Hi! I would like to see a Freshmeat like vitality index for Debian packages. Basically, it is a measurement of how actively a package is being maintained. My intended use for it is that when there are several packages providing the same functionality, I can try the most actively maintained one first.
A package's index could be computed using the following factors: a. How many bugs have been resolved by the current maintainer? b. How long has the package been maintained by the current maintainer? c. How many releases have the current maintainer made? d. How long ago was it that the package was last updated by the current maintainer? Those factors can be molded into a value thusly: vitality = ((a + 1) * b * c) / d (a + 1) is because otherwise packages that haven't had any bugs fixed will all have zero vitality. Also, I imagine the vitality as being for a certain package with a certain maintainer; if a package switches maintainer the vitality score should be reset (as the new maintainer can be better / worse than the previous one). Then, if you wish to have a linear measurement (instead of a quadratic one as in the above formula), you could take the square root of the above value. I would recommend that, but it's hardly necessary. Also, sorting the packages by vitality and saying how vital each package is relative to others (as in "foo is the 645:th most vital debian package") is probably more useful than "foo has a vitality of 123515.5435". I would like to see the vitality score presented on all package web pages, and in a separate list. Also, I would like to see it in dselect, but I realize that is an order of magnitude more complicated so I'll hardly press the issue. Unforturnately I have neither the time nor the skill to implement this; I just hope to inspire somebody more cunning in the Debian arts than me to do it. The Freshmeat vitality index is described at "http://freshmeat.net/faq/view/27/";. Their vitality high score list is at "http://freshmeat.net/stats/#vitality";. Cheers //Johan -- Johan Walles WWW: http://www.student.nada.kth.se/~d92-jwa Vultejusvägen 40 Home: +46(8)371657 / Great minds run | 168 56 BROMMA GSM: +46(70)7106277 | in great circles. /
