In recent years, I have been engaged in work related to the evaluation of open source ecosystems. This series of articles aims to summarize my work experience, and organize the thoughts for upcoming work. Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to exchanging ideas with everyone.

Through the observation of the academic and open source industry development in the past thirty years, we can find that the evaluation and measurement of the open source community mainly focus on three mainstream directions: open source software, open source projects, and open source ecosystems. The emergence of these directions is closely related to the era, and with the development of open source, their boundaries gradually blur, showing a trend of mutual inclusion. Due to the different focuses of various markets and user concerns, they develop somewhat independently.

Jierui Zhang，Ying Li，Liang Wang，Xianping Tao

Department of Computer Science and Technology, Nanjing University, State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology OSS Compass

Abstract​

In this study, we study the community evolution behavior in developer social networks around open source software projects, in response to the limitation of traditional community evolution analysis techniques being biased towards qualitative rather than quantitative analysis. We propose a set of community split, shrink, merge, and expand indices based on information entropy to measure the evolutionary behavior of open source developer social networks. Empirical studies demonstrate that these indices effectively characterize the evolution of open source communities, by achieving a 94.1% accuracy in drawing conclusions consistent with existing qualitative work through simple rules. Furthermore, additional research indicates a significant correlation between the proposed community evolution indices and the productivity of open source projects, represented by the number of commits. The information entropy-based measurement indices presented in this study provide quantitative support for understanding and analyzing the evolutionary behavior of open source communities.

Zheng Liu，Xiaolan Zu，Xingyu Luo，Zihang Wang，Jierui zhang，Yehui wang， Liang Wang, Xianping Tao Department of Computer Science and Technology, State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University Huawei Technologies Co, Ltd. OSS Compass

Abstract​

This study proposes a method to predict the future activeness of open source projects using OSS Compass indicators. It employs a feature-based time series classification approach, extracting statistical features from OSS Compass indicator series and using machine learning algorithms for prediction. The method demonstrated an accuracy of nearly 90% in cross-validation on a dataset of around 600 projects and about 80% accuracy on a larger set of over 10,000 repositories, indicating its practical applicability. The results partially reflect the future health status of open source projects, demonstrating the effectiveness of the OSS Compass indicator system in measuring the health of open source software. The method could provide valuable insights for users, developers, investors, and managers of open source software.

Liang Wang$^{1,2}$，Zhiwen Zheng$^{1,2}$，Xiangchen Wu$^{1,2}$，Baihui Sang$^{1,2}$，Jierui Zhang$^{1,2}$，Xianping Tao$^{1,2}$

$^1$Department of Computer Science and Technology, Nanjing University, State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology $^2$OSS Compass

Abstract​

This research focuses on project forks on open-source software (OSS) platforms, revolving around measuring and understanding the diversity of forks in open-source software projects. The paper accomplishes this by constructing a novel fork entropy based on Rao's second entropy and assessing this diversity based on modifications to project files. Empirical studies indicate a significant correlation between fork entropy in open-source projects and various key outcomes, including external productivity of the project (measured by the number of contributions from external contributors), acceptance rate of external contributors' pull requests, and the reported number of bugs. Additionally, we observe significant interactions between fork entropy and other factors, such as the quantity of forks. These findings suggest that fork entropy, as an effective metric, not only enhances the current available measurements of forks in open-source software projects but also deepens our understanding of the development process based on forked repositories. It holds the potential to support further research and applications.

Community Highlights​

• On September 21st, we participated in OSS EU 2023 and delivered a speech, further expanding OSS Compass's influence in Europe and globally. After the event, we received collaboration invitations from an open source project both well-known in Europe and America.

• OSS Compass (hereinafter referred to as "Compass") has become a partner of CHAOSS, and CHAOSS is actively advancing deep collaboration with Compass.

• Compass is supporting academic research of Nanjing University, providing data support for the CCF-A class conference paper.

• Compass supported the release of the " 2023 China Fundamental Softwares' Open Source Industry Research White Paper".

• On August 23rd, we organized the first Compass community board meeting of 2023.

• On August 23rd, we hosted a live streaming event for the release of Compass Lab, reaching an audience of tens of thousands.

Part 1: Community Value​

User Growth​

From July to September, the total number of users on our official website increased to over 9,300, with over 3,300 new users.

The majority of users come from mainland China, but more than 30% of our users come from Europe, America, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other countries and regions.

Strategic Partnerships​

On September 21st, Yehui Wang represented Compass and CHAOSS at OSS EU 2023 and delivered a speech, further expanding our influence in Europe and globally. We also received collaboration invitations from an open source project both well-known in Europe and America.

We have established a partnership with CHAOSS, and CHAOSS is actively promoting deep collaboration with Compass.

Compass is supporting academic research of Peking University, Nanjing University, and other universities, and have provided data support for Professor Liang Wang's CCF-A class conference papers.

Compass provided data support for the "2023 China Fundamental Softwares' Open Source Industry Research White Paper" released at the the Open Source Forum of HUAWEI CONNECT 2023 on September 21st. This report was published by iResearch.

Part 2: Technical Progress​

Since our official release on February 21, 2023, OSS Compass has been continuously accelerating its iterations and optimizations at the technical level to provide superior metric models and SaaS services, as well as expanding its data sets.

Data Sets​

From July to September, Compass evaluation datasets have been expanded with over 30,000 projects added, and the total number of open source projects in our database has been increased from over 20,000 to 50,000, offering users a wider selection. We also optimized the technical categorization of projects, adding over 200 sub-categories, increasing the total number of categories from 100+ to 300+.

Open Source Ecosystem Evaluation System​

We optimized the existing 30+ evaluation metrics and 4 evaluation models, enhancing the "last updated" metric in the activity model and excluding archived repositories from evaluation metrics. We broke down all the metrics for the "Collaborative Development Index", "Community Service and Support", "Activity" and "Organization Activity" models, including five types: code, issues, pull requests, repositories, and contributors, totaling 45 individual metrics.

SaaS Services​

From July to September, Compass introduced a new SaaS service called Compass Lab, along with some project dashboard features such as Compass badges, Y-axis Scaling for charts, switching between One-Point System and Percentage System, and one-click access to repositories.

Compass Lab

Compass badges

Y-axis Scaling for charts

Switching between One-Point System and Percentage System

One-click access to repositories

Part 3: Community Governance​

Community Meetings​

From July to September, we organized 19 technical meetings and provided meeting minutes in both English and Chinese for repository updates 17 times. https://github.com/oss-compass/community/blob/main/meeting%20minutes/meeting-minutes_EN.md

On August 23rd, we hosted the first community board meeting of 2023, with one board meeting summary for repository updates. https://github.com/oss-compass/community/blob/main/meeting%20minutes/board-meeting-minutes_EN.md

Official Website Maintenance​

We added Gitee or Github repository icons to all project avatars on our official website, along with technical categorization tags for repositories to provide clearer information.

We optimized the previous hot field on homepage by dividing it into two sections: popular projects and popular categories. The popular projects section showcases recent, highly popular projects related to open source LLM and deep learning frameworks, while the popular categories randomly display projects from different technical categories.

We added a News page to the website, updating it with recent technical updates and community news, and showing the latest activities on the homepage.

Part 4: Community Operations​

Community Activities​

On August 23rd, we organized a live streaming event for the release of Compass Lab, which was simultaneously broadcasted on six platforms and reached tens of thousands of viewers.

The first half of the live stream: http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzkxMDQzNjc2MQ==&mid=2247484283&idx=2&sn=f6fd46f82bec89a2d391aed54ffbe10e&chksm=c12a338df65dba9b750193dd74bf72aaf501883be3679b7fc3aa4f1dfba4b45345f823f1ee5b&scene=21#wechat_redirect

The second half of the live stream: http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzkxMDQzNjc2MQ==&mid=2247484324&idx=1&sn=4e54c0905909dc6b5ec3c14678092edb&chksm=c12a3352f65dba4418f3794c31b11de0b61693df39e7a53f3d8b6381a278455a69d0a2d2255b&scene=21#wechat_redirect

On September 21st, Yehui Wang represented Compass and CHAOSS in delivering a speech at OSS EU 2023.

http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzkxMDQzNjc2MQ==&mid=2247484400&idx=1&sn=c3ac26dd4b5a96ca03fab5f52a230d3b&chksm=c12a3306f65dba10586c4eb8a093c333bf038191781001fe5891598f93536abf1cced876cf87&scene=21#wechat_redirect

Marketing and Communication​

We sent out 15 articles via our WeChat official account platform from July to September, including 5 articles of feature updates, 6 articles of events previews and reviews, 1 article introducing community members, 2 articles for community partnership news, and 1 article about the community board meeting, getting more than 230 followers and nearly 3,000 views. We posted 10 updates on Twitter, with almost 300 views. We uploaded three videos on our WeChat video account, including two videos of the live event on August 23rd and the OSS EU 2023 speech on September 21st, with almost 700 plays. Our official WeChat group has nearly 300 members with over 90 new members added.

Part 5: Conclusion​

OSS Compass is dedicated to continuous improvement and expansion to meet the evolving needs of our users, providing a comprehensive, flexible, and efficient open source project evaluation service. We will continue to work hard to deliver innovations and valuable features in the field of open source evaluation for our large community of users.

Hi, dear OSS Compass users! It's time for another edition of "OSS Compass New Feature Reveals"! Today, we are going to introduce a brand-new feature, one that has been eagerly requested by users, making OSS Compass project report pages more powerful and flexible! Without further ado, let's take a look~