Business Readiness of an Open Source Project

Why It Matters

Many organizations want to assess the readiness of an open source project on which they can adopt, rely on, and use in their business. This could be as an open source dependency or as a single use open source software. Organizations want to assess the longevity and continuity of an open source project so that once an open source project is adopted it continues to survive, thrive, and produce quality software. This model will help organizations to assess the adoption readiness of open source projects in the initial selection phase as well as on the continuous use of that project.

User Stories

OSPO managers want to ensure that projects that are adopted will not create legal issues in future like licensing lawsuits or copyright infringement. OSPO managers want to ensure that a project does not increase maintenance costs associated with product development. Individual developers want to understand code quality or community risks related to open source code that is adopted.

Metrics in the Metrics Model

• Code Quality

  • Defect Resolution Duration
  • Test Coverage

• License Issues

  • License Coverage
  • License Declared
  • OSI Approved Licenses
• Risk assessment
  • Contributor Absence Factor
  • Committers
  • Elephant Factor

References

[1] McDonald, N., & Goggins, S. (2013). Performance and participation in open source software on GitHub. CHI ’13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems on - CHI EA ’13, 139.

Contributors

• Vinod Kumar Ahuja
• Matt Germonprez
• Sean Goggins
• Elizabeth Barron

To reference this metric in software or publications please use this stable URL: https://chaoss.community/?p=5284