This week the Linux Foundation announced project CHAOSS, a collaborative initiative focused on creating the analytics and metrics to help define the health of open source communities, and developing tools for analyzing and improving the contributor experience in modern software development.

credit: Chaoss project

Besides Mozilla, initial members contributing to the project include Bitergia, Eclipse Foundation, Jono Bacon Consulting, Laval University (Canada), Linaro, OpenStack, Polytechnique Montreal (Canada) Red Hat, Sauce Labs, Software Sustainability Institute, Symphony Software Foundation, University of Missouri, University of Mons (Belgium), University of Nebraska at Omaha, and University of Victoria.

With the combined expertise from academic researchers and practitioners from industry the CHAOSS metrics committee aims to “define a neutral, implementation-agnostic set of reference metrics to be used to describe communities in a common way.” The analytical work will be complemented by the CHAOSS software committee, “formed to provide a framework for establishing an open source GPLv3 reference implementation of the CHAOSS metrics.”

Mozilla’s Open Innovation strategist Don Marti will be part of the CHAOSS project’s governance board, which is responsible for the overall oversight of the Project and coordination of efforts of the technical committees.

As a member of CHAOSS, Mozilla is committed to supporting research that will help maintainers pick the right open source metrics to focus on — metrics that will help open source projects make great software and provide a rewarding experience for contributors.

If you want to learn more about how to participate in the project have a look at the CHAOSS community website: https://chaoss.community.