
@charlyblack @david_ross It's all based on a reasonable engineering premise that if you can't measure something then you can't understand or improve it. This works in domains where feedback and network effects are negligible, like mechanical engineering, but in social systems feedback anf networked dependencies are everywhere and a reductionist approach tends to result in absurd outcomes.
ءفر @charlyblack

@bob @david_ross word. luckily we always have strong policies to implement ethical guidances/ audits/rules when tech tools have impact on social systems πŸ˜‚

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί David Ross πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ @david_ross

@charlyblack @bob Well yes. But correlating positive insights from open source software use with SPYWARE is, laughably disingenuous.

ءفر @charlyblack

@david_ross @bob oh I was not implying such a correlation, sorry if it came out that way

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