An introduction to using metrics to assess the health and sustainability of library open source software projects

In LYRASIS 2021 Open Source Software Report: Understanding the Landscape of Open Source Software Support in American Libraries (Rosen & Grogg, 2021), responding libraries indicated the sustainability of OSS projects to be an important concern when making decisions about adoption. However, method...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Jenn Colt
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Code4Lib 2023-08-01
Series:Code4Lib Journal
Online Access:https://journal.code4lib.org/articles/17514
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Summary:In LYRASIS 2021 Open Source Software Report: Understanding the Landscape of Open Source Software Support in American Libraries (Rosen & Grogg, 2021), responding libraries indicated the sustainability of OSS projects to be an important concern when making decisions about adoption. However, methods libraries might use to gather information about sustainability is not discussed. Metrics defined by the Linux Foundation’s CHAOSS project (https://chaoss.community/) are designed to measure the health and sustainability of open source software (OSS) communities and may be useful for libraries who are making decisions about adopting particular OSS applications. I demonstrate the use of cauldron.io as one method to gather and visualize the data for these metrics, and discuss the benefits and limitations of using them for decision-making.
ISSN:1940-5758