BoF: Discussing Metrics for Open Source in Light of Insights From the CHAOSS Project - Georg Link, Bitergia

Open source communities have grown beyond what we can comprehend without tool support. The complexity is still on the rise including cross-community collaboration of dependent projects. We can use metrics for observing community health. This comes with challenges including a choice for what to measure and where to get the data.

The birds of a feather session will begin by addressing the challenges with insights from the Linux Foundation CHAOSS (Community Health Analytics Open Source Software) project, which is at the forefront of establishing best practices for community metrics. These insights include: establishing a baseline against which to measure community changes, building a metrics strategy for a community, observing cross-community collaboration when contributors work across open source projects, and tools available to begin the metrics journey.

After sharing these insights, the second part of the session will be an open dialog about experiences, concerns, and specific use cases that participants bring forward. For a large group, we will split into smaller discussion groups and share highlights at the end.

Transcript

1. BoF: Discussing Metrics for Open Source in Light of Insights From the CHAOSS Project Georg Link, Bitergia #ossummit @georglink
2. #ossna Agenda •Challenges for Open Source Metrics •Together: Better, Stronger, Faster • The CHAOSS Project •Open Conversation
3. #ossna Georg Link •PhD in Open Source •Cofounder of CHAOSS project •Director of Sales at Bitergia #ossna Georg Link •PhD in Open Source •Cofounder of CHAOSS project •Director of Sales at Bitergia
4. #ossna Metrics a method of measuring something, or the result obtained from this Project Data Method Insights
5. Challenges for Open Source Metrics • Legal & Ethical • Organization • Technology
6. #ossna Legal and Ethical Challenges •Laws like GDPR •Data Privacy •Informed Consent: Opt-in vs. Opt-out
7. #ossna Organizational Challenges •Metric Strategy •Actionable Insights •Buy-in from community
8. #ossna Technological Challenges •Getting quality data •Managing identities •Reporting and visualizing
9. Together: Better, Stronger, Faster
10. #ossna Super Experts are rare
11. #ossna Together: Better, Stronger, Faster
12. #ossna TOGETHER: CHAOSS Community Mission: Create analytics and metrics to help define community health •LF Project, founded 2017
13. #ossna BETTER: CHAOSS Practices • Analyze communities at scale through metrics • Reduce bias in decision making • Data-driven management • Shared decision-making
14. #ossna STRONGER: CHAOSS Metrics Diversity & Inclusion Risk Evolution Value Common
15. #ossna FASTER: CHAOSS Software •Collect data from communities •Present metrics and analytics to users •Trial new metric ideas and practices •Professional usage by companies
16. #ossna Lessons Learned for Starting a Metrics Journey • Listen, by collecting everything • Ask questions of the data to achieve your goals (GQM) • Tell a story with the data • Avoid gaming of metrics • Value all contributions
17. #ossna CHAOSS Resources • Listen to “CHAOSScast” podcast.chaoss.community • Review metrics chaoss.community/metrics • Contribute to software chaoss.community/software • Participate in CHAOSS chaoss.community/participate • Join Mailing List • Join a Working Group
18. #ossna Together: Better, Stronger, Faster
19. Open Conversation