You are here:

Organizational Diversity

Question: What is the organizational diversity of contributions?

Overview

Organizational diversity refers to the variety of organizations that contribute to an open source project and how actively each organization participates. Measuring organizational diversity involves assessing the percentage of contributions from each organization within a defined period and monitoring changes in organizational composition over time.

Tracking organizational diversity informs project health and sustainability by showing the influence and investment levels of different organizations. It can indicate the project’s inclusivity, as a variety of contributing organizations may promote diverse perspectives. In contrast, a single organization's dominance might deter participation from others, potentially affecting inclusivity and innovation.

Want to Know More?

Click to read more about this metric.

Data Collection Strategies

Qualitative

  • Footprint of an organization in a project or ecosystem
  • Influence of an organization in a project or ecosystem
  • Affiliation diversity in governance structures.

Quantitative

  • % of commits by each organization
  • % of merges/reviews from each organization
  • % of any kind of contributors from each organization
  • % of lines of code contributed by each organization
  • % issues filed by each organization
  • New Contributor Organizations - New organizations contributing to the project over time.
  • Number of Contributing Organizations - Number of organizations participating in the project over time.
  • Elephant Factor - If 50% of community members are employed by the same company, it is the elephant in the room. Formally: The minimum number of companies whose employees perform 50% of the commits
  • Affiliation Diversity - Ratio of contributors from a single company over all contributors. Also described as: Maintainers from different companies. Diversity of contributor affiliation.
  • In projects with the concept of code ownership, % of code owners affiliated with each organization weighed by the importance/size/LoC of the code they own and the number of co-owners.

Filters

  • Time Period: Assess organizational diversity over various intervals.
  • Contribution Type: Filter by commits, issues, reviews, or other specific contributions.
  • Organization Size: Compare contributions from large vs. small organizations.

Visualizations

  • Example Visualization 1: Organizational diversity pie chart.
    Organizational Diversity Pie Chart
    Figure 1: Organizational diversity representation (CHAOSS, 2023)

  • Example Visualization 2: Organizational diversity view on LF Analytics.
    Organizational Diversity View
    Figure 2: Organizational diversity metrics (LF Analytics, 2023)


References

Contributors

  • Dawn Foster
  • Kevin Lumbard
  • Vinod Ahuja
  • Elizabeth Barron
  • Sean Goggins
  • Matt Germonprez
  • Georg Link
  • Yigakpoa L. Samuel

Additional Information

To edit this metric, please submit a Change Request here.
To reference this metric in software or publications, please use this stable URL: https://chaoss.community/?p=3464

The usage and dissemination of health metrics may lead to privacy violations. Organizations may be exposed to risks. These risks may flow from compliance with the GDPR in the EU, with state law in the US, or with other laws. There may also be contractual risks flowing from terms of service for data providers such as GitHub and GitLab. The usage of metrics must be examined for risk and potential data ethics problems. Please see CHAOSS Data Ethics document for additional guidance.

Tags:
Was this article helpful?
Dislike 0