
CHAOSScast
This CHAOSS Community podcast features members who spent considerable time and effort to understand open source community health and how we can measure it through metrics, analytics, and software. We invite guests to this podcast to talk about how they use open source community health metrics and software in their own open source communities, companies, or foundations. This podcast fills the gap with open source community metric definitions and software on one side and their use on the other side.
Latest episodes

Nov 19, 2021 • 49min
Episode 48: Creating Appreciative Communities and Implicit Mentoring with Anita Sarma and Iftekhar Ahmed
Hello and welcome to CHAOSScast Community podcast, where we share use cases and experiences with measuring open source community health. Elevating conversations about metrics, analytics, and software from the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software, or short CHAOSS Project, to wherever you like to listen. Today, we are very excited to have two guests joining us, Anita Sarma and Iftekhar Ahmed. Anita is a Professor of Computer Science at Oregon State University and Iftekhar is an Assistant Professor at University of California, Irvine. They are here to talk about creating appreciative communities and implicit mentoring. We learn more about what socio-technical means, metrics to look at or use to understand if we’re on the right track, and some important things they learned from their research. Also, Anita and Iftekhar share their thoughts on how they see implicit mentoring and creating appreciative communities fitting together. Download this episode now to find out much more, and don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast on your favorite podcast app and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues!
[00:01:55] Anita and Iftekhar give us a brief introduction of who they are and their backgrounds.
[00:04:10] Georg speaks about the importance of creating quality software and how there’s more to it than testing the software and having reviews, and we learn more about what socio-technical means.
[00:10:27] We find out some important things from Anita what they’ve learned from their research.
[00:15:15] With open source growing so much over the past five to seven years, Sean asks Iftekhar how that has influenced this socio-technical system of testing and quality assurance in open source software.
[00:18:49] Iftekhar and Anita explain the phenomenon behind projects that achieve a certain level of success which leads to additional demands on it.
[00:22:25] We learn more about what implicit mentoring means.
[00:28:39] Anita tells more about the research they did with pull request comments and what they found out in their initial work with interviews.
[00:31:14] Anita shares what she’s learned about implicit mentoring and she gives advice on metrics we could use to look at or use to understand if we’re on the right track.
[00:34:44] Sean asks Anita if explicit mentoring is trying to help people be successful, and if it’s a perspective of helpfulness compared to a perspective of critique.
[00:37:26] Anita and Iftekhar share their thoughts on how they see implicit mentoring and creating appreciative communities fitting together.
[00:42:34] Find out where you can follow Anita and Iftekhar’s work online.
Value Adds (Picks) of the week:
[00:44:03] Georg’s pick is he’s going out of town with his family for a wedding and getting to explore Washington D.C.
[00:44:46] Anita’s pick is she is super excited to go on a sabbatical.
[00:45:34] Iftekhar’s pick is his three-month old son and the sounds he makes which is the highlight of his day.
[00:46:01] Sean’s pick is celebrating Thanksgiving and watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and football.
Quote:
[00:12:13] “You have to be participating if you need to get reviews back, and I don’t remember the exact statistic, but I think the largest proportion of people stop contributing because they did not get the feedback. The feedback was very delayed and by the time they got the feedback that issue or task was already done by someone else.”
Panelists:
Georg Link
Sean Goggins
Guests:
Anita Sarma
Iftekhar Ahmed
Sponsor:
SustainOSS
Links:
CHAOSS
CHAOSS Project Twitter
CHAOSScast Podcast
podcast@chaoss.community
Anita Sarma-Oregon State University
Anita Sarma Twitter
Anita Sarma email
Iftekhar Ahmed-University of California, Irvine
Iftekhar Ahmed Linkedin
Iftekhar Ahmed Twitter
Iftekhar Ahmed email
Special Guests: Anita Sarma and Iftekhar Ahmed.Support CHAOSScast

Nov 5, 2021 • 28min
Episode 47: Writing the GrimoireLab Tutorial through the Summer of Open Source Promotion Plan with Veerasamy Sevagen
Hello and welcome to CHAOSScast Community podcast, where we share use cases and experiences with measuring open source community health. Elevating conversations about metrics, analytics, and software from the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software, or short CHAOSS Project, to wherever you like to listen. Today, we have as our guest Sevagen, who worked with us on the Summer of Open Source Promotion Plan. We find out more about this program and more specifically Sevagen’s project, which was to revamp the GrimoireLab Tutorial, as well as an explanation of two major difficulties they faced for the project. We also learn how the mentors helped, the current status of the tutorial, Sevagen’s future plans, and what he’s learned from this program. Download this episode now to find out much more, and don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast on your favorite podcast app and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues!
[00:02:15] Sevagen tells us a little bit about himself.
[00:03:06] Xiaoya fills us in on what the Summer of Open Source Promotion Plan is and Venu tells us about the goal of the project.
[00:06:01] We hear how Sevagen heard about the Summer of Open Source Promotion Plan and how he became involved and decided to work with CHAOSS?
[00:07:30] Sevagen explains what his initial understanding of the project was, the tutorial, and two major difficulties they faced.
[00:12:47] Xiaoya shares her experience in the process of reviewing the tutorial.
[00:14:29] We learn more about how mentors helped Sevagen.
[00:16:47] Georg asks what the current status is of the tutorial and if there are any next steps that are still to follow.
[00:19:13] Sevagen shares his future plans and what he wants to do, as well as what he’s learned being in this program.
[00:22:18] Find out where you follow Sevagen online.
Value Adds (Picks) of the week:
[00:23:04] Georg’s pick is the book series, Famous Five by Enid Blyton.
[00:24:01] Xiaoya’s pick is the Disney animation, Tangled.
[00:24:27] Venu’s pick is OpenSearch.
[00:24:46] Sevagen’s pick is the amFOSS Club.
Panelists:
Georg Link
Venu Tekula
Xiaoya Xia
Guest:
Veerasamy Sevagen
Sponsor:
SustainOSS
Links:
CHAOSS
CHAOSS Project Twitter
CHAOSScast Podcast
podcast@chaoss.community
Summer 2021 of Open Source Promotion Plan
Veerasamy Sevagen Twitter
Veerasamy Sevagen Linkedin
sevagenv@gmail.com
CHAOSS GrimoireLab Tutorial-GitHub
Famous Five Collection by Enid Blyton
Tangled
OpenSearch
amFOSS
Special Guests: Veerasamy Sevagen, Venu Tekula, and Xiaoya Xia.Support CHAOSScast

Oct 22, 2021 • 36min
Episode 46: Social Science Theories with Erin Staples
Hello and welcome to CHAOSScast Community podcast, where we share use cases and experiences with measuring open source community health. Elevating conversations about metrics, analytics, and software from the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software, or short CHAOSS Project, to wherever you like to listen. Today, our guest is Erin Staples, who works as a Community Advocate at Orbit. She is with us to talk about social science theories and what we can learn from other communities. Erin tells us the importance of making sure your contributors feel valued, creating a very inclusive, mindful environment online, and she explains how we can learn a lot from how Fandom communities measure health. She goes in depth about behaviors at gatherings such as conferences and she shares advice in creating online spaces. Download this episode now to find out much more, and don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast on your favorite podcast app and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues.
[00:02:00] Erin fills us in a little on her background and about what they do at Orbit with building a healthy community in the online space.
[00:03:38] How did Erin get so interested in this topic?
[00:05:33] For the social science conversation and Fandom, Erin talks about how she started to explore this huge topic. She tells us about a journal article she loves from Rachel Winter, Anastasia Salter, and Mel Stanfill who wrote about the “Communities of making: Exploring parallels between Fandom and open source.”
[00:09:02] Erin explains more about the behaviors and how they happen at gatherings and in the Fandom world.
[00:13:30] Georg brings up how open source is changing and has changed over the years with more organizations getting involved in creation of software and paying employees to be in these communities and Erin shares her thoughts about how this may be changing the dynamic. The Founder of Linux, Linus Torvalds, comes up in conversation as well.
[00:19:47] Venia tells us about a website called Budget Light Forum and Erin talks about “the medium is the message,” which is a quote from Marshall McLuhan and how this relates to the way we think about online spaces and how we transmit information.
[00:24:44] Georg brings up a great point if you want to understand the community you actually have to talk to the community members and ask them how that makes them feel, if they feel welcome and included, etc., and Erin and Venia share their thoughts on this.
[00:28:11] As more people are working online, maintainer burnout in open source is discussed, which existed before COVID, with pressure to maintain the quality of code and for being responsive and they’re not feeling appreciated.
[00:30:41] Erin talks about some action steps to creating online spaces and shares an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
[00:32:04] Find out where you can follow Erin online.
Adds (Picks) of the week:
[00:32:46] Georg’s pick is re-reading the Eragon series in English.
[00:33:38] Venia’s pick is a book called Systematic Methods for Analyzing Culture: A Practical Guide.
[00:34:22] Erin’s pick is a book called A City is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences.
Panelists:
Georg Link
Venia Logan
Guest:
Erin Staples
Sponsor:
SustainOSS
Links:
CHAOSS
CHAOSS Project Twitter
CHAOSScast Podcast
podcast@chaoss.community
Erin Staples Twitter
Erin Staples Website
Erin Staples Linkedin
Orbit
Fandom
Communities of making: Exploring parallels between fandom and open source by Rachel Winter, Anastasia Salter, and Mel Stanfill
Fans, at their core, are producers. What does this tell us about the ethics of fan labor?- Fandom Communties 002
Budget Light Forum
Become a Tea Duellist By Austin Sirkin (Steampunk R&D)
Herbert Marshall McLuhan (Wikipedia)
Margaret Mead (Wikipedia)
Dunning-Kruger effect (Psychology Today)
Ted 2016: Linux founder not a ‘people person’ By Jane Wakefield (BBC News)
Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off (Hacker News)
The Inheritance Cycle Series 4 Book Collection Eragon, Eldestk, Brisngr Box set by Christoper Paolini
Systematic Methods for Analyzing Culture: A Practical Guide by H.J. François
Dengah II, Jeffrey Snodgrass, Evan R. Polzer, William Cody Nixon
A City is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences by Shannon Mattern
The Sims: A Retrospective, A Participatory Culture 14 Years On by Ludovica Price (Intensive: Cult Media Review)
Special Guest: Erin Staples.Support CHAOSScast

Oct 8, 2021 • 51min
Episode 45: Fireside Chat: Metrics Strategy with Daniel, Sean, and Venia
Hello and welcome to CHAOSScast Community podcast, where we share use cases and experiences with measuring open source community health. Elevating conversations about metrics, analytics, and software from the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software, or short CHAOSS Project, to wherever you like to listen. On today’s episode, we are discussing the pitfalls of metrics since there are a lot of things that can go wrong when implementing your metrics from getting over the feeling of being lost in the data. Also, we’ll be talking about a variety of different communities from very small all the way to larger ones. Daniel and Sean share some frameworks they have found work really well for building and deciding metrics, and how metrics are assessed to make sure whether or not they are still relevant. Download this episode now to find out much more, and don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast on your favorite podcast app and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues.
[00:02:43] The conversation starts by talking about what goes wrong when people start to build a lot of metrics, and what are some pitfalls or issues that we can maybe solve later.
[00:08:19] Daniel and Sean talk about the concept of commit and give a use case example.
[00:11:42] Venia brings up a common issue they tend to have following with gamification is not just the concerted effort to gamify the analytics and the stacks the second they become public and Daniel and Sean expand on that.
[00:17:55] Daniel and Sean share some frameworks that they have found work really well for building and deciding metrics, for building policies that ensure that those occur, and a good framework for benchmarking over time so that you can measure and change your metric strategy as you communities grow.
[00:23:00] The topic of goals is expanded on by Venia, and she talks about recognizing that sometimes simple is better and she mentions what goals you want to consider.
[00:28:25] We’re talking about the “M” in the GQM (goal, question, metric) process and Sean and Daniel give us their recommendations on how you go about based on one specific question, picking out a suite of metrics that might explain that, and if is there one specific key performance indicator and a few descriptors or if you just select three main metrics.
[00:33:21] Venia wonders how we navigate and start that conversation to wrap in the organizational aspects in the course of your metrics building journey.
[00:39:09] We learn how are metrics are checked to make sure that the metrics makes sense and the ways they are they assessed whether or not they are still relevant.
Adds (Picks) of the week:
[00:45:29] Daniel’s pick is a book called, The Culture Map, Decoding How People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done Across Cultures by Erin Meyer.
[00:46:49] Sean’s pick is a book called, Big Data Baseball: Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streak by Travis Sawchik.
[00:48:54] Venia’s pick is building a small, intimate community of learning and creating her own information diet book club.
Panelists:
Venia Logan
Sean Goggins
Daniel Izquierdo
Sponsor:
SustainOSS
Links:
CHAOSS
CHAOSS Project Twitter
CHAOSScast Podcast
podcast@chaoss.community
Bitergia
The Culture Map- Decoding How People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done Across Cultures by Erin Meyer
Big Data Baseball: Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streak by Travis Sawchik
Support CHAOSScast

Sep 24, 2021 • 35min
Episode 44: GSOC: M.A.R.S. Project - Metrics Automated Release System with Yash and Ritik
Hello and welcome to CHAOSScast Community podcast, where we share use cases and experiences with measuring and improving open source community health. Elevating conversations about metrics, analytics, and software from the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software, or short CHAOSS Project, to wherever you like to listen.
Today, we have with us Yash and Ritik, who are two students that worked with us this summer with the Google Summer of Code 2021, on automating the CHAOSS Metric Release. We are going to discuss the CHAOSS M.A.R.S. Project and learn all about what it is and what problem it solves. They also go in depth about the process of releasing the metrics, as well as how they went about doing the Translations of CHAOSS metrics. Yash and Ritik also share what their favorite part of the experience was participating in Google Summer of Code in the CHAOSS Project. Download this episode now to find out much more, and don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues.
[00:02:13] Yash and Ritik tell us a little bit about themselves and what they’re doing outside and within CHAOSS. We also learn how they heard about the CHAOSS project and how they got interested in the Google Summer of Code program.
[00:05:10] Find out more about the M.A.R.S. (Metrics Automated Release System) Project and what the connection was with the Google Summer of Code.
[00:08:43] Ritik goes into detail how they solve the problem with M.A.R.S., how it works, and the components involved, which now, it’s as simple as a click of a button! Ritik and Yash also tells us how they had to consider the work of the community and how the working groups within those repositories worked and the structures they had to follow, as well as the connection and technical components with the M.A.R.S. Project.
[00:15:16] Georg talks about the goals of Google Summer of Code, one of which is to bring in people to open source communities and show them the way this works. He talks about the strengths that Ritik and Yash had and why they were selected as students.
[00:16:30] Ritik and Yash let us know if anything has changed for them in terms of how they think about open source engagement.
[00:19:04] What are Ritik and Yash’s future plans?
[00:20:52] Kevin brings up a point about through the M.A.R.S. Project and how the work helped define the process with translating the metrics into different languages. Matt and Yash share some thoughts on this as well.
[00:22:27] Georg tells us about the community handbook you can look at if you’re interested in the process, and the CHAOSS Metric Quality Checklist as well. Yash tells us how this checklist came about, the hurdles along the way, and what he’s learned.
[00:26:10] Ritik and Yash tell us their favorite part about the Google Summer of Code experience in the CHAOSS Project.
[00:29:18] Find out where you can follow Yash and Ritik online.
Value Adds of the week:
[00:30:06] Georg’s pick is bark.us.
[00:31:38] Kevin’s pick is listening to music.
[00:32:31] Matt’s pick is helping with his son’s college recruiting trips.
[00:33:12] Yash’s pick is to enjoy your work and take breaks!
[00:33:52] Ritik’s pick is Snooker tricks.
Panelists:
Georg Link
Matt Germonprez
Kevin Lumbard
Guests:
Yash Prakash
Ritik Malik
Sponsor:
SustainOSS
Links:
CHAOSS
CHAOSS Project Twitter
CHAOSScast Podcast
podcast@chaoss.community
Yash Prakash Linkedin
Ritik Malik Linkedin
Ritik Malik Blog
CHAOSS M.A.R.S. (Metrics Automated Release System)
CHAOSS Community Handbook-Translation
CHAOSS Metric Quality Checklist-GitHub
bark
Snooker
Special Guests: Kevin Lumbard, Ritik Malik, and Yash Prakash.Support CHAOSScast

Sep 10, 2021 • 35min
Episode 43: Growing the CHAOSS Community Globally - CHAOSS 社区的全球化故事 - with Xiaoya, Willem, King, and Clement
Hello and welcome to CHAOSScast Community podcast, where we share use cases and experiences with measuring and improving open source community health. Elevating conversations about metrics, analytics, and software from the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software, or short CHAOSS Project, to wherever you like to listen.
Today, we are super excited to have four guests who are here to highlight work that is happening in the CHAOSS Project in the Asia Pacific Region. We have Xiaoya Xia, Willem Jiang, King Gao, and Clement Li joining us. Today, we learn each of them do with the CHAOSS Project in the Asia Pacific Region. Also, we find out how it got started and what’s bringing people in. They go in depth explaining the value that CHAOSS metrics provides and share stories about different metrics they found valuable in how they understand project health and how they’re using metrics. Download this episode now to find out much more, and don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues.
[00:01:23] Xiaoya, Willem, King, and Clement introduce themselves, and what they do with the CHAOSS Project.
[00:06:43] Georg wonders how this Asian Pacific Community got started around the CHAOSS Project, what were the drivers, and what’s bringing people in.
[00:13:55] The guests talk more about the value that CHAOSS metrics provides and what CHAOSS needs to do to make it even more valuable to them or in their use case.
[00:16:28] Georg wonders at what stage does which metric come in and what does it actually tell us about how the software development is going.
[00:20:12] A few stories are shared by the guests about metrics they found valuable in how they understand project health and how they’re using metrics.
[00:23:43] Xiaoya talks about a research topic that was in her lab about Open-source governance and why her mentor encouraged her to learn more about metrics in CHAOSS, and she mentions the GitHub Insight Report she posted on the blog posts. She also talks about the first working group she participated with most and where she learned what a community is.
[00:25:35] King shares his experience with metrics and the CHAOSS Community.
[00:27:37] Find out where you follow and connect with each of our guests on the internet.
Adds (Picks) of the week:
[00:30:20] Georg’s pick is a new bed.
[00:30:36] Xiaoya’s picks are good luck with her paper, to slow down, and her proposal for CHAOSScon got accepted.
[00:31:36] Willem’s picks are ApacheCon Asia 2021 and a book called From the Soil.
[00:32:46] King’s pick is everyone helping him to improve his English to communicate better.
[00:33:32] Clement’s pick is the release of the community AI robot in September.
Panelist:
Georg Link
Guests:
Xiaoya Xia
King Gao
Clement Li
Willem Jiang
Sponsor:
SustainOSS
Links:
CHAOSS
CHAOSS Project Twitter
CHAOSScast Podcast
podcast@chaoss.community
Huawei Joins The Governing Board Of The OpenChain Project
CHAOSScast podcast-Episode 27-GSOD with Xiaoya & Jaskirat
CHAOSS Shanghai Meetup-2020
Add new metrics for Mapping between PR/MRs and issues #382 wg evolution
Add new Metrics about branch lifecycle #368 wg evolution
CHAOSS Community Blog Post-Check Out The GitHub 2020 Digital Insight Report! By Xiaoya
CHAOSSCon 2021
ApacheCon Asia 2021
From the Soil by Xiaotong Fei
Xiaoya Xia Twitter
King Gao GitHub
King Gao Linkedin
Clement Li Facebook
Clement Li Twitter
Clement Li Linkedin
Willem Jiang’s Blog
Willem Jiang Twitter
Willem Jiang Linkedin
WeChat-xiaoyaesther (Xiaoya)
WeChat-xiaokun774780 (King Gao)
WeChat-ALC Beijing
Special Guests: Clement Li, King Gao, Willem Jiang, and Xiaoya Xia.Support CHAOSScast

Aug 27, 2021 • 46min
Episode 42: Hidden Infrastructure: The Foundations of Open Source with Josh Simmons
CHAOSScast – Episode 42
Hello and welcome to CHAOSScast Community podcast, where we share use cases and experiences with measuring and improving open source community health. Elevating conversations about metrics, analytics, and software from the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software, or short CHAOSS Project, to wherever you like to listen.
We are super excited to have as our guest, Josh Simmons, who is President of the Open Source Initiative and Ecosystem Strategy Lead at Tidelift. Today, we will be talking with Josh all about Open Source Foundations and the topic of “Hidden Infrastructure” which is very relevant to community health. We learn from Josh the major challenges he sees to open source foundations sustainability and foundational sustainability in corporations. Also, there is a big discussion with everyone as each of them share their opinions about the health of projects and foundations and how they would asses that. Download this episode now to find out much more, and don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues.
[00:02:42] Josh explains the topic of “Hidden Infrastructure-The Foundations of Open Source.”
[00:05:24] Brian asks Josh what he sees as some of the major challenges that he sees to open source foundations sustainability.
[00:08:43] Daniel wonders where Josh sees the balance between growing and growing as a foundation or being more of a smaller foundation but really focused on providing those services to the projects.
[00:14:10] Josh goes more in depth about foundational sustainability in corporations.
[00:24:54] There is discussion with everyone about the health of projects and foundations and how you would assess that.
[00:35:35] Daniel brings up development tools, some might not be open source that are being used, and there might be changes in the service quality, and he asks Josh if this is an issue we should be aware of or take care of.
[00:38:42] Daniel tells us about how they analyzed software development projects at GrimoireLab, which is part of CHAOSS Project, and what happened.
[00:39:55] Find out where you can get in touch with Josh and follow him online.
Adds (Picks) of the week:
[00:40:29] Georg’s picks are the answer to the “Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything,” and his birthday coming up August 27th.
[00:41:34] Brian’s pick is being excited about the OSPO.Zone from the new Open Alliance in the EU.
[00:42:22] Daniel’s pick is taking a course on Business Anthropology.
[00:43:02] Josh’s pick is a project called OCEAN + ACROSS.
Panelists:
Georg Link
Brian Proffitt
Daniel Izquierdo
Guest:
Josh Simmons
Sponsor:
SustainOSS
Links:
CHAOSS
CHAOSS Project Twitter
CHAOSScast Podcast
podcast@chaoss.community
Joshua Simmons Website
Josh Simmons Twitter
Josh Simmons Linkedin
Checklist for measuring the health of an open source project-Red Hat
GitHub Sponsors
Open Collective
Software Freedom Conservancy
The Apache Software Foundation
The Linux Foundation
Mozilla
Greg Kroah-Hartman bans University of Minnesota from Linux development for deliberately buggy patches (ZD Net article)
Mozilla-Firefox Browser
Django changes its governance (LWN.net article)
CHAOSS Types of Contributions
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Movie)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
OSPO.Zone
Amanda Casari Twitter (for Project OCEAN + ACROSS) Special Guest: Josh Simmons.Support CHAOSScast

Aug 13, 2021 • 49min
Episode 41: Forecasting Sustainability with Vladimir Filkov and Likang Yin
CHAOSScast – Episode 41
Hello and welcome to CHAOSScast Community podcast, where we share use cases and experiences with measuring and improving open source community health. Elevating conversations about metrics, analytics, and software from the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software, or short CHAOSS Project, to wherever you like to listen. Today, we are super excited to have as our guests, Vladimir Filkov and Likang Yin. Vladimir is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Davis, as well as a Data Scientist and a Software Engineer. Likang is a third year PhD student at UC-Davis working with Professor Vladimir Filkov. They are joining us to talk about their research into forecasting sustainability of open source communities. Also, we learn about the challenges they faced, how they overcame them, how they are expanding their research to engage the community more, and what their goal is. Download this episode now to find out much more, and don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues.
[00:02:01] Vladimir and Likang introduce themselves and tell us what they do.
[00:03:33] Vladimir tells us what his motivation was to look at open source sustainability.
[00:05:45] Sophia asks Vladimir how he thinks about the concept of sustainability since there are a lot of elements associated with that term. Sean asks if it’s binary in the sense that you get out of the incubator alive or you don’t. Vladimir talks about how the ASF is working with them.
[00:09:54] Vladimir and Likang talk about what their project covered and the key observations they had. We also find what they mean by Socio-technical and how they are thinking about what a Socio-technical system is.
[00:13:25] At CHAOSS, one thing they are talking about is recognizing all types of contributions, and Likang and Vladimir give their perspective on this and tell us about their mailing list. Also, learn what they found out and what’s predicting sustainability.
[00:16:17] Find out what LSTM means and what kind of modeling it is.
[00:20:20] Sean asks Vladimir to explain better what all this means to him as a Software Developer deciding on what open source project to contribute to or to him as a person trying to incubate a project and how these methods are helping so he can see it more clearly and explain it to his mom. Vladimir tells us the “Four Myths of Sustainability.”
[00:23:02] Sophia wants to know more about the assumptions of the people themselves and asks Vladimir if there’s a step before he starts finding his groups of people and if there’s any understanding of individual characteristics, motivation, or incentive that could also dictate the progression of that project.
[00:24:49] Sophia asks Vladimir how he normalizes for different kinds of governance models or if they’re all the same because they’re part of the incubator program. She also wonders how he’s addressing differences in size and whether or not it makes sense to model certain size groups of projects and how he’s handling that in Europe.
[00:29:25] Sean wonders when Vladimir thinks about groups, does he think about cognition and awareness of a group or does he think about other things.
[00:31:55] We learn about the challenges that Vladimir and Likang faced and how they overcame them. Also, we learn about their research and how they are expanding it to engage the community more, and what their goal is.
[00:40:13] Georg asks for Vladimir’s perspective on what he sees CHAOSS as a project providing now, where does he think CHAOSS should go in the future as a project, and what can they do to support their work.
[00:44:10] Find out where you can follow Vladimir and Likang online.
Value Adds (Picks) of the week:
[00:45:33] Georg’s pick is going with his family to their first concert since the pandemic to see Lindsey Stirling.
[00:45:58] Vladimir’s pick is outdoor movie theaters.
[00:46:27] Sophia’s pick is discovering that a new smartphone case makes for a great draw organizer.
[00:47:06] Sean’s pick is going to two concerts in the Fall, Wilco & Sleater-Kinney in August and Alanis Morissette, Garbage, and Liz Phair in September.
[00:47:41] Likang’s pick is he discovered a better way to balance his sleep cycle.
Panelists:
Georg Link
Sophia Vargas
Sean Goggins
Guests:
Vladimir Filkov
Likang Yin
Sponsor:
SustainOSS
Links:
CHAOSS
CHAOSS Project Twitter
CHAOSScast Podcast
podcast@chaoss.community
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF)
ApacheCon
Long short-term memory
Vladimir Filkov Twitter
filkov@cs.ucdavis.edu
Likang Yin Twitter
Likang Yin Linkedin
Sustainability Forecasting for Apache Incubator Projects by Likang Yin, Qi Xuan, Zhuangzhi Chen, and Vladimir Filkov
Latent social structure in open source projects
Lindsey Stirling
Wilco
Sleater-KinneySpecial Guests: Likang Yin and Vladimir Filkov.Support CHAOSScast

Jul 30, 2021 • 42min
Episode 40: A Call for Qualitative Developer-First Metrics with Terrence Chen
Panelists
Georg Link | Nicole Huesman
Guest
Terrence Chen
Sponsor
SustainOSS
Show Notes
Today, we are excited to have as our guest, Terrence Chen, Software Developer for over 15 years, and the sole creator of GitSense, which focuses on providing software development metrics that both leaders and developers can get behind. Terrence tells us all about GitSense and what led to the creation of it. We learn about Developers First Metrics and the three principles it’s based on, and we find out more about The Hierarchy of Data Needs pyramid as Terrence goes through his funding journey. Download this episode now to find out much more, and don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues.
[00:02:08] Terrence shares his background and what led to the creation of GitSense.
[00:03:04] We learn what motivates Terrence to get up in the morning, how he thinks about metrics, and he tells us about Developers First Metrics and explains the three principles.
[00:08:09] Georg asks Terrence to talk more about the How and Why of the three principles, and the importance of context matters.
[00:14:50] Nicole asks Terrence how we measure the quality of contributions, even outside of code, since there are so many different skillsets and contributions coming in so many different forms.
[00:18:31] Georg asks Terrence if he has built other things in GitSense that he is super proud of that we can learn from, and hopefully get to see if other tools are being adopted as well. We learn more about a pyramid that became famous in the data science world called, The Hierarchy of Data Needs.
[00:24:48] Terrence explains more about the pyramid and the ability to clean and pre-process the data.
[00:26:20] Nicole asks Terrence to talk more about how he addresses not using data nefariously and ensuring that it is used for good and not guarding against not using it.
[00:35:27] Georg shares some thoughts on Terrence’s comments he made about creating a connections graph that shows open source contributions.
[00:37:14] Find out where you can connect with Terrence online.
Adds (Picks) of the week
[00:37:56] Georg’s pick is the app for learning languages, Duolingo.
[00:38:45] Nicole’s pick is watching the movie, _A League of Their Own, _with her son.
[00:39:30] Terrence’s pick is to talk, learn new things, and to share what he’s learned.
Quotes
[00:04:16] “Which is why I’m very much focused on what I call a Developer First Metrics.
Honestly, it’s based on three principles and I would love CHAOSS and others to adopt it. Developers First Metrics is pretty much can I answer quickly how and why? So, if you’re going to use metrics make sure you can explain how and why. The second aspect of developer metrics is, make sure it’s useful. Can a developer use developer metrics on a day-to-day basis, because it’s one thing to use it as organization, and it’s another thing to use it to judge developers, and it’s another thing to have a tool that actually, this is what I can use on a day-to-day basis as a developer. That’s the second principle. And the third principle honestly is transparency, like how easily can I verify that these numbers are correct.”
Links
CHAOSS
CHAOSS Project Twitter
CHAOSScast Podcast
podcast@chaoss.community
GitSense
terrchen@gitsense.com
The Data Science Hierarchy Of Needs
Duolingo
_A League of Their Own _
SustainOSS Working GroupsSpecial Guest: Terrence Chen.Support CHAOSScast

Jul 16, 2021 • 59min
Episode 39: Leaderboards and Metrics at Drupal.org with Matthew Tift and Tim Lehnen
Panelists
Georg Link | Nicole Huesman | Sean Goggins
Guests
Tim Lehnen | Matthew Tift
Sponsor
SustainOSS
Show Notes
Today, we are lucky to have two representatives from the Drupal community. Our two guests are Tim Lehnen, CTO of the Drupal Association, and Matthew Tift, Lead Engineer at Lullabot, who has been involved in the Drupal Project since 2010. They are here today to talk about who contributes to open source and how do we understand this in the Drupal Community. We also learn the meaning behind Tim and Matthew’s catchphrases, “Build a better picture of how open source gets built” and “Building a better understanding of corporate citizenship in open source.” Download this episode now to find out much more! Don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues.
[00:02:13] Tim and Matthew introduce themselves and tell us what they do and how they got into the Drupal community.
[00:06:18] Tim and Matthew talk about what the Drupal community is doing to really be this community that it is today.
[00:13:14] Nicole wonders how Tim and Matthew go about putting a pulse on who’s contributing from a non-code perspective, and if there are ways that they surface these contributors either through reports or other ways. They talk about the mechanics of what they do.
[00:18:43] Tim talks about one of the key considerations of the initial design is wanting to avoid giving people too much paperwork, and Tim tells us the two catchphrases they came up.
[00:20:15] Matt talks about an analysis that he did with Dries Buytaert called, “Who sponsors Drupal development?”
[00:25:16] Tim talks about two points that were brought up by Matt and Nicole earlier about the value of understanding who gets paid to the work and the different roles and historically unnoticed roles in open source.
[00:28:24] We learn more about what we can do with the data when we capture it really well. Tim talks about the cool data they gathered and what they did with it, and the experiment they are trying out at the Drupal Association.
[00:38:43] Georg asks Tim how the issue tracker is being used and how has that collaboration shaping up there.
[00:49:16] Nicole asks if Tim and Matthew if they report out on the diversity of the Drupal community and if they’ve seen upticks or changes.
[00:52:24] Find out where you can follow Tim and Matthew and their work online. They also share advice for communities that want to adopt a system and resources or any starting points.
Quotes
[00:17:25] “It’s organizing these different events, it’s writing a blog, it’s all of these different things that we do to, it’s the so what who cares, it’s the translating the lines of code into, you know at heart I’m a storyteller, so it’s really translating these lines of code into why is that important to our broader world.”
[00:19:48] “Building a better picture of how open source gets built” and “Building a better understanding of corporate citizenship in open source,” were two of our sort of like catch phrases.”
[00:31:57] “So if your organization sponsors a lot of people’s time you get to come up right on top of the list, you get more business and leads, you’re rewarded for sponsoring your developers to work on the project, and that encourages you to do it more.”
[00:38:08] “Nobody in our community wants people to feel bad, so we’re trying to tweak this. We’re trying to work on our algorithms, our marketplace page as a committee that could probably talk about that studying this.”
[00:42:12] “So, we have our contribution recognition committee which has access to what the true weights are. We don’t publish the exact numbers of those variables because gaming the system is something you have to look out for and manage and review periodically.”
[00:44:48] “And I think for me, there is still the sense that you can use these data in different kinds of ways and one of them is to sort of rank people. And I think in another way, one of the more interesting views is to kind of understand the diversity of the community, to try and understand what sort of initiatives are important to organizations, and what initiatives are important to say, volunteers.”
Adds (Picks) of the week
[00:53:51] Georg’s pick is the Nebraska Passport Program.
[00:54:38] Nicole’s pick is traveling to Massachusetts and Maine with her son this summer.
[00:55:27] Sean’s pick is a book called, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn _by Richard W. Hamming. _
[00:55:57] Tim’s pick is working with his brother on building a PC Case Mod with custom water cooling, and it’s NASA themed.
[00:56:44] Matthew’s pick is a book called, Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias _in a World Designed for Men _by Caroline Criado Perez.
Links
CHAOSS
CHAOSS Project Twitter
CHAOSScast Podcast
podcast@chaoss.community
Matthew Tift Website
Matthew Tift Twitter
Matthew Tift Linkedin
Matthew.tift@lullabot.com
Tim Lehnen-Drupal
Tim Lehnen Twitter
Tim Lehnen Linkedin
tim@association.drupal.org
Drupal
Lullabot
Drupal Contribution Credit
OpenStack Diversity Report
“Who sponsors Drupal development?” (2019-2020 edition)
CHAOSScast Podcast-Episode 20-CHAOSS + FINOS: Lessons Learned with Rob Underwood
GitLab issue, proposing to add the Drupal system-Tim Lehnen
Drupal Diversity & Inclusion
Nebraska Passport Program
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn by Richard W. Hamming
Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado PerezSpecial Guests: Matthew Tift and Tim Lehnen.Support CHAOSScast
Remember Everything You Learn from Podcasts
Save insights instantly, chat with episodes, and build lasting knowledge - all powered by AI.