Ohloh.net seems to be a great tool for finding out the statistics of an open-source project. I was browsing through the SharpDevelop website, when I happened to look at a counter displaying all sorts of summary - lines of code, developers, cost, time spent, licensing model, activity percentage. I was attracted to the counter in the first glance. This was something unusual in the world of badges where we find more of them representing the technology used, the target technology and the projects that power the service.

This was a counter that was not about itself, it was about the project that I was interested in. I clicked on the counter, and what opened was a magicians box. With loads of information, and a wealth of statistics, the dashboard was analyzing this open-source project, and estimating various metrics.

ohloh.net displays the following information about a project,

  • languages used in the project
  • lines of code including/excluding markups
  • effort time in man years
  • projected cost
  • license usage
  • history of the codebase
  • developers effort in the project

and more… You can look at the statistics for SharpDevelop here. Great going folks, I have checked the badge and found it good, now next I will have a badge of my own, one day..surely, one day!