Baling Wire, Bailing Buckets, or Bailing Out
How can we tell when a free software project is in danger?
Presented by:
Kaylea Champion is a graduate student in the Department of Communication at University of Washington, with a background in tech support and system administration. As a member of the Community Data Science Collective, her work focuses on online communities and the differences between what people want and what they do. She's been using Linux since 1994.
Bugs and problems are a reality in software engineering. Some bugs threaten to sink entire application stacks and lurk undetected, while others are low-priority irritants. Some projects are able to improve rapidly and respond to issues, while others struggle. Meanwhile, our distributions are composed of thousands of projects.
As developers, users, and supporters of FLOSS, how can we tell the difference between the everyday reality of imperfect ever-changing work and the signs of pending disaster? What are the signals of health and risk for a FLOSS project?
In this talk, I'll translate recent findings in computer science and social science research into The Awful Eight -- eight practical signs of potential trouble in a free software project, each with suggested strategies and resources for developers and users to detect and address them.
- Date:
- Duration:
- 45 min
- Conference:
- LinuxFest Northwest 2019
- Language:
- Track:
- Infrastructure
- Difficulty:
- Easy