Episode 112: Community health metrics and open infrastructure decision making – with Chrys Wu, Invest in Open Infrastructure

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Jun 12, 2025

Chrys Wu, the product lead at Invest in Open Infrastructure, discusses pivotal insights from the 'State of Open Infrastructure' report. She highlights how community health frameworks impact decision-making, focusing on CHAOSS, FOREST, and POSI. The conversation dives into the significance of trust and transparency in open infrastructure, alongside the role of tools like InfraFinder in improving community engagement. Chrys also addresses challenges in attracting contributors and the importance of diversity metrics for robust open-source projects.

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INSIGHT

Low Framework Awareness, Trust Matters

There is generally low awareness of community health frameworks in the open infrastructure ecosystem.
Trust and practical concerns like functionality and cost are key themes influencing infrastructure adoption decisions.

ADVICE

Use CHAOSS Metrics Strategically

Use CHAOSS metric models to help projects focus on key user and organizational metrics.
Leverage practitioner guides and working groups to address diversity, inclusion, and adoption challenges.

INSIGHT

CHAOSS Metrics Serve Whole Community

CHAOSS metrics are developed for the whole community including maintainers, contributors, users, and funders.
Standardized metric language helps diverse stakeholders measure project health and activity effectively.

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Thank you to the folks at Sustain for providing the hosting account for CHAOSSCast!

CHAOSScast – Episode 112

In this episode of CHAOSScast, host Georg Link, along with Nicole Huesman and Ruth Ikegah, welcome guest Chrys Wu to discuss the findings from the “State of Open Infrastructure” report by Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI). The episode dives into how community health frameworks shape open infrastructure decisions, highlighting various frameworks like CHAOSS metrics, the FOREST framework, and POSI. Chrys talks about the Infra Finder tool and the importance of trust in decision-making for open infrastructure. The conversation also touches on metrics for understanding community engagement, the challenges of resource allocation, and the impact of open infrastructure on research ecosystems. Press download now to find out more!

[00:01:01] Chrys explains her role of product lead at IOI and leading the research for the “State of Open Infrastructure” report.

[00:02:08] Why study community health frameworks? IOI heard repeated mentions of frameworks in conversations but wasn’t sure of their awareness or impact.

[00:03:20] Chrys talks about the focus on three frameworks: CHAOSS, the FOREST framework (scholarly publishing), and POSI (The Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure).

[00:06:20] Chrys defines “Open Infrastructure” that includes software, tools, standards, protocols used across the research lifecycle, and does not include hardware.

[00:07:15] She shares some research findings that include a general low awareness of community health frameworks, trust is the key theme, and goes in depth with some primary concerns.

[00:10:00] Ruth elaborates into CHAOSS metrics context explaining CHAOSS uses working groups to develop context-aware metrics and metrics and models help projects focus efforts, like identifying organizational diversity or adoption levels.

[00:14:48] Who are CHAOSS metrics for? Ruth explains that metrics are made for the community: maintainers, users, contributors, and funders, and Georg talks about the origins of CHAOSS.

[00:17:55] Chrys dives into the Infra Finder breakdown. She goes in depth what it gathers information on and how it allows organizations to assess readiness and sustainability of open infrastructure projects.

[00:21:42] The Infra Finder has been used successfully in procurement processes. Chrys turns the conversation to talking about decision making. Users depend on peer feedback and case studies due to lack of formal sales/support in open source and she shares some key questions.

[00:26:34] Nicole brings up the topic of supporting new contributors and there’s a discussion on how CHAOSS includes metrics to identify and support new contributors and resources include project badging, practitioner guides, and metric models. Also, Ruth talks about challenges for small projects.

[00:31:35] Chrys details some information on how IOI helps improve project visibility by sharing entries and providing communications support.

[00:32:38] As far as what’s next for the research they are doing, Chrys shares they’re doing more in-depth sharing of report findings coming soon and IOI invites collaborators to help build governance, strategy, and respond to community needs.

Value Adds (Picks) of the week:

[00:35:16] Georg’s pick is electric vehicle infrastructure.
[00:36:00] Nicole’s pick is the concept of slow travel.
[00:37:03] Ruth’s pick is spontaneously hanging out with friends.
[00:38:19] Chrys’s pick is Simon Willison’s Newsletter and her favorite musical group, SHINee.

*Panelists: *
Georg Link

Nicole Huesman

Ruth Ikegah

Guest:

Chrys Wu

Links:

podcast@chaoss.community

Georg Link Website