Appendix: the GobForge-CL analysis

Alejandro Fuentes, from CSOL, was kind enough to comment on my previous post, and he says something I liked a lot:

[…]On the other hand, trying to measure or extrapolate the “state of free software in Chile” has the same methodological value as trying to establish the “state of Chilean painting” by counting the pictures in a museum.[…]

He’s right, but I think he misread my intent, or I picked the wrong title.

Either way, the museum metaphor is a good one (it reminds me of the Indiana Jones line: “That belongs in a museum”), because the Forges do, in fact, end up being nothing but museums. What’s needed are living, collaborative communities. That’s why I think the idea of GobForge is a waste of time, now that we’ve evolved to social-network models for developers, like GitHub, BitBucket, and even CodePlex. That will be the subject of future posts, so don’t rush me.

The point of this post was to tack a little tail onto my previous analysis, with a visit to the software museum of the Chilean government, or of the Ministry of Economy, to be more precise (you’ll see why).

A brief analysis of GobForge

GobForge is part of the new public software initiative promoted by the Secretaría de Desarrollo Digital (the government’s digital development office).

The site appears to have been created in 2008.

Registered users: 141

Total registered projects: 16

Total cataloged projects: 11 (2 in Beta, 9 in Production/Stable)

Activity

The home page has several news items announcing that various documents or files have been made available. There are only 6 news items.

Apart from the news, the community’s only interaction is these messages:

Can’t find installation files
[reply]](http://www.gobforge.gob.cl/forum/message.php?msg_id=415) 2009-10-20 12:13

Hi I downloaded the only package published but found it only has images? Where can I download the installation package.
Thanks

setting up the IP number control system
reply 2009-06-16 13:06
can anyone point me in the right direction to get it running

RE: hhrr system
[reply]](http://www.gobforge.gob.cl/forum/message.php?msg_id=438) 2010-03-29 15:27

looks like this community is over.…. too bad

hhrr system
[reply]](https://www.gobforge.gob.cl/forum/message.php?msg_id=437) 2010-03-29 15:24

how do I download the application

The success of open source projects depends on the activity of their community. This isn’t just a museum, it’s a museum that doesn’t even have a guide you can turn to.

Project maturity

There are 11 cataloged projects:

• 2 in beta, which have not released a single file

• 9 in production.

• 8 of the production/stable projects have released files

• 8 of the production/stable projects use Subversion (SVN) to manage code.

• Every project was created by the administrator user, Admin. The 8 SVN repositories were initialized by the same user (jhp).

• Almost every project has just 1 member (Admin)

• Every cataloged project was developed at the Ministry of Economy.

Other observations

GobForge gives the impression of a site thrown together in a hurry, as if someone had issued a peremptory order. 8 of the production projects were created on the morning of April 4, 2009. All the repositories were created by the same user, and they’ve had no activity since.

Comment

It’s not enough to ask a consultant to put together a SourceForge-style site and populate the SVN repositories so you can say you’re doing a good job and that we’re promoting free software in the government. All of us in this market can easily work out who the consultant was who went to the trouble of standing this site up (someone I think highly of). Good thing he did his job well! Otherwise the government would have nothing to show. But the people who received this work, what did they do next? The authorities and the people in charge behind it, what have they done to make this community grow and support its users? It’s a nice initiative, but it looks like nothing more than a virtual ribbon-cutting at a badly run museum.