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Many programs are Free/Libre and Open Source, both of those are very well defined so I'm not going to waste my or your time by defining them for you here.
If you do need a definition, take a look at the following:
- The Open Source Definition as defined by the Open Source Initiative or OSI
- What is Free Software? By the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
So without further ado, let's define developement and release strategies!
Development
The following is definitions for strategies used in FLOSS development. These strategies are grouped by ones that can't be mixed and matched.
Who developes it?
- Community-Driven. Community members are able to submit patches, and these patches are often included directly into the project.
- Community-Supported. Community members are able to submit patches, but these patches are not included directly.
- Non-Community-Driven. Community members cannot submit patches.
Does your project have (a) core maintainer(s)?
- Unicentered. One core maintainer.
- Centered. Multiple (more than one) core maintainers.
- Non-centered. No core maintainers.
Do you have a full history available?
- Historical. A full log is available for all commits made to the project in question.
- Non-Historical. A log is not available for commits in a project.
- Semi-Historical. A log is available, but there is a cutoff in available commits.
Note that a commit history being available doesn't mean a source history is available, for that, see the next section.
When is the source code released?
- Sourced-per-commit. Source is made available per-commit.
- Timed-source. Source is released at set intervals of time.
- Commit-based-source. Source is released at set intervals of commits.
- Arbitrarily-sourced. Source is released when the maintainer(s) feel there has been enough changes or time, when these numbers of commits or time do not stay the same.
Outro
Thank you for reading this pointless blog post. I know nobody is ever gonna get use out of it.