It has been a couple of months since I picked an interest in Opensource and I must admit that my experience has been wholesome. Honestly, I did not follow the tradition of researching projects, picking a project and starting contributing to it, lol.

I had heard my friend talk about a particular project she was contributing to and immediately I wanted to get involved, it was so easy. I joined the community and for the first four months, I wasn't sure what was going on. I realised that I wasn't trying hard enough to get the information I needed to start making a meaningful contribution to the project. So I started attending meetings, engaging in conversations, and researching more about the project and in a short time I was able to get 40% of the knowledge I needed to help the next person trying to find their way in the community. This project happens to be the CHAOSS Project, which I contribute to through the Africa chapter. Stay with me...

There's a lot going on in CHAOSS but here is what you should note; in CHAOSS, we pretty much create and identify metrics that help measure the health of open-source communities. It is from the CHAOSS Project we will be learning about some essential metrics for measuring community health and growth. First, if you're new to open source, Ruth Ikegah has a "beginners guide to open source" she wrote here.

Let's define what community health is in open source:

This refers to the health and sustainability of the community of contributors and users who work together to develop and maintain the software.

There's no doubt that open source has been around for a while but it has become increasingly popular in recent times and is becoming (or now) an integral part of modern software development. A thriving open source community is the foundation of a successful open source project. It provides the foundation for ongoing maintenance, improvement, and evolution. In this article, I explore various methods of evaluating the health and vitality of open source communities.

1. Community size and activity: Assessing the size of an open source community involves counting the number of participants, both contributors and users. The level of community activity, including the frequency of code commits, raised issues and submitted pull requests, provides insight into the project's level of engagement and interest. These metrics offer a glimpse into the community's future growth prospects and potential.

2. Contribution pattern: When you analyze contribution patterns it offers valuable insights into the health of an open source community. A significant volume of modest contributions can signal high community engagement, while a low number of substantial contributions may imply that the community is dominated by a small number of participants

3. Community responsiveness: The responsiveness of a community to issues and requests is an essential factor in measuring its health. This can be measured by the time taken to respond to issues, the time taken to resolve bugs, and the time taken to merge pull requests. A responsive community will be better equipped to address and resolve problems quickly, securing the project's long-term viability.

4. Project governance: Good governance in open source is very important. This includes having clear rules, processes, and decision-making mechanisms in place. The structure of the community can be analyzed to determine whether it is hierarchical or flat and whether there are clear leadership roles and responsibilities. At what point to a member move to a leadership role? What will that process be like? Are members given the chance to lead in different aspects of the community? Especially for people underrepresented. In your open source community, there should be clear rules and processes for all of this. And it should accommodate everyone.

5. Code quality and maintainability: The quality and maintainability of the code, is a key indicators of the health of an open source community. This can be measured through metrics such as the number of bugs and vulnerabilities, the complexity of the code, and the level of documentation and test coverage. The more maintainable the code, the easier it is for new contributors to get involved and for the project to continue to evolve. Open source maintainers need to do better at this.

6. Project access: Access to open source projects is of utmost importance. In measuring this metric, you should ask; How accessible is my project resource to members and or contributors? In CHAOSS, the project access metric is one we have identified to measure how accessible different parts of the project are for community members and new contributors. This can be measured through: members' access to the project's code and documentation. Support for translations as needed during meetings. System by which non-code contributions are supported and recognized

   It's true that some parts of the project may be more accessible than others. Barriers to access may be due to technology, project governance, lack of project resources, restrictions on internet access, or inattention to access concerns.

7. Community engagement and communication: Effective communication and engagement within the community are crucial for its health. This can be measured by the level of activity on mailing lists, forums, and other communication platforms. The number of discussions and most importantly the quality of the discussions, and the level of participation can all be used to gauge the level of community engagement. This is also why you should have a community manager in your open source project. I will be talking more about that in my next article.

   Lastly, how inclusive are your project's communication platforms? Is the platform(s) easy to use? For your video conferencing platform, does it consume heavy data? How robust are the moderation tools available on the platform? Opensource leaders should consider these and more when choosing a communication platform for their community.

8. Contributor satisfaction: This isn't talked about a lot but measuring contributor satisfaction is an important aspect of assessing the health of an open source community and it's important maintainers and owners of OS projects do this. Contributor satisfaction can be measured through surveys, interviews, or other feedback mechanisms. Satisfied contributors are more likely to stay engaged with the project, refer others to the project and contribute more in the future. Low contributor satisfaction can indicate a need for improvements in the community's governance, culture, communication and a bunch of other factors.

9. Project mentorship: Mentorship programs are a vital component in growing and sustaining a community. It's one thing to attract folks into your project as contributors, it's another to help them stay relevant even in their career, and mentorship is a way to achieve that by helping existing members grow within a community, thereby ensuring the overall community's health. Your opensource community should have a pipeline to fuel that growth for new and existing members.

10. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: Open source communities should aim for diversity and inclusion, welcoming contributions from individuals of diverse backgrounds and fostering an environment where everyone feels comfortable participating. Even in your open source community events, DEI should be centred around it; how are the underrepresented people going to be supported to be a part of your event? Who are the speakers, and what are their demographics and gender? All of these questions and more you can ask yourself when thinking about inclusiveness in your open source events and your projects at large.

    The diversity of contributors can be evaluated in terms of gender, geography, and culture, and these metrics can highlight areas in need of improvement to promote inclusiveness within the community.

These are some of the metrics we create at CHAOSS to help your community be a safe and friendly environment for open source users and contributors. To learn more about the metrics we create at CHAOSS, please visit https://chaoss.community/kbtopic/all-metrics/. A healthy open source community is characterized by active and engaged contributors, high-quality code, effective communication and collaboration, and a shared sense of purpose.

In conclusion, it's important to note that measuring the health of an open source community is an ongoing process, and the metrics should be regularly reviewed and updated to reflect the changing needs of the community. The goal should always be to provide a supportive, inclusive, and sustainable environment for all contributors and users.

Feeling fly and want to join the CHAOSS community and be an active contributor? Here is a quick guide on how to get started https://chaoss.community/kb-getting-started/. Check out our GitHub repo here https://github.com/chaoss/community.

If you read this far and found this helpful, please share with your network and leave me a review.