Comment Define "Failure" (Score 1) 133
How do you know FLOSS projects don't suffer a 70% failure rate too. Or perhaps even worse.
FLOSS projects typically don't have deadlines unless they get really popular, way after they passed the "success" treshold.
If a FLOSS project that hasn't had updates for years a failure or a success, even though it's fully functional?
Projects that don't meet budgets, deadlines or functional criteria are considered failed. Most FLOSS projects don't have any of these unless they already had some level of success. Most FLOSS projects die well before reaching that level, though.
Judging by my own subjective standards of failure; most projects on Github and Sourceforge are failures. They have no code, cannot compile or have showstopper bugs and no recently activity that could remedy these problems.