Mission
What distinguishes a strong software project from a weak one? How do we distinguish flourishing Open Source Software (OSS) projects from those that flounder? In an academic or research setting, which software does the best job at encouraging excellent research? Which provides the best opportunities for scientific networks and connections? In short, what makes up the health of an academic open source project and how do we measure it?
To answer these questions, we'll identify a preliminary set of best measures of OSS project health in the academic and research communities and summarize these in an index. This index will lead to two important long-term impacts:
- Implicitly encourage teams to develop software in ways that are most useful for academic and open source communities.
- Provide an index of metrics that stakeholders can use to evaluate projects when considering adoption, use, funding, or support.
For more information, see the summary of the project (PDF, 20KB).