WikiSuite | Constructive Cost Model COCOMO

As of 2019, WikiSuite's cost to develop is between 50 and 100 million $USD.

Really?

Yes. If you tried to re-code WikiSuite using proprietary models. Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COCOMO

How can it be free and who paid for this?

Like Wikipedia, GNU/Linux and Firefox, WikiSuite is the result of massive collaboration.

How do you arrive to 50-100 million $USD? Are you including the cost of GNU/Linux?

Nope. Just the Linux Kernel would cost billions to redevelop

The WikiSuite-specific code (mostly ClearOS installers):
0.2 M: https://www.openhub.net/p/wikisuite/estimated_cost
This is intentionally as small as possible since we focus on upstreaming code to the various Software Components

The main software components:

Isn't the figure exaggerated?

In some cases, it's actually underestimated. COCOMO counts the number of lines of code. But a project like Tiki has been in active development for over 16 years, and there has been over 68 000 code commits. This battle-tested code costs more to develop than an application that would have the same number of lines, but would cost less to develop.

The Tiki-specific code is at approximately $15M. But that doesn't even count the 125 external dependencies. Think about it. Each dependency represents a distinct community / code base / bug tracker / etc.

Ok, but I am not going to use all the features

That is true of all feature-rich software. But the economics don't make it feasible to build software just for your needs. Community Free / Libre / Open Source software will necessarily want to cater to a wider community and get more users and contributors.

Information	Version
2019-05-07 11:15 Marc Laporte	64	View
2019-05-01 10:24 Marc Laporte Fixed	63	View
2019-04-23 11:26 Marc Laporte Add a section: But adding up these figures is way more than $50 million (a fair question)	62	View
2019-04-23 08:48 Marc Laporte Changing because it's currently broken	61	View
2019-04-22 03:30 M. Bilal Siddiq	59 - 60	View
2019-04-10 09:19 Marc Laporte	58	View
2019-04-05 18:15 Marc Laporte	57	View
2019-02-13 20:21 Marc Laporte Thanks luci!	56	View
2019-02-07 09:18 gary.cunningham-lee Fixed an error I introduced; changed large-figure format (to use comma).	54 - 55	View
2019-02-06 20:24 Marc Laporte	53	View
2019-02-04 20:39 Marc Laporte	33 - 52	View
2019-02-04 17:17 Marc Laporte Addressing reasonable questions	32	View
2019-02-04 10:45 Marc Laporte	31	View
2019-02-04 02:34 Marc Laporte	17 - 30	View
2019-01-30 20:38 Marc Laporte	16	View
2019-01-30 14:12 Marc Laporte	15	View

History: Constructive Cost Model COCOMO

Preview of version: 19

Really?

How can it be free and who paid for this?

How do you arrive to 50-100 million $USD? Are you including the cost of GNU/Linux?

The main software components:

Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware

Openfire

ClearOS

Syncthing

Elasticsearch

Isn't the figure exaggerated?

Ok, but I am not going to use all the features

Related links

History