Living with 1000 Open Source
Projects Dr Nic Williams, tallest person at Mocra @drnic · http://drnicwilliams.com · http://mocra.com

Pacific Ocean Trips

Pacific Ocean Trips RubyConf 2007:
9am Sunday 50% Awake

Pacific Ocean Trips RubyConf 2007:
9am Sunday 50% Awake FutureRuby 2009: 10am Sunday 50% Canadian

Pacific Ocean Trips RubyConf 2007:
9am Sunday 50% Awake FutureRuby 2009: 10am Sunday 50% Canadian

Two types
(OSS project)
founders…

A. Nurture and converse “Do
you care?”

B. Previously A “Do it
yourself”

Life as an A-type is
awesome…

Life as an A-type is
awesome… until it is not

“Saying Goodbye”

Jamis vs Dr Nic Proof
of Jamis’s awesomeness Downloads 500000 375000 250000 125000 0 Capistrano Composite Keys NewGem RubiGen source: http://gems.rubyforge.org/stats.html

Jamis vs Dr Nic Proof
of Jamis’s awesomeness Downloads 500000 375000 250000 125000 0 Capistrano Composite Keys NewGem RubiGen source: http://gems.rubyforge.org/stats.html

Jamis vs Dr Nic Proof
of Jamis’s awesomeness Downloads 500000 375000 250000 125000 0 Capistrano Composite Keys NewGem RubiGen source: http://gems.rubyforge.org/stats.html

Jamis vs Dr Nic Proof
of Jamis’s awesomeness Downloads 500000 375000 250000 125000 0 Capistrano Composite Keys NewGem RubiGen source: http://gems.rubyforge.org/stats.html

Jamis vs Dr Nic Proof
of Jamis’s awesomeness Downloads 500000 375000 250000 125000 0 Capistrano Composite Keys NewGem RubiGen source: http://gems.rubyforge.org/stats.html

! Disclaimer My projects aren’t
wildly popular

80 60 40 20 0
mid-2007 mid-2008 mid-2009 I just have heaps of them

Some formulas… X projects/yr x
40 years = ? 5 projects/yr x 40 years = 200 25 projects/yr x 40 years = 1000 1000 projects x ½hr/wk = 500hr/wk There are only 168 hrs in a week

OSS projects don’t scale but
neither does raising pets nor children

A dog trainer having a
pet dog vs maintaining many dogs

A teacher having a pet
child vs maintaining many children

An OSS owner having a
pet project vs maintaining many projects

What to maintain? pet projects
and libraries you need each day

and abandon the rest
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robbyrussell/243693247/

Maintenance Goal:
Zero Effort

Aim: Manage expectations

• Publish project status •
Facilitate group therapy • Forward emails to mailing list Aim: Reduce bad karma

Aim: Community self-sufficiency

Centralised patches

Centralised patches

$ gem install defunkt-github #
super lazy $ cd your/project $ gh pull username --merge $ rake test $ git push # update History.txt for next release Use: Command line tools

Add: Admins/contributors

Aim: Zero maintenance cost

require 'rubygems' gem 'hoe', '>=
2.1.0' require 'hoe' Hoe.plugin :newgem Hoe.plugin :cucumberfeatures Hoe.spec 'looksee' do developer 'George Ogata', 'george.ogata@gmail.com' end Packaging: Hoe/Echoe for Gems

ChocTop.new do |s| s.host =
'commitchat.com' s.base_url = 'http://commitchat.com/dl' s.remote_dir = '/opt/apps/commitchat/dl' s.background_file = "dmgbg.png" s.volume_icon = 'VolumeIcon.icns' s.app_icon_position = [106, 83] s.applications_icon_position = [422, 83] s.applications_icon = "dmgappico.png" end Packaging: ChocTop for DMGs

Packaging: ChocTop for DMGs

• Test frameworks: ............... •
Reuse processes: rake • Create tools: newgem • Promote your process: blog Aim: zero process cost

5 mins to run tests
30 mins looking at bug reports Aim: zero defects

5 mins to run tests
0 7.5 15 22.5 30 30 mins looking at bug reports Aim: zero defects

$ cucumber features/development.feature Scenario: Generate
RubyGem Given this project is active project folder And "pkg" folder is deleted When I invoke task "rake gem" Then folder "pkg" is created And file with name matching "pkg/*.gem" is created 1 scenario (1 passed) 6 steps (6 passed) QA test packaging

Aim for zero • Don’t
use it? Don’t maintain it • Manage expectations • Community self-sufficiency • Zero process cost • Zero defects

Use your spare time •
Find a hobby • Talk to your spouse • Create more projects

Create a new project newgem
my_project cd my_project git init git add . git commit -m "initial" github create-from-local

Thank you Canada Dr Nic
Williams drnicwilliams.com · @drnic