
GitTrends estimates the Truck Factor of thousands of GitHub projects - nextjj
http://gittrends.io
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daly
Projects die when the original authors stop working on them.
github/sourceforge/savannah are littered with dead projects.

What causes this? I would argue that it is the development style and focus. We
still code the way we did when I worked on an 8k PDP-11. Memory constraints
forced small files, #include statements, overlay linkers, etc. To 'organize'
we invented 'informative names' for directories like 'src', 'test' (minimal),
and 'doc' (usually empty). This 'pile of sand' (POS) approach is still used
today. This POS style forces a focus on the code.

This focus on code has the side-effect of making everything else optional.
Projects are considered 'done' when you ship the code.

Successful commercial projects spend a lot of time on presentation and
documentation. Books are written, technical notes are available, for-profit
and/or online courses are available. The user interface is polished. All of
this without publishing a single line of code.

It is my belief that we need to develop a different style and focus for open
source. I believe that literate programming (ref: Knuth) will make it possible
for non-authors to maintain, modify, and improve programs. It will change the
style from POS and focus from 'only the code' to 'the WHY behind the code'.
Throwing POS code on github/sourceforge/savannah is certain death.

See 'Physically Based Rendering' by Pharr and Humphreys for a gold-standard
example.

