Looking beyond the programmers
Is Linus Torvalds important to open-source software? Of course. Guido van Rossum, who created the popular programming language Python? Sure! Michael « Monty » Widenius of MySQL fame? Certainly. OK, what about Robert Love? Eben Moglen? Or Jono Bacon? Who? Exactly. They latter three are, in order: the author of Linux in a Nutshell, arguably the most important Linux book; the leading open-source GPL attorney; and perhaps the top open-source community guru. Would open-source software exist without them? Yes. But, would it look the same? No. No it wouldn’t. We’ve always known that open source is more than its developers. Open source is also the people who document it, popularise it, organise the communities that support it and, yes, lead the companies that monetise it. But, how do you measure their value? That’s a good question without an obvious good answer. For programmers, it’s relatively easy. Once you get rid of the insane idea that programming productivity could be measured by lines of code (LoC) per day, like so many factory workers making widgets, you can come up with reasonable metrics. These include a variety of Key Performance Indicators (KPI)s. These will vary from project to project, but once you’ve worked out what really matters in your programs, it’s not too hard. Of course, KPIs can be abused. We’re looking at you, Huawei, with some of your Linux « contributions. » My favorite metric, though, comes from Eric Elliott, author of Composing Software, who said: « The best way to be a 10x developer is to help 5 other developers be 2x developers. » That’s very open source in spirit! But documentation? Legal help? Community development? There’s no way to give those GitHub Stars.
