How do we calculate the "value" of .NET OSS Projects?
Opened this issue · 2 comments
To accomplish #1, I think we'll want to try to get to a unit of value for OSS software. Obviously, we'll only ever get into ballpark range, but if we could get to any sort of standard comparison, we could help calculate a sort of standard measure of what companies should reasonably give back.
As a community, we're well aware that the research and the brainpower that goes into OSS goes far beyond lines of code or number of hours, and I think we should attempt to account for that as well.
What I want to try to figure out is some sort of number of cost or dev-hours for a project based upon:
- Number of contributors
- Business value provided (time saved)
- Use throughout a given codebase (e.g. is it a whole framework? Is it a small utility?)
- What it would take for another team to replicate the project @ a company's current rate for devs
- etc.
The only methodology I've seen so far is COCOMO, and my understanding is that it's universally known to be not so great.
Thoughts on how we can get there?
Great comment from @Adron via Twitter:
Including the management interruptions & other errata that would take place on a non-OSS project that isn't self-organizing?
I think this is an awesome point and that we could make it well. OSS relieves a lot of the overhead involved in most companies' development processes, and self-organization a big key to that.
(similarly, I see those aspects of the OSS discipline as things that could be highly beneficial to businesses who adopt them. So this could also apply to #11 OR #6 as well.
+1