COUNTING.RST Our community (being OpenStack) is guided primarily by aspirational standards, rather than expository regulations. We have HACKING.rst for coding style. This is a proposed COUNTING.rst to talk about how we measure ourselves. It's based on conversations I had with Stefano Maffuli and others, after the launch of Stackalytics.com and s…

COUNTING.rst

COUNTING.RST

Open Source projects and communities, like most things, are full of humans. Humans have egos.

WE FOCUS ON the CARROT, and not the STICK

• COUNT things in a way to PRAISE many, without CONDEMNING some.

0. Count all the things

• Don't report on just coding

  • Report on bugs filed
  • Report on reviews
  • Report on meetups hosted
  • Report on email threads contributed to
  • Report on speeches given
  • Report on deployments achieved

• Count all the repos (http://git.openstack.org/cgit)

1. Don't count LOC except as a last resort

   • Count number of modules
   • Count number of tests
   • Count change to cyclomatic complexity

2. Count within a module, not across modules
3. Count within a language, not across languages

4. Count company absolutes, if you have to, but favor counting deltas

   • Increase in contributors (by percentage)
   • Increase in rate of contributions (by percentage)

5. Count WITH, not VERSUS
6. Favor INCLUDING more things in the counting

Projects that count with these principles in mind could be referred to as "Open Count Software" or something.

I like the specifics and the framework of this. Thinking about the cultural aspects, I think you may be tipped more towards tracking & reporting (which are "softer") than counting. I like the tracking deltas > tracking absolutes.

It's true, what's measured gets results. I'd add what results you want to get in these counters because I think that would add valuable perspective.

(note: Victor Lowther is reading over my shoulder and thinks that you need to provide a link for cyclomatic complexity)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclomatic_complexity

More "all things" that may need different counting methods: Documentation, Translation