Measuring Contribution to Open Source

A presentation at European Commission Open Source Workshops for Computing & Sustainability in in Brussels, Belgium by Tobie Langel

Tobie Langel
Tobie Langel
@tobie

Open Source is a vital infrastructure to our digital world, pervading every personal device and business system we use. Both the private and public sector continue to increase their use of open source, which is a positive trend. However, on the whole, the existence, availability and support of open source is taken for granted. Many individuals, companies, foundations and public administrations do contribute, but this is already recognised to be insufficient.

How can we contribute to open source? Can we measure this? Are there metrics? How does a conscientious organisation know it is contributing well? Are there contribution best practices and/or league tables? With ESG, organisations will soon be measuring their environmental footprint. Should we also not measure our use of and contribution to open source? Isn’t this contribution vital to the sustainability of open source?

Chair:

Saranjit Arora (European Commission OSPO)

Assisted by:

Miguel Diez Blanco (EC OSPO Team Lead, DIGIT)

Panellists:

  • Bastien Guerry (Etalab/DINUM)
  • Leslie Hawthorn (Red Hat)
  • Sachiko Muto (OpenForumEurope)
  • Timo Levi (T-Systems)
  • Tobie Langel (Senior Fellow, Omidyar Network)
  • Italo Vignoli (Document Foundation)