Slides of the presentation of the paper titled "The Role of Foundations in Open Source Projects", accepted in the Software Engineering in Society track of the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE).

1. Flickr/BenNuttall
The Role of Foundations in
Open Source Projects
Javier L. Cánovas Izquierdo, Jordi Cabot
unsplash/finan

2. flickr/airpix
Motivation

3. Life in Open Source Project Development

4. Life in Open Source Project Development

5. Life in Open Source Project Development

6. Life in Open Source Project Development

7. Life in Open Source Project Development

8. How others do it?
flickr/timjmansfield
Activity
flickr/romainguy
Membership Governance
flickr/ToriRector

9. How others do it?
…and in Software?
Provide the needed grounds for open and
collaborative software development, the
legal framework for individual volunteers
and enable the donation of resources for
the public benefit
flickr/timjmansfield
Activity
flickr/romainguy
Membership Governance
flickr/ToriRector

10. Unsplash/Annie Spratt
Aim

11. Aim
Study the different flavors of OSS
foundations and their influence in the
development of OSS
Help developers to make informed
decisions when joining or creating new
ones

12. Aim
Study the different flavors of OSS
foundations and their influence in the
development of OSS
Help developers to make informed
decisions when joining or creating new
ones
RQ1. How many software foundations are there?
RQ2. What is their scope?
RQ3. Do foundations play a direct role or have some influence in the way
software is developed
RQ4. How open software foundations are?
HOW?

13. Unsplash/antoine-dautry
Method

14. Method

15. Method

16. Method

17. Method

18. Dataset

19. Unsplash/ tyler-callahan

20. 73% of the analyzed foundations are specically aimed at supporting software development efforts.
Foundations not focused on software are mainly devoted to support and promote the open and free software
movement.
Does each foundation cover development-specific aspects?
24
foundations
Training
Certification
Evangelization

21. 72% of the foundations targeting software development in our dataset have an international vocation and
78% are independent single software foundations. For the 57% of the software foundations with an explicit
mission description, the community and defense of OSS are key concepts together with the development
support.
Geographical distribution, does it have an international scope?
Coverage, does it have direct influence over projects ?
Mission, is the mission clearly stated? Does it target software development?
18
14
28

22. Most of the foundations provide communication means and useful information for newcomers, but have
limited implication and influence in the software project day-to-day work and decision process.
Communication, which means are used?
Becoming a committer, how to retain and capture developers?
Governance, how to contribute and how decisions are made?
Technical Board, to drive the development?
Mailing lists and forums
Documentation to promote onboarding
Open to anyone showing commitment
Different selection process mechanisms
Usually scatered across several documents
Most of them rely on issue trackers
Around a half of them use boards

23. The analyzed foundations show a high level of openness with most decision procedures based on member
voting and democratic practices.
Board, how long it lasts? How they are elected/removed?
Membership, can anyone participate?
Meetings, who can participate?
Yearly term elected by majority by members
Removal process largely differs
Selection usually relies on current members
Different selection process mechanisms
Anyone can participate
Influence in development not stated

24. flickr/GabyAv
Additional
discussion points

25. Utility of umbrella foundations for new projects
Weak alignment between foundation and project’s development practices
Lack of precise documentation
No historical data publicly available
• Especially useful for young OSS projects
• They create an ecosystem to promote collaboration
• Organization does not generally extends to the software projects
• Tighter integration could help projects benefit from the organizational knowledge
• Scare away some potential contributors
• A clear and concise information about all foundation aspects is a must
• Most of them do not provide easy means to access the assets tracking the foundation activity
• No longitudinal studies can be done at this point

26. Unsplash/NeonBrand

27. Conclusion
• Study to understand the role software foundations play in OSS projects
• Very few of them are devoted to provide full-fledged support
• They seem to be more directed towards providing legal support and
evangelization.
What we have shown
What we want to do next
Comparison between the role foundations
play in OSS versus the role they have in
other kinds of non-governmental
organizations
Qualitative study including both users and
contributors of OSS to explore their opinions
and views on the needs and expectations
from software foundations

28. Except where otherwise noted, content on this presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
license.
Thanks!
Javier L. Cánovas Izquierdo
jcanovasi@uoc.edu
@jlcanovas
Jordi Cabot
jordi.cabot@icrea.cat
@softmodeling