Hello there, I'm a developer from Brazil doing an MSc project on Open Source/Free Software engineering processes, and as the final part of it, I'm conducting a survey of the most important free software projects. I'm sending out a request to the maintainer for each project, and so far we have over 170 surveys filled out, including some very interesting ones (Apache, Perl, Python, Sendmail, Berkeley DB, GNU Make, Vim, Nethack, Bugzilla, sed, to name a few); http://www.async.com.br/~kiko/fsp/newproj.php lists all registered projects. Since you are maintainer for GRX, which IMO is an important free software/open source project, I would be really grateful if you could participate in the survey by answering for it, and for other projects you lead (that you find are relevant to the study). The survey is Web-based (I can send an email version of it to you, of course), and it's online at: http://www.async.com.br/~kiko/fsp/ IMHO the survey is quite unique, and the data and comments gathered form a very interesting display of the different projects. The data will be published and offered freely when the survey is finished, of course. This is the only email I will send you with a request, and if you don't have the time, kindly ignore it (use "d" in mail/mailx and "D" in mutt/pine :-). Thanks if you do take the time, too. I've pasted below some standard details about the survey. --- Survey details start here ------------------------------------------ The Survey http://www.async.com.br/~kiko/fsp/ It has 12 questions, and shouldn't take more than 15 minutes to answer (we did some testing and most people finish in about 7). If you would like someone else to answer, please send me an email address and I'll ask them directly. If you would rather the survey came in through email, let me know too and I'll send an email-ready version. The survey is usable on any browser (including text browsers like lynx and w3m), and it contains *no* graphics, so it should be quite fast. If you use Mozilla or another DOM-compliant browser the help boxes show in the same page, which is a bit nicer than the default behaviour. Apart from that it shouldn't be too much of a bother to fill it out, and it will really help us get valid research findings. If you want to know more about the survey, there is a FAQ on the site, and I am available to answer any questions. A short text follows describing it. About the Research The MSc project is an attempt to characterize open source/free software projects with respect to their software processes. This means how the project organizes, how code is designed, produced and kept track of, and other issues relating to the project's approach to development. The qualification paper (in portuguese, i'm afraid) is available at http://www.async.com.br/~kiko/quali/ - Google does a [rather poor, and my surname isn't Kings] translation of it if you enter the URL in the search box. The results of this survey will be made publically available, and the report will be also published in English, to make sure that the largest number of people and organizations can benefit from the data. If you are interested I can offer data in any format that's considered convenient. About me I'm an MSc student at ICMC USP, Brazil, and my MSc work involves describing and characterizing software process models for open source projects. As part of my research, I've done a study of a number of projects, and this year I've published an article on the Mozilla Software Process at the OSS Workshop in Newcastle, UK. It's available online at http://www.async.com.br/~kiko/papers.html I'm also a member of the Kiwi, Bugzilla and PyGTK development teams, and I work mainly on an open source project to develop a free point of sales and retail management software, called Stoq.