University of Nebraska at Omaha
To support continued development and adoption in research and practice of open source software community health metrics
This grant supports the continued operation and growth of the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software (CHAOSS) project. Led by Sean Goggins and Matt Germonprez, CHAOSS is an organization devoted to the creation thriving open source software communities through the development and adoption of research-driven 'community metrics' that assess the responsiveness, engagement, inclusion, and other properties of the distributed community of developers who build and maintain a given project. Well-designed community metrics are critical signals of the resilience and sustainability of an open source project, can inform risk assessment decisions about the use of a particular piece of open source software, and can facilitate efforts to improve the well-being of project contributors and users. Since its founding, CHAOSS has grown from initially defining a handful of metrics to supporting entire systems of practice and research across industry and academia. CHAOSS’ activities include research on open source project health and sustainability, growing and supporting a community which helps define what open source project health and sustainability mean, public dissemination of databases and resources for informed decision-making, and continued maintenance and development of CHAOSS data and tools. Grant funds will support the continuation and expansion of these activities, as well as several new ones, including the launch of a new data science initiative aimed at lowering barriers to adoption; support for regional community leads in under-resourced areas of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and the execution of plans to move the organization toward independent financial sustainability.