He does admit however that GitHub has been a saviour or of sorts for the open source world. He says that 'forking' used to be a bad word before GitHub because forked projects would often lead to split loyalties and a dwindling interest. But with GitHub, since the process of forking is very simple and has a negligible investment, it takes away that risk but instead enables experimentation; a majority of forks can die, but progress will still be made. GitHub also lowers the transaction cost required to get a new developers code into a repository, be it the central, or a forked repository. Further, since the process of forking also brings ownership with it, one does not need permissions anymore before they can begin to experiment and contribute test code.

He also suggests that such data would allow I tried searching for a community live version of this dashboard hosted online, but was only able to better understand itself from find a developer's perspective. An example he gives surrounds the unknown period screen-shot of time a developer has to wait after submitting a patch but before it gets reviews, viewable [http://eaves.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/main-board-everything1.png here]. Since this process is not standardized, Some aspects of it often leads seem similar to frustrations which might convert to quits. According to Eavesthe statistics that GitHub offers per repository, average wait times will become self-apparent, and if though they begin to slide in individual cases, then moderators could be chastized for their delays. In this way, community data can be used hard to introspection to find efficiencies and standardsunderstand for larger projects.

I tried searching for He also suggests that such data would allow a community to better understand itself from a live version developer's perspective. An example he gives surrounds the unknown period of this dashboard hosted online, but was only able time a developer has to find wait after submitting a screen-shot of patch before itgets reviewed. Since this process is not standardized, viewable [http://eavesit often leads to frustrations which might convert to quits.ca/wpAccording to Eaves, average wait times will become self-content/uploads/2011/04/main-board-everything1apparent, and if they begin to slide in individual cases, then moderators could be chastized for their delays.png here]. Some aspects of it seem similar to the statistics that GitHub offers per repositoryIn this way, though they community data can be hard used for introspection to understand for larger projectsfind efficiencies and standards.

Finally Eaves gives an example of how open data has helped a client of his in the open government model. The city of Los Angeles recently made restaurant inspection data open, and required it to be posted on every establishment's door (much like in Toronto.) According to Eaves, this led to restaurants with poor records receiving fewer customers and those with better records a higher number. In other words, good restaurants were rewarded and poor restaurants punished. He also noted that there has been a decline in the number of patients that visit the emergency room with food poisoning, a fact that he says is likely grounded in this freeing of information.

Other than his role in open government, I particularly found Eaves' analysis on the challenges of open source communities interesting. Lately I have been really buying into the idea than an open source project needs not only the relevant licenses to be efficient, but also a community. For example, Google's Chromium Browser is an open source project released largely under a BSD license. However it is still largely developed behind closed doors, code from which is dumped externally afterwards with an open source license. This is in contrast to a project like Mozilla Firefox, which not only has an open source license, but also a large and thriving community working on it. The former has a very small community of developers relatively speaking (mostly Google employees), and is hence largely unknown to the public as an open source project. Eaves' analysis speaks to the mechanics of that community building and can perhaps be used to see why certain projects out there are more popular than others.