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I appreciate Jonathan sounding out the arguments against the proposed form of the award, and offering some alternatives. In short, I think I agree with him. I was at Karen's "OSS Metrics" breakout session, and had a lot of reservations about the "output" of the session, even though the discussion there was interesting and well-intentioned. It comes down to the two decision-making processes: the internal c4l one for making the award and the external one(s) being influenced by it. We were listing criteria one might use to evaluate a given project. And it was a good enough list of issues, but I kept thinking that it was bound to fail if it were a scorecard to be used *comparatively* between otherwise heterogeneous projects on different platforms, in different environments, with different purposes, etc. I wasn't even confident of our ability to review one individual criteria like "security" for a given project, let alone amongst all projects. For the amount of work and expertise it would take to evaluate that honestly, we could be contributing *fixes* to even the "lesser" projects. But I'll put aside the question of how accurately we could pick amongst totally diverse projects. Pretend we could. I don't think we could communicate the objective context to the external decision makers who would consider themselves informed by the mere fact of the award. The Journal featuring a project has none of these problems, because it can maintain context. Like "Is this project useful to archivists in major institutions?" or "Is this OSS project a good alternative to a different proprietary software X?" I also like the role of code4lib being more of a contributer and less of an arbiter. If the goal is to benefit the cool projects, keep the money, show me the code. --Joe Atzberger, LibLime On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Jonathan Rochkind <[log in to unmask]>wrote: > As I think about the award idea more, I still don't really like it. (Sorry > Eric!). > > Some comments at > http://bibwild.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/why-i-dont-like-the-code4lib-code-award-idea/ > > With a shorter version below (thanks Jodi). > > The award will inevitably be seen as an endorsement of the awarded project > by ‘Code4Lib.’ While some supporters say this is not the intention, I’ve > also seen supporters say the reason they want the Code4Lib name on it is so > the award will have more prestige. To me, this implies that an implied > endorsement in fact is part of the idea: What else would this prestige be > for? But whether it’s intentional or not, it’s inevitable. > > The Code4Lib community has indeed garnered a fair amount of prestige > lately, including by people who don’t really understand the informal and > non-official nature of Code4Lib. I’ve seen Code4Lib erroneously referred to > as an ‘organization’ several times. Much of this audience will see such an > award as an endorsement of the project awarded, by the prestigious > ‘Code4Lib’. > > But I don’t think Code4Lib actually has the capacity to accurately and > useful determine value of an open source project. > > Libraries need to learn how to evaluate open source projects on their own, > for their own circumstances and needs. Libraries, always on the look-out for > shortcuts, are going to be really tempted to use a Code4Lib award as a > shortcut to their own investigation. If it’s awarded by Code4Lib, it must be > good. I worry about anything that discourages libraries from the hard work > of developing their own capacity to evaluate projects; and I also worry > about such an implied endorsement actually steering them wrong because I > don’t think we have the capacity to reliably make such universally > applicable evaluations as a community. Sure, the award won’t be intended as > such, but it will be read as such. > > I would actually love to see a regular “notable project review” feature in > the Code4Lib Journal, perhaps in every issue. This could cover only articles > that the reviewers thought were exceptionally good, or it could cover any > project of note. > > And reviews would have particular reviewer’s bylines attached, making it > clear who was doing the evaluation, and discouraging the reader from > thinking it’s the “Code4Lib community”, which isn’t capable of speaking with > one voice anyway (nor do we desire it to). > > If the goal of the idea is to inject some money into library-domain open > source software development, than rather than an award with compenstaion, I > think the money could more effectively be spent funding an internship or > some kind. > > Perhaps something like Google Summer of Code. Give a stipend to some > library student (or currently un- or under-employed Code4Libber, but I like > the idea of getting library students involved as bonus) to work on a > Code4Lib community project. Perhaps the community could vote on which > project(s) were eligible for such an internship, and then people could apply > expressing their interests, and a smaller committee would actually match an > intern with a project. >