Communicating repo status "importance" / "desire for contributions"?

[justinabrahms]

In a recent touchpoint, we talked about the investment put into a given project. We have https://opensource.twitter.dev/status/ which tracks repo stability, but we don't have a way to talk about how important the repo is in to the OSPO.

What ways would we talk about this?

My guess:

• "source code dump"
• "we think it would be cool if you used this"
• "it's actually a 'big bet' for the company and we want to facilitate a community around this"

[detiber]

I think @juliaferraioli captured this a bit in her blog around purpose of open source here: https://www.juliaferraioli.com/blog/2022/social-model-oss/#breaking-down-open-source-projects-by-purpose

[juliaferraioli]

There are two aspects here: internal and external

For use inside a company when talking about projects yet to be released as open source, I generally categorize things as (in no particular order):

• hobby project
• small project
• small strategic project
• experimental project
• large strategic project

For use outside the company context when telegraphing how the company thinks about the project, these are some categories that i have used (in no particular order and not mutually exclusive):

• hobby project
• experimental / incubating
• demo / example
• static / proof of concept
• used in production
• others I can't think of

Generally, I'd put lots of this information in matrix form:

name	description	type	status	governance approach	usage	accepting contributions	other
super awesome project	this is going to change the cloud native game forever	large strategic project	experimental	uh, we should have a plan	used at company X	yes	let's build a brand around this, please help

Or some such. Whatever matrix you use can help you categorize and communicate both internally and externally.

[jeffpaul]

We've codified this a bit @10up via https://10up.github.io/Open-Source-Best-Practices/github-process/#support-levels (noting this was first identified and replicated from https://formidable.com/blog/2019/oss-maintenance/).

[nicorikken]

The French government uses 4 levels: https://guides.etalab.gouv.fr/logiciels/#a-quoi-sert-il

• 📘 Niveau A - contributif : Le code source est publié, les contributions extérieures sont activement recherchées et traitées.: open source and actively looking for external contributions
• 📗 Niveau B - ouvert : Le code source est publié, les contributions extérieures sont traitées mais non activement recherchées.: open source, external contributions will be considered/handled but won't be sought after
• 📙 Niveau C - publié: Le code source est publié mais les contributions extérieures ne sont pas traitées. : open source but offered contributions won't be considered.
• 📕 Niveau D - non-communicable: Le code source n'est pas communicable au public. : source code can't be published

This is mainly focussed on external contributions, but I think that is most relevant to communicate. The way I see it the level can change after a couple of years if the situation changes.