One thing all open source projects have in common is that they require collaboration in order to flourish. That’s why we are so grateful to the Linux Foundation for hosting the Open Source Summit North American 2018, where open source community members from around the world joined to advance projects, share best practices, and network in Vancouver.

In addition to a packed main event, the Open Source Summit 2018 also served as a rallying point for satellite events, including CHAOSScon and the OpenChain Mini Summit.

CHAOSScon and OpenChain Mini Summit

CHAOSS (Community Health Analytics Open Source Software) is a Linux Foundation project focused on creating metrics and analytics to improve open source community health. By measuring project health, CHAOSS strives to advance transparency so that interested participants can make informed assessments about their open source software strategies.

As recent studies have shown, companies are increasingly opening Open Source Program Offices (OSPO), and one of the challenges those offices face is how to measure the effectiveness of open-source tools and engagement. 

On Tuesday August 28th, we attended and presented at CHAOSScon. Hosted at the University of British Columbia, CHAOSScon was a forum that focused specifically on this challenge, featuring discussions and use cases regarding effective open source metrics.  One highlight that stood out was Remy DeCausemaker, Open Source Program Manager at Twitter, demonstrating the company’s sleek new open source page that displays project health metrics: https://twitter.github.io.

Nearby to CHAOSScon, the OpenChain Mini Summit held an open source license compliance workshop that included case studies, a panel discussion, and new training material. During this event, we learned about the free online course for self-certification to the OpenChain Specification. This was an outstanding opportunity to get up-to-date and useful information on open source compliance.

Open Source Summit North America Highlights

During the Open Source Summit welcome keynotes, Executive Director of The Linux Foundation, Jim Zemlin, announced the formation of the Academy Software Foundation, a place for developers in the media and motion picture industries to develop best practices, share knowledge and work together on technologies for visual effects, image creation, sound and animation. Some of the founding members of the ASWF include Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Autodesk, Cisco, DreamWorks Animation, Epic Games, Google Cloud, Intel, and Walt Disney Studios.

Another highlight was hearing from Jennifer Cloer, founder and lead consultant at reTHINKit PR and executive producer of the The Chasing Grace Project, which features stories of women in technology and includes, among many other women, Nithya Ruff, Senior Director, Open Source Practice at Comcast.  We are honored to support this important project.