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Project Popularity

Question: How popular is an open source project?

Overview

Project popularity measures the level of visibility and engagement around an open source project by tracking various data points, such as social media mentions, forks, stars, contributors, and downstream dependencies. These indicators reflect community interest and adoption rates, providing insights into a project's reach and potential impact.

Measuring project popularity helps inform project health and sustainability by identifying growth trends, which may indicate an increase in active use and contributions. A popular project is often seen as more valuable, both for individual contributors looking to work on impactful projects and for organizations considering where to invest resources. Popularity also helps reveal underserved projects with growth potential, which may present valuable opportunities for contributors and stakeholders.

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Data Collection Strategies 

To measure project popularity, collect data points from:

  • Social media mentions
  • Forks
  • Change requests
  • New Issues
  • Stars, badges, likes
  • New contributors
  • Organizational Diversity
  • Job postings requesting skills in project
  • Conversations within and outside of project
  • Clones
  • Followers
  • Downstream dependencies
  • People attending events that focus on a project

Data can also be gathered through platforms like GitHub, GitLab, social media, and job sites.

Filters 

  • Time Period: Measure changes in popularity over specific intervals.
  • Platform: Compare popularity metrics across GitHub, GitLab, or other hosting services.
  • Project Type: Filter based on project categories, such as libraries, tools, or frameworks.

Visualizations

  • Example Visualization 1: Issues and reviews visualization from Cauldron (GrimoireLab).
    Issues and reviews
    Figure 1: Issues and reviews (Cauldron, 2023)

  • Example Visualization 2: Kubernetes project popularity statistics from DevStats.
    Kubernetes_project_popularity
    Figure 2: Kubernetes project popularity statistics (DevStats, 2023)


References

Contributors

  • Kevin Lumbard
  • Justin W. Flory
  • Matt Germonprez
  • Elizabeth Barron
  • Matt Cantu
  • Lauren Phipps
  • Joshua Simmons
  • Vinod Ahuja
  • Georg Link
  • Sean Goggins
  • Yigakpoa L. Ikpae

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=3573

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.

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