When I start or join a new open source project, I usually make sure they are registered on several websites relating to open source that I frequent. Two of them are http://koders.com and http://ohloh.net. These sites offer different services. However, they both take the code from your version control repository, download it periodically, and report information derived from that data on their website. What the derived information is different.

Koders is a source code search engine. It lets you search for source code. Ohloh is a website that calculates and reports various metrics about open source projects. While you cannot compare the services they offer directly, you can compare how their project submission and user interactions work.

The first thing you will notice if you register with both sites is that ohloh is totally automated and koders reviews all projects individually. Ohloh will let you register in minutes. If you are lucky and server load is low enough, your project will be imported in less than an hour and you will have what it calls “shallow metrics,” or statistics about your code such as code to comment ratios and the breakdown of languages used in it. Koders, on the other hand, will inform you that your project must be reviewed by hand. My personal experience is you will have to wait over a month to be informed that your project was approved. They claim the purpose of the review is to ensure the code is legitimately open source.

Feedback mechanisms are similar for both sites. They both have forums and the site admins read and respond to support requests on them. Both sites are small in terms of forum volume at the moment. I’ve used Ohloh’s forums at various time, but never had a need to use Koders’. I predict Ohloh’s forum volume will grow faster than Koders’ simply because Ohloh is a community and Koders is a search engine. There are various activities that you can do at Ohloh, such as review projects, give other users “kudos” and updaste your “stack”, a list of open source applications you use. However, at koders, your options are to register a project or search source code. Therefore, there is more to talk about on the Ohloh forums than the Koders ones.

Another thing you will notice about Ohloh is the extensive use of the honors system. For example, I can login, find a project with a developer not associated with an Ohloh account, and click on the button that says “I am this user.” I’ve not tried to see what happens if I claim to be Linus Torvalds, but I do know if click on that developer profile for linux or git I see the “I am this user” button. There is no honors system or trust in the community at Koders. They hand reviews projects, and once the project is in the system, its in the system.

One final thing I noticed about Koders is unlike Ohloh, they seem to seek open source project to add to the repository themselves. In a blog article they proudly announce they have “partnered” with IBM to add all their developer works projects to the repository. Ohloh is using crowdsourcing to get all their data, where koders uses it as one avenue, but also seeks out projects on their own.

To put all this in perspective we must look at each websites motivation, or to more clearly define it, business model. Ohloh is building a community. It is a social networking site of sorts. I expect either ads to start appearing, the site to start selling aggregate data, or some other income source that basically revolves around selling their demographic. Koders, on the other hand, sells a professional version of their product. You can buy Koders Pro Edition, install it on your network, point it at your repositories and search your internal code. Ohloh needs active members that constantly go to the site, so they offer things to do there. Koders, on the other hand, needs people to find their search engine useful enough to want to use it internally, so they would want all the source code to be legitimately under the license it is listed under and would want to make sure that the majority of the source code on their site is worth reading and reusing.