Mastodawn

Register to join me and @communitydata this Friday (November 7) for our next free/public science of community dialogue on "The Impacts of Organizational Interventions in Open Source Software Engineering" with talks from @mgone and Igor Steinmacher: https://blog.communitydata.science/science-of-community-dialogue-the-impacts-of-organizational-interventions-in-open-source-software-engineering/

Science of Community Dialogue: The Impacts of Organizational Interventions in Open Source Software Engineering

Community Data Science Collective

Matt Gaughan Oct 23

Community Data Science Oct 22

Science of Community Dialogue: The Impacts of Organizational Interventions in Open Source Software Engineering

This dialogue will take place on November 7th at 12pm CT and will explore how free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) projects adapt their work processes to recruit new contributors and build the project communities that they want, and how FLOSS projects redesign collaboration processes within different environments and moments in project lifecycles.…

http://blog.communitydata.science/science-of-community-dialogue-the-impacts-of-organizational-interventions-in-open-source-software-engineering/

Science of Community Dialogue: The Impacts of Organizational Interventions in Open Source Software Engineering

Community Data Science Collective

Matt Gaughan Jul 25, 2025

Community Data Science Jul 24, 2025

Only One Week Until FOSSY 2025, Come See Us There!

Let the countdown begin! FOSSY 2025 begins next week July 31st through August 3rd. We'll be there, running the Science of Community track on Friday, August 1st and Saturday August 2nd. The Science of Community track is inspired by the CDSC Science of Community Dialogues, which aim to bring together practitioners and researchers to discuss scholarly work that is relevant to the efforts of practitioners.

http://blog.communitydata.science/only-one-week-until-fossy-2025-come-see-us-there/

Only One Week Until FOSSY 2025, Come See Us There!

Let the countdown begin! FOSSY 2025 begins next week July 31st through August 3rd. We’ll be there, running the Science of Community track on Friday, August 1st and Saturday August 2nd. The Sc…

Community Data Science Collective

Matt Gaughan May 20, 2025

Community Data Science May 20, 2025

The Introduction of Documentation in FLOSS Projects

Community decay and abandonment are persistent risks to free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) projects. As such, large institutions such as GitHub or Mozilla offer advice to FLOSS projects on how to organize their work for sustainability and community-building. Guides recommend the production of README files and CONTRIBUTING guides as useful tools in recruiting new project contributors and driving activity. Yet…

https://blog.communitydata.science/the-introduction-of-documentation-in-floss-projects/

The Introduction of Documentation in FLOSS Projects

Community Data Science Collective

Matt Gaughan May 5, 2025

Community Data Science May 2, 2025

3 days left to submit your proposal for FOSSY 2025!
Visit https://wiki.communitydata.science/FOSSY_(2025) to learn more about the Science of Community Track. We can't wait to see you there!

FOSSY (2025) - CommunityData

Matt Gaughan May 5, 2025

Software Freedom Conservancy May 5, 2025

Today is the last day to submit for FOSSY! Whether you are a veteran to the FOSS speaking scene or a first time speaker or even first time FOSS conference attendee, we want to hear from you!

Join us in IRC/ XMPP or send us an email if you have any last minute questions about your talk! [email protected]

https://2025.fossy.us/call-for-proposals/

FOSSY 2025 | Call for Proposals

Matt Gaughan Apr 28, 2025

sohyeon hwang Apr 22, 2025

📢 research call 📢

please boost! we're running a series of small group design workshops for community governance on fedi. if you are a user, admin, mod, dev, organizer - or have thought quite a bit about governance on fedi - and a legal adult in your locale, join us!

each workshop, scheduled based on peoples' availability, is:
🌐 2 hrs on Zoom
👥 w/ 6-10 people
💲 comes w/ $60 USD per person

details: https://dsmw.cs.princeton.edu/
sign up: https://princetonsurvey.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_e3SdG4y6wocMPie
questions: [email protected]

Decentralized Social Media Workshop

Matt Gaughan Mar 5, 2025

new paper (w/ @kaylea, @s0hw, @aaronshaw)! where we looked at when FLOSS projects first publish documentation files and the nature of what they end up publishing https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.18440

The Introduction of README and CONTRIBUTING Files in Open Source Software Development

README and CONTRIBUTING files can serve as the first point of contact for potential contributors to free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) projects. Prominent open source software organizations such as Mozilla, GitHub, and the Linux Foundation advocate that projects provide community-focused and process-oriented documentation early to foster recruitment and activity. In this paper we investigate the introduction of these documents in FLOSS projects, including whether early documentation conforms to these recommendations or explains subsequent activity. We use a novel dataset of FLOSS projects packaged by the Debian GNU/Linux distribution and conduct a quantitative analysis to examine README (n=4226) and CONTRIBUTING (n=714) files when they are first published into projects' repositories. We find that projects create minimal READMEs proactively, but often publish CONTRIBUTING files following an influx of contributions. The initial versions of these files rarely focus on community development, instead containing descriptions of project procedure for library usage or code contribution. The findings suggest that FLOSS projects do not create documentation with community-building in mind, but rather favor brevity and standardized instructions.

arXiv.org

Matt Gaughan Feb 28, 2025

David Gerard Feb 28, 2025

New Mozilla TOS diff. This is what they just removed:

* Does Firefox sell your personal data?

> Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to protect your privacy. That’s a promise.

The purpose of the new TOS appears to be to enable them to do this - such as for their advertising and AI sidelines.

https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b61939b7f4310eb80c5470e

Tos copy updates (fix #16016) (#16018) · mozilla/bedrock@d459add

* ToS copy updates (fix #16016) * Apply suggestions from code review - copy change Co-authored-by: maureenlholland <[email protected]> --------- Co-authored-by: maureenlholland &lt...

GitHub

Matt Gaughan Feb 24, 2025

Sage Sharp Feb 13, 2025

Please boost for research reach!

Community moderators and event organizers:

📊 What challenges are you facing in Code of Conduct reports or community moderation?