Understanding the Effects of Practices on KDE Ecosystem Health
Introduces a modification to Softgoal Interdependency Graph (SIG) models to study software ecosystem (SECO) health. Other than the introduction of terms and a list of the practicies from KDE.
Principled Evaluation of Strengths and Weaknesses in FLOSS Communities: A Systematic Mixed Methods Maturity Model Approach
Proposes a maturity model for FLOSS communities. The paper suggests that more "traditional" metrics based approaches to studying FLOSS communities do not by themselves provide guidance regarding opportunities for improvement which is of use to FLOSS community managers. TODO: pick up reading from page 40
Release Management in Free Software Projects: Practices and Problems
Categorizes "release management" into three categories
- development releases
- major user releases
- minor user releases
and focuses on user releases due to the greater complexity required in coordinating them. Repeats the dual classifcation of release strategy
- Feature based release strategy
- time based release strategy
discussed some skills that a release manager should have
- community building
- strong vision
- discipline
- judgement
- attention to detail
- good communication
- management skills
then briefly discussed common release management practices
- freezing
- scheduling
- establishing milestones
- setting deadlines
- building on different architectures
- user testing
- following a release checklist
- holding a post-release review
before finishing with common challenges faced by FOSS projects
- major features not ready
- interdependencies
- supporting old releases
- lack of interest in creating user releases vs development releases
- vendors shipping development releases
- long periods without testing
- problem of coordination
all of the problems listed are probably familiar to someone who has been involved in a release process before.