Enterprise Open Source: Measuring Value, and Recognizing Contributions

Enterprise open-source software is becoming more popular because it offers innovative and cost-effective technology solutions. As the number of open-source contributors and users is increasing, there is a need to coordinate and manage all their activities. That is why companies create Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) as dedicated teams within organizations to manage and support the use of open-source software. Additionally, Open Source Contribution Index (OSCI) is established to measure and analyze corporate open-source contributions and trends.

In this article, open-source experts, Anastasiia Usacheva, Product Owner in EPAM's OSPO, and Christopher Howard, Lead Open Source Program Manager provide some valuable insights on these topics. We asked them about the popularity of enterprise open-source software and how companies and individuals can benefit from taking part in open source. We also discussed the importance of data in further open-source development and how open-source contribution can be measured and recognized.

The Increase In the Use of Enterprise Open-Source Software

According to GitHub, 97% of applications leverage open-source code and 90% of companies are using it in some way. Open source recognition among business leaders is increasing, leading to further investment. Companies are keen to invest in different open-source initiatives.

TODO Group has conducted a survey last year showing that adopting Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) or similar programs has risen to 50% of respondents. Also, a considerable percentage of enterprises are ready to invest in open-source initiatives. That is the highest level in five years.

OSPO's Position In an Enterprise - Potential and Consequences

Generally, OSPOs exist a little bit like satellites in organizations. They don't fall in line with typical reporting processes or expectations around delivering toward strategic business goals. However, OSPOs should be responsible for contributing to the strategic goals of organizations and every other business function or competency center. Open Source Program Offices should be represented as business units. That's how OSPO is positioned within EPAM, for example. As long as those differences exist they slow down the further development of open source and even the adoption of open source for enterprise. It becomes very difficult for an OSPO to demonstrate the value that they are delivering.

The Value of Open Source for Enterprise - Can It Be Measured?

Data language is the best way to communicate the value of open source. To align OSPO with the strategic business objectives of different offices it is necessary to get the data to confirm, visualize and monitor the organization's open-source activity. And when you know the data, and all the key figures, it is possible to contribute towards the key results that are beneficial for the business, like reducing employee attrition or building a new competency center. That's how data helps and how the value that an OSPO and open source deliver can be measured.

Data language makes open-source contributions visible and therefore it can influence its future.

What is OSCI and What Does it Measure?

Open Source Contributor Index (OSCI) is an EPAM open-source tool that is intended to measure and recognize organizations contributing to open source. It measures community numbers with 2 main metrics to compare:

• the total community which includes all the contributors who made at least one commitment over some time

• active contributors who made more than 10 commits

Using OSCI, you can get an insight into the growth trends of each organization. You can see how a company is progressing over years starting from the date it was included in the ranking.

It is also possible to see the most active open-source projects, and trends in the adoption of languages for different organizations or over a period for the whole ranking. Soon a new feature will be available to include location as a metric to get insights about top contributing regions.

OSCI is increasingly regarded as an open-source industry benchmark and the focus of wider engagements and publications. Analysts refer to OSCI ranking in their reports and publications. Organizations submit their company names for ranking and start competing in their community numbers, sharing tweets around their position in OSCI.

OSCI's Latest Findings

The latest annual data research shows that last year there was a declining contributor trend compared to 2021. The same trend is expected in 2023. On the other hand, there is a climbing number of contributions instead. So, the number of contributors, and people involved in open-source projects within different organizations is declining, while the number of contributions is increasing. This trend also exists in the top five leading companies like Google and Microsoft. Another interesting finding is that the most of commits are made to repositories that are maintained by these organizations. But some organizations are passionate about contributing to the same open-source projects like Linux Kernel or PyTorch. This trend is visible in all the organizations involved in the ranking.

Most Popular Enterprise Open-Source Technologies in 2022-2023

According to OSCI, at the end of 2022, the top programming languages used across all contributing organizations were Python, TypeScript, Java, JavaScript, Go, and C.

As for the projects, there is an uptrend in the number of commits to Linux Kernel, PyTorch, and Kubernetes repositories that are widely supported by all ranking organizations, but especially by the leaders like Google, Microsoft, Adobe, etc.

The Biggest Open-Source Contributors

Organizations representing the IT sector and professional services are the biggest contributors. Companies ranked at the top are Google, Red Hat, Microsoft, Intel, and Amazon. When it comes to regions, the largest share of organizations is headquartered in North America.

The Most Popular EPAM Open-Source Solutions

Starting in 2020, EPAM moved up 7 positions in the ranking. From being 25th in the ranking, it was positioned 18 at the end of 2022.

The most active open-source project within EPAM is the Vividus project. Around 2000 events were recorded by our internal tool. It's a tool used for testing automation.

Other popular EPAM open-source solutions are Cloud Pipeline and EPAM Delivery Platform. The Report Portal is not the top contributor, but it's interesting because it has about 50% EPAM and about 50% external contributors. It shows the value of open source because there are external individuals not paid by EPAM who are contributing to the future of that tool. They're not only using it, but they're also building new features and helping with its development and roadmap which makes it a real success story.

Who Can Contribute to Open-Source?

Anyone can contribute to open source, but there's a misconception that open source is just for developers. It's often easier for developers to contribute to open source because they're working on code, they can fix bugs, understand the programming language, and make suggestions. But what is usually overlooked are thousands of analysts, technical writers, designers, or QAs who write documentation, provide guidelines, test the code, and contribute that back. It's not even necessary to have a technical background. Contributors could be coming from a design or a copywriting angle.

How to Contribute to Open-Source?

The most important thing is to find a project you feel comfortable with and as a part of that community. You should spend a few weeks watching that project and the activity that's going on there, and then reach out to the project leads and say - "I've got XYZ skills. I'd love to get involved. Perhaps you can point me in that direction." Projects generally don't like open-source contributors to just drop in, fix something and then push that upstream. They get a bit protective in that case. There's the etiquette around engaging in open-source communities and products and being a part of that before you start contributing. They are called community guidelines or contribution guidelines.

How to Measure Open-Source Contribution?

Since there are so many types of activities that can be considered as a contribution, there are also different ways to measure it and it depends on the platform you use for contribution. The easiest way is to define it using the GitHub profile, looking at some typical numbers such as the number of commits, the number of opening issues, and answering discussions. But GitHub is not the only platform. OSPOs face the challenge of unifying these multiple data sources to have a consolidated overview of all contributions made. This makes this measurement difficult and it hugely depends on the community.

For example, the Drupal community uses a very comprehensive credit system to recognize contributors. But this system is also not perfect for a huge enterprise such as EPAM. We have an in-house tool that measures in-place contributions to different open-source projects. Initially, the focus was only on code contributions, but now we are working on extending this functionality to cover non-code contributions as well such as document management and everything that brings value.

Contribution to Open-Source - Reward and Recognition

Companies recognize and reward open-source contributions in different ways. In EPAM, for example, there is a contribution bonus program. EPAM also has an internal badge and recognition program where those who have exceeded expectations and made a sizable number of push events receive the badges from senior managers, which gives a bit more gravity to them. It is a nice encouragement to continue contributing to open source, which is the whole purpose and motivation behind these programs.

Also, by engaging with some of the industry initiatives like Hacktoberfest contributors can individually, outside of their companies receive benefits for their open-source contribution.

Open-Source Case Study - Talent Acquisition and Retention

If a company builds programs for contribution recognition, bonuses based on them, and other ways to reward open-source contributors, then it can be very attractive to work at, particularly if you're an open-source engaged engineer. So you join the company because it has got great programs to deliver value for you. Then you start to innovate and say - let's change this policy and make this process better. And by doing that the company can build better products and better services for its clients because it has a better, more innovative engineering team. When it builds better client solutions, it makes more money, becomes a bigger company, attracts more talent, and starts that cycle again.

In Conclusion

EPAM open-source experts and Open Source Program Office (OSPO) representatives believe that bringing OSPOs closer to the enterprise leadership objectives strategy doesn't only help develop the company's open-source footprint, but also enhances the business by bringing in an area that perhaps traditionally has sat outside of KPIs. While it is still quite a new idea for businesses, they believe that the steady growth of OSPOs and data language will ensure all the benefits of enterprise open source are easily visible.