Funding Impact Measurement Working Group

The CHAOSS Working Group on OSS Funding Impacts aims to develop frameworks, metrics, and methodologies for measuring and understanding the impacts of funding on open source software development. The group will bring together researchers, developers, funders, and policymakers to create practical tools and approaches for evaluating funding outcomes.

Table of Contents

• Context
• Objectives
• Working Group Chairs
• Participate
• Activities
• License

Context

The open source community increasingly recognizes funding as critical for project sustainability, yet measuring funding impacts remains challenging. Does it make a meaningful difference in project security and sustainability? Does it contribute to healthier communities? Does it foster long-term resilience and technological diversity? This working group will bring together diverse stakeholders to develop standardized approaches for evaluating how funding influences and supports open source projects and developer communities.

Objectives

• Develop standardized frameworks and metrics for measuring economic, social, and technological impacts of open source funding
• Create guidelines and tools to help funders and OSS projects evaluate funding outcomes
• Document and share best practices across different project types and funding models
• Build an evidence base of effective funding approaches for different contexts or needs
• Foster collaboration between researchers, practitioners, and funders
• Contribute to broader discussions about sustaining critical open source infrastructure

Chairs

• Cailean Osborne
• Paul Sharratt
• Dawn Foster

Participate

• We meet every other week over Zoom, and meeting details can by found on the CHAOSS Calendar
• Agenda/Meeting-Minutes
• Join us in the #wg-funding-impact channel within the CHAOSS Slack Workspace (invite link to join CHAOSS Slack).

Contribution guidelines can be found in the CHAOSS Community CONTRIBUTING.MD.

We follow the CHAOSS Code of Conduct.

Activities

• Develop and refine metrics for measuring funding impacts
• Create documentation and guidelines for measuring funding impacts
• Develop tools for data collection and analysis (e.g. scripts, Jupyter notebooks)
• Build relationships between funders, researchers, and communities
• Maintain list (database) of relevant resources (e.g. papers, reports, talks)
• Review case studies to identify patterns and lessons learned
• Host discussions with invited speakers from funded projects and funders
• Contribute findings to broader CHAOSS community

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details.