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Visualizing Open Source Application Evolution

If you've ever sat back and tried to visualize how all the global commitments to various open source projects look--a picture of sharing done on the grand scale--a U.C. Davis web site is now serving these views up in video format. "I've been studying software projects for a while now," says the site author, who is identified on Slashdot as a U.C. Davis student. "Not the programming, but the people -- the way they interact with each other through collaboration and communication." The videos are quite eye-catching and informative. Here's more.

The first visualization you'll find at the site is called Code Swarm. It shows "the history of commits" in a software project, where a commit equals "when a developer makes changes to the code or documents and transfers them into the central project repository." The visualizations depict both files and the actions of people. They can look a little too busy, in my opinion, but they're still compelling.

Among other visualizations you'll find, there are examples for Eclipse (rendered in HD), Python, PostGreSQL, and Apache. For Eclipse, in particular, the number of commits looks like a gargantuan phenomenon.

If nothing else, these visualizations are good testaments to the efforts of the lead developers on various open source projects. Their names roll by as the evolution of the projects are depicted, along with background music, and histograms of the number of commitments over time . Check some of these out. They have a definite "picture is worth a thousand words" attraction to them. 

• python
• Apache
• postgresql
• Eclipse

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