Hey all, in an attempt to better understand FOSS, I've decided to see how the FOSS development cycle works, compared to the propitiatory software development cycle. If anybody would care to tell me about it, or even just link me to an article, I'd be very grateful

-Dante

Hi,

The development cycle depends more on the project and its staff than its type (Free/Libre Software or proprietary).

In both worlds you have projects that are one-man-show, released-when-ready, released-by-schedule, feature-release-based...

There isn't necessarily a difference.

Sure, proprietary software is often developed in long cycles, with little or no feedback from users in between. But often doesn't mean always and not all FOSS development is based on release-early-release-often.

Cheers,
_

As I've come to understand it, a propitery software development cycle seems to dispense with community feedback, rather they are far more interested in development that increases the company's value and chances of survival, even if this means they exploit certain aspects of it and stop developing others.

Historically everything was developed in a waterfall; development went towards a goal with no feedback; then in the 1980s the idea of cycles became popular as this brought feedback into the development at about the time that continuous improvement became one of the themes in quality management.

However, as already pointed out, most people in FOSS were not brought up in this environment and so have developed a wider range of models - some of which are like continuous improvement models but others of which involve parallel development in which separate branches are developed and then merged. None of this is normally planned; everything is much more evolutionary.

NB There is some interesting strategic management research which says that planning makes no difference in good times, only in bad times, when those who have thought about the direction in which they are going appear to do better BUT how they do this is irrelevant. What is significant is that they have a clear goal that enables them to focus on what they need to do in bad times.

I think it's safe to say that in FOSS, reinventing the wheel isnt done 'quite' as often as in other models.