How contributors participate in this community?

[maxj]

Hi, I am a phd student of Peking University. My interest is to

investigate hybrid projects (open source and backed by companies), e.g,

how it affects volunteers compared to the beginning open and free world.

I studied jboss through its log files in SVN, issue reports in Issue

Tracker, emailing-lists and information all over Internet, found some

interesting results, also have a couple of questions, hope any of you

wouldn't mind reading and answering.

JBoss seems to go through four periods since is was born in 1999.

period1: 2000.04-2001.03, pure open source project

period2: 2001.06-2004.02, hybrid project under JBoss Group LLC., aimed to Offering professional services

period3: 2004.06-2006.02, hybrid project under JBoss Inc., claimed to build "Professional Open Source"

period4: 2006.10-2010.08(to the date of my investigation), hybrid project under Redhat, to build "Professional Open Source"

If I'm wrong, please correct me.

1) It seems that JBoss gets less external developers after Redhat's

acquiring -- I identified external developers through their

emails (according to the domain of the contact email addresses in JIRA, mail-list archives: with domains “@jboss.org”, “@jboss.com”, or

“@redhat.com” to be internal for JBossAS; otherwise, to be extenal).

Is that because a new protocol requires a long process to get commit

privilege? Or, people just simply didn't like any commercial companies

getting involved therefore ran away? E.g, "There had been rumors

swirling about various people leaving JBoss after its acquisition by Red

Hat, including Marc Fleury." (See

http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=43410)

I also observed that Geronimo showed the similar phenomena IBM stepped

in. I suppose commercial involvement might hurt people in open source to

some extent, I wonder what it is.

2) However, I found JBoss developers stay longer after JBoss LLC./Inc.

was founded and especially after Redhat acquired it.

It looks like JBoss Inc. and Redhat hired a lot people working on it.

I guess people would be happy if they are paid to do something they are

happy to do. This is the bright side of hybrids, isn't it?

Are there any specific strategies Redhat would do to keep experienced

people who have been contributing a long time in the project?

3) People always say one big advantage of oss is to have a big amount of

users reporting issues therefore help improve quality. However, I found

less issues are reported by users after Redhat acquired JBoss. Is

that because many users tend to post questions and issues on on JBoss

Community Forum where the response is faster? Or is that because

Redhat restrict the usage of JIRA so as to ensure the issue quality,

such as it requires users to first ask in forum then in JIRA?

I also found developers are the majority of issue reporters, not only in

jboss, but also in geronimo nowdays. I was wondering, is that because

jira is more for developers now (users r in forum)? Or, developers are

required to report before jumping into fixing/changing code?

I believe what JBoss is doing has great implications for software

engineering, e.g, how to build a better community, what are the best

practices to attract participators. I would greatly appreciate any

comments you might have.

[maxj]

Hi,

   Sorry to bother you again. Since beforehand i had no idea about how to ask for help on these questions about JBoss, and I think although these questions are not directly related to the techniques of JBoss but do related to the development and community building of JBoss, then I chose to post here.  Hoping for any insights about these questions, Or any insights about other spaces/ways/individuals/... to ask for help!  Please wouldn't mind informing me. I would be very grateful of any reply.

   Thanks very much for taking your time!

Best,

[jaikiran]

This is the right place. I wanted to reply earlier but have been caught up with some other important tasks for now. I'll come back to this soon.

[maxj]

  Thank you! Then I am feeling relieved to find the right place. Never mind, and I am very grateful for your reading and concerning. Looking forward to replying from you:-)

[maxj]

Sorry to trouble you again. How is things going on? And any ideas about my questions? How about the time epochs, do they match the reality? 

[babydragon]

I was wondering if you'll be able to read this thread again and offer some feedback. I also work on this research topic, wondering if JBOSS people have any insights to share about how you achieve success through combining commercial practice with FLOSS practice.