Level of Difficulty - Rating for Install and Build Effords

Hello everyone,

I would like to propose an additional rating option: a "level of difficulty" for installation, configuration and building.

Wasting Time

We all know this problem. Some projects run like a charm and others fail after weeks of twiddling around with them.

Example

Projects like Zimbra or DimDim are OpenSource, but their build process is (maybe deliberately) crippled. Others, like Hudson work out of the box within minutes.

Proposition

I would propose a rating option based on "time spent" combined with the information if a build or installation effort was successful or not.

Community Value

This could add a lot of value to the ohloh community. We would get an idea on time needed to get going with a project in the first place.

What do you think? Would this be helpful? @ohloh-developers: Is this a huge effort? Would it be worth it?

Kind regards, Dan Choon

No, one? Well, I'll just add some userstories for clarification.

User Stories

Rating the Set-Up Effort

As a User, I want to submit my set-up effort spent on setting-up my instance of an Open Source project to inform others on the level of difficulty of the project .

Viewing Effort Level Estimation

As a User, I want to view the estimated set-up effort of an Open Source project to decide if I got time for a try.

Set-up beeing either:

• download + install + initial configuration + start or
• download + build + initial configuration + start

Cheers, Dan

Sounds like a great idea!

But (there's almost always a but) are there other similarly important information for users which could be included?

I think that giving the setup-time would help projects which focus on being easy to use, but then it could just as well go into the general rating.

Do you think that the question is important enough to users to stand alone, or are there other similar questions which could be combined to a generalized user questionaire?

Thanks for your post. Yes, I do think the question on set-up effort is important enough to stand alone.

Time is a bottle neck

I would argue that every Open Source developer simply uses a huge amount of projects and that knowing the cost of time beforehand would make ones decision towards a project more sophisticated.

Pro-Choice - Value vs. Cost

Ohloh already simplifies the screening process for solutions. It has a lot of information on how valuable different projects are - but it lacks comparable information on how costly they are to implement.

How do you make you choice when you need - say an CMS for your website?

Scenario

A software developer is starting an Open Source project with four others. Let's call him Bob. Bob surely does know how to compile and code, but most programs he just wants to get running. Let's look at Bobs week. Parallel to his work he sets up linux servers, source code management, ssl certificates, wikis, blogs, a website, a build environment, maybe continious integration, a document repository, 5 different CMS, hopefully a backup system, ... and the list goes on. Parallel to the time spent on coding on his own project a lot of time goes into setting up and installing other stuff. Many times Bob chooses a project based on looking at the screenshots and guessing the effort. The effort exceeds his expectations most of the time. If Bob knew which projects work out of the box he would be able to choose differently in the first place.

Value vs. cost sounds useful to me.

How can the cost be updated when the project updates, so it fits the project on the long term?

I think that the time for installation will change far more often than the overall value.