| Subject | Re: Firebird Versions (was Firebird's slogan) |
|---|---|
| Author | paulruizendaal |
| Post date | 2005-04-24T09:58:24Z |
--- In Firebird-general@yahoogroups.com, "Miroslav Penchev"
*NO*, I disagree. This may have been true back in 2000 and the
PostgreSQL folk have been very active in pushing that theme. It
simply is not true anymore.
1. Our development numbers have increased significantly ovr the last
two years. There are now at least 6 companies with core engine
engineering capabilities. Including the driver teams (as others do),
we have somewhere between 30 and 100 developers. There are very few
pieces of software which such a big developer base, proprietary or
open source.
2. Numbers do not mean everything: it is about how productive the
team is. Some projects claim to have a big developer base, but they
progress slowly. Perhaps they waste too much time chatting. Perhaps
the difference is on the individual level: some developers are 10
times more productive than others. I happen to think that we have a
high share of the super-productive developers on our team. How many
developers can migrate a complex code base from C to C++ in a year?
You did it.
3. It is also about strategy and 'elephants cannot dance' and all
that. Back around 300BC, Alexander defeated Darius. Darius had 1
million troops, Alexander had about 30,000. Alexander had realised
that only the front 1,000 men could possibly be fighting at any one
time and that capturing Darius was enough to win. Working with fewer
on the right things is more useful than working with many on the
wrong things.
The above being said, it is of course always a good thing to attract
more, good developers. Bob Young, the founder of Red Hat, once told
me how surprised he was at the number of exceptional quality people
that just show up at open source projects. Let's make sure we welcome
them in as they appear.
Hi Miroslav,
to-do list. I am sure Dmitry Yemanov can think of many things he
needs help with. I could use some help with Java and .NET stored
procedures. Whatever takes your fancy.
> On Sun, 24 Apr 2005 04:13:22 -0400, Claudio Valderrama C.Claudio,
> > One thing that worries me is that already some competitors have
> > highlighted an unquestionable fact: the small numbers of active
> > core developers in this project.
*NO*, I disagree. This may have been true back in 2000 and the
PostgreSQL folk have been very active in pushing that theme. It
simply is not true anymore.
1. Our development numbers have increased significantly ovr the last
two years. There are now at least 6 companies with core engine
engineering capabilities. Including the driver teams (as others do),
we have somewhere between 30 and 100 developers. There are very few
pieces of software which such a big developer base, proprietary or
open source.
2. Numbers do not mean everything: it is about how productive the
team is. Some projects claim to have a big developer base, but they
progress slowly. Perhaps they waste too much time chatting. Perhaps
the difference is on the individual level: some developers are 10
times more productive than others. I happen to think that we have a
high share of the super-productive developers on our team. How many
developers can migrate a complex code base from C to C++ in a year?
You did it.
3. It is also about strategy and 'elephants cannot dance' and all
that. Back around 300BC, Alexander defeated Darius. Darius had 1
million troops, Alexander had about 30,000. Alexander had realised
that only the front 1,000 men could possibly be fighting at any one
time and that capturing Darius was enough to win. Working with fewer
on the right things is more useful than working with many on the
wrong things.
The above being said, it is of course always a good thing to attract
more, good developers. Bob Young, the founder of Red Hat, once told
me how surprised he was at the number of exceptional quality people
that just show up at open source projects. Let's make sure we welcome
them in as they appear.
Hi Miroslav,
> I am working on that - In the near future (after digging a littleWelcome into the developer community. There is a ton of work on the
> more in source code ;) - it is 'interesting' source code :) ) I
> will offer my skills in C/C++ to the project :)
to-do list. I am sure Dmitry Yemanov can think of many things he
needs help with. I could use some help with Java and .NET stored
procedures. Whatever takes your fancy.