USENIX 2004 Annual Technical Conference, FREENIX Track Abstract
Pp. 93102 of the Proceedings
Managing Volunteer Activity in Free Software Projects
Martin Michlmayr, University of Melbourne
Abstract
During the last few years, thousands of volunteers have created a large body of free software. Even though this accomplishment shows that the free software development model works, there are some drawbacks associated with this model. Due to the volunteer nature of most free software projects, it is impossible to fully rely on participants. Volunteers may become busy and neglect their duties. This may lead to a steady decrease of quality as work is not being carried out. The problem of inactive volunteers is intensified by the fact that most free software projects are distributed, which makes it hard to quickly identify volunteers who neglect their duties. This paper shows Debian's approach to inactive volunteers. Insights presented here can be applied to other free software projects in order to implement effective quality assurance strategies.
- View the full text of this paper in HTML and PDF.
The Proceedings are published as a collective work, © 2004 by the USENIX Association. All Rights Reserved. Rights to individual papers remain with the author or the author's employer. Permission is granted for the noncommercial reproduction of the complete work for educational or research purposes. USENIX acknowledges all trademarks within this paper.
- If you need the latest Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can download it from Adobe's site.
|