Ohloh is an open source network that connects people through the software they create and use. I’ve been monitoring it for some time and have been impressed with the direction it is going. It is gradually turning into a kind of social networking tool for open source programmers. It’s is not like the likes of MySpace and Facebook, relationships and activity is extracted from commit logs of open source projects so there is no need for people to manually maintain their relationships with others.
However, we should recognise that the approach of using version control commit logs is very limited. It does not recognise the contributions of users who report bugs and feature requests, assist in clarifying documentation and perform a great many other useful activities which do not show up in commit logs. It also misses people who do things like contribute to documentation (unless it is stored in version control) . Similarly, those who participate in design discussions on the mailing list are not credited. Finally, it does not recognise activities such as evangelism and community development.
Even when we recognise these limitations, and only focus on programmer activity, there are problems. Raw logs only indicate the number of commits, not the value of those commits. For example, someone running a script to format the code will be seen to have made a major contribution, but in fact they have not added any functional value to the project. Similarly, the user who submits a patch fixing a really sticky bug will not be spotted by OhLoh since the commit log will credit a committer, not the contributor, with the activity, furthermore, OhLoh has no way of knowing it was a complicated bug they squashed.
It is possible for users to indicate their non-commit activity on a project, and a Kudos system allows others to acknowledge the value of their peers contributions. But these details have to be manually maintained.
When considering these limitations, it should be recognised that OhLoh is quite young, but developing fast. Furthermore, it is about to publish an API that will allow other projects to extend its functionality. For example, I’m currently working on a proposal that will allow social networking profiles to be extracted from publicly archived mailing lists. Hopefully their API will enable me to feed this data back into OhLoh via the Simal project.
Even with its current limitations OhLoh is interesting, it may even be useful. I’ll be watching OhLoh with interest.
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