Reading about Google keeping their long tradition of discontinuing products/services, often after just a few years[1]. On the other hand, the minimal "bus factor"[2] of my open source offerings is one of the stated reasons for people to not use them, even though the vast majority of the 200+ https://thi.ng/ libraries & tools has been actively maintained for much longer than many Google projects (99% by this single person)... Even many of my older projects which are defunkt by now have had an active period which outlasted many Google services, and — crucially — they're are stable, still available and can still be used now (e.g. my Java library collection developed between 2005-2013 still has regular users)...

Maybe internal politics, re-orgs and layoffs in BigTech are an equal/bigger risk factor for users (aside from other differences in design philosophy and resulting coupling and tech debt, e.g. massive all-in frameworks vs. lightweight composable pick-n-mix toolkits)? 🤔

[1] https://killedbygoogle.com/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor

#OpenSource #BusFactor #Maintenance

Please share with your colleagues:
Asking all US-based scientists:
Are there repositories of #OpenAccess papers etc. pp. that need mirrored?
(I'm proud #GuerillaOpenAccess, but not currently trying to do an Aaron Swartz #RIP 😢)

You've got research to safeguard?
Consider uploading to https://zenodo.org (run by CERN, well established, trustworthy, you can private your uploads)

To organize: https://matrix.to/#/#safeguarding-research:matrix.org
(Everyone welcome! #BusFactor)

@academicchatter @academicsunite

@jeanbaptistemarie : Une seule personne, c'est pas terrible pour le #busfactor !

stop using niche #linux distributions already p l e a s e.

just use #debian, #ubuntu, #fedora, or even #opensuse. these titanic collective efforts are so much better at creating a good, reliable, secure, and accessible computing environment than today's Distro Of The Week with a #BusFactor of one (1).

thank you.

@tlaurion @jrf_nl @opencollective Listening to the keynote, I wrote for communal clarity in case of #maintainer #death and how to continue maintenance of my #FOSS #projects.

https://github.com/niccokunzmann/case-of-death

Really, I wonder how to reach out to increase the #busFactor of my projects. But in case this has not happened tomorrow, there is my #software #will :)

My intention is also to flag up the issues we face as a community.

@beyondmachines1

talk about a #busfactor !!

@vaurora: In this case it was rather "not enough people involved" istead of "too many involved": See #busfactor and https://xkcd.com/2347 #xkcd2347

This was only possible because the original maintainer did that work alone and seems to have been close to a #burnout and urgently needed someone to step in. So it was easy to get the co-maintainer position without long-time #trust being involved.

#JiaT75 #xzorcist #xz #FLOSS

Funny... But lets not forget the real unprofessional problem is for a company to rely on a #BusFactor of 1.

(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor)

@dansup as far as I know, you do almost all of the development on pixelfed yourself. Would this be an opportunity to move to a maintainer team?

#busfactor

People who use GitHub: have you designated an account successor in case something happens to you?

A successor cannot log into your account, but can manage your public repositories after presenting proof of your death.

Probably something we should all do sooner rather than later, especially if we're responsible for projects that other people rely on …

https://docs.github.com/en/account-and-profile/setting-up-and-managing-your-personal-account-on-github/managing-access-to-your-personal-repositories/maintaining-ownership-continuity-of-your-personal-accounts-repositories
#GitHub #BusFactor

@johnm I have similar concerns about #CondaForge #BusFactor again from the perspective of a minor contributor to/of a few recipes.

🚌 Facteur de bus : évitez de mettre tous vos œufs dans le même panier

J'ai discuté avec quelqu'un dont le CTO était la seule personne à intervenir sur les parties critiques de leur application. Cela m’a rappelé le concept du "Bus Factor."

#BusFactor #Collaboration #SharingKnowledge #DevTeam

J'explique 🧵👇[1/4]

The Bus Factor is a prelude to the disaster. The fact that only one person has all the knowledge puts at risk your whole team and, potentially, your organization

https://optimistengineer.substack.com/p/how-to-melt-the-bus-factor-on-your

#optimistengineer #busfactor #startup #europe #softwareengineering #engineering #experiences #growth #techlead #engineeringmanager #makers #software #learnings #technology #summertime

🔴 The Bus Factor is a prelude to the disaster. The fact that only one person has all the knowledge puts at risk your whole team and, potentially, your organization

https://optimistengineer.substack.com/p/how-to-melt-the-bus-factor-on-your

#optimistengineer #experience #growth #share #engineer #softwareengineering #softwaredevelopment #startup #busfactor #learnings #techlead

🔴New issue of The Optimist Engineer newsletter @optimistengineer

The Bus Factor represents the risk of having all the knowledge, that is critical for your business (either a company or a dev team), in one single person or a small set of people. In today's issue, I share my experience about this and some advice to avoid this happening

https://open.substack.com/pub/optimistengineer/p/how-to-melt-the-bus-factor-on-your?r=nw9bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

#optimistengineer #experience #growth #share #engineer #softwareengineering #softwaredevelopment #startup #busfactor #learnings #techlead

A few of my bigger projects have additional contributors, but outside of @dedication_bot it's a 1.

One thing I'm doing for my personal site and @botwiki is that articles are automatically backed up to https://web.archive.org, plus most of my work is open-sourced, so at least it should be possible to resurrect most of it.

#opensource #SideProjects #BusFactor

What is a typical bus factor on your personal side projects?

How do you go about increasing it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor

#poll #survey #SideProjects #projects #BusFactor #webdev #developers

@thor Maybe you could partner with a trusted admin from another instance to address the #busfactor problem ? 🤔

(#BerserkerTown is awesome, thank you very much! 🙏)

@ariadne You've addressed the #BusFactor? Good going.

@ij Possibly side-tracking, but I'm curious: do you have, plan to have or consider having a team of moderators? My impression (as a user) is that doing both the admin job and the moderation job is quite time-consuming. Also, a risky thing to have a #BusFactor of 1.