Ohloh
Encyclopedia
Ohloh is a website
which provides a web service
s suite and online community
platform that aims to map the landscape of open source
software development. It was founded by former Microsoft
managers Jason Allen and Scott Collison in 2004 and joined by the developer Robin Luckey. As of March 2011 the site lists 441,250+ projects.
On May 28, 2009, Ohloh was acquired by Geeknet
, owners of the popular open source development platform SourceForge
. However, Geeknet later sold Ohloh to the open source analysis company Black Duck Software
on October 5, 2010. Black Duck plans on integrating Ohloh's functionality with their existing products to advance the site into a major resource for FOSS development.
(such as CVS
, SVN, Git
, Bazaar and Mercurial
), Ohloh provides statistics about the longevity of projects, their licenses (including license conflict information) and software metric
s such as source lines of code
and commit
statistics. The codebase history informs about the amount of activity for each project. Software stacks (list of software applications used by Ohloh's members) and tags are used to calculate the similarity between projects. Ohloh also offers a download service.
Global statistics per language measure the popularity of specific programming language
s since the early 90s. Those global statistics across all projects in Ohloh have also been used to identify those with the most extensive continuous revision control histories.
Contributor statistics are also available, measuring open source developers' experience as observable in code committed to revision control repositories. Social network
features (kudos) have been introduced to allow users to rank open source contributors. A KudoRank for each user and open source contributor on a scale of 1 to 10 is automatically extracted from all kudos in the system. The idea of measuring open source developers' skills and productivity on the basis of commit statistics or mutual rating has received mixed reactions in technology blogs.
On August 22, 2007, a public beta of a web-service API
was announced, exposing Ohloh's data and reports to promote the development of third party applications.
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
which provides a web service
Web service
A Web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over the web.The W3C defines a "Web service" as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network". It has an interface described in a machine-processable format...
s suite and online community
Online community
An online community is a virtual community that exists online and whose members enable its existence through taking part in membership ritual. An online community can take the form of an information system where anyone can post content, such as a Bulletin board system or one where only a restricted...
platform that aims to map the landscape of open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
software development. It was founded by former Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
managers Jason Allen and Scott Collison in 2004 and joined by the developer Robin Luckey. As of March 2011 the site lists 441,250+ projects.
On May 28, 2009, Ohloh was acquired by Geeknet
Geeknet
Geeknet, Inc. is a Mountain View, California company that owns several computer tech-related websites and the online retailer ThinkGeek. Formerly known as VA Research, VA Linux Systems, VA Software, and SourceForge, Inc., it was founded in 1993.-VA Research:VA Research was founded in November...
, owners of the popular open source development platform SourceForge
SourceForge
SourceForge Enterprise Edition is a collaborative revision control and software development management system. It provides a front-end to a range of software development lifecycle services and integrates with a number of free software / open source software applications .While originally itself...
. However, Geeknet later sold Ohloh to the open source analysis company Black Duck Software
Black Duck Software
Black Duck Software is a Massachusetts US private company. Black Duck Software pioneered the automation of mixed-origin software component reuse management...
on October 5, 2010. Black Duck plans on integrating Ohloh's functionality with their existing products to advance the site into a major resource for FOSS development.
Design
By retrieving data from revision control repositoriesRevision control
Revision control, also known as version control and source control , is the management of changes to documents, programs, and other information stored as computer files. It is most commonly used in software development, where a team of people may change the same files...
(such as CVS
Concurrent Versions System
The Concurrent Versions System , also known as the Concurrent Versioning System, is a client-server free software revision control system in the field of software development. Version control system software keeps track of all work and all changes in a set of files, and allows several developers ...
, SVN, Git
Git (software)
Git is a distributed revision control system with an emphasis on speed. Git was initially designed and developed by Linus Torvalds for Linux kernel development. Every Git working directory is a full-fledged repository with complete history and full revision tracking capabilities, not dependent on...
, Bazaar and Mercurial
Mercurial
Mercurial is a cross-platform, distributed revision control tool for software developers. It is mainly implemented using the Python programming language, but includes a binary diff implementation written in C. It is supported on Windows and Unix-like systems, such as FreeBSD, Mac OS X and Linux...
), Ohloh provides statistics about the longevity of projects, their licenses (including license conflict information) and software metric
Software metric
A software metric is a measure of some property of a piece of software or its specifications. Since quantitative measurements are essential in all sciences, there is a continuous effort by computer science practitioners and theoreticians to bring similar approaches to software development...
s such as source lines of code
Source lines of code
Source lines of code is a software metric used to measure the size of a software program by counting the number of lines in the text of the program's source code...
and commit
Commit (data management)
In the context of computer science and data management, commit refers to the idea of making a set of tentative changes permanent. A popular usage is at the end of a transaction. A commit is an act of committing.-Data management:...
statistics. The codebase history informs about the amount of activity for each project. Software stacks (list of software applications used by Ohloh's members) and tags are used to calculate the similarity between projects. Ohloh also offers a download service.
Global statistics per language measure the popularity of specific programming language
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
s since the early 90s. Those global statistics across all projects in Ohloh have also been used to identify those with the most extensive continuous revision control histories.
Contributor statistics are also available, measuring open source developers' experience as observable in code committed to revision control repositories. Social network
Social network
A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
features (kudos) have been introduced to allow users to rank open source contributors. A KudoRank for each user and open source contributor on a scale of 1 to 10 is automatically extracted from all kudos in the system. The idea of measuring open source developers' skills and productivity on the basis of commit statistics or mutual rating has received mixed reactions in technology blogs.
On August 22, 2007, a public beta of a web-service API
Application programming interface
An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
was announced, exposing Ohloh's data and reports to promote the development of third party applications.