Hi Sharan, Thank you so much for your email. We are going to take a look at Apache Kibble and see if we can extract the metrics we need from there.
Kind regards, Isabella > On Nov 2, 2020, at 3:19 PM, sharanf <sha...@apache.org> wrote: > > Hi Isabella > > Thanks very much for reaching out to me. It's great to hear that you are > interested in the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) and doing some research on > the the potential lifecycle of incubating projects. I think that the topics > that you are looking to gather information on cover a few areas within the > ASF. While Community Development is a general umbrella covering all Apache > communities, we do have specific areas that are focussed specifically on D&I > and Apache Incubator itself. > > Our Apache Incubator community oversees the whole Apache incubation process > while D&I community has been instrumental in performing the latest survey of > diversity within the Apache communities and may be able to give you a better > indication of what diversity information we have and can share. > > In the meantime I will try to respond inline to your various points below. > > A key tool we use to gather statistics and metrics for all Apache projects is > another Apache project called Apache Kibble which collects contribution and > statistics information on incubating projects too so maybe take a look at. > > > On 2020-11-02 16:10, Isabella Ferreira wrote: >> Dear Sharan Foga, >> >> My name is Isabella Ferreira and I was in your presentation at CHAOSScon >> Europe 2020. Based on your presentation, I saw that you are involved in >> several initiatives to encourage diversity within the ASF. >> >> We, a group of Canadian and Dutch software engineering researchers, are >> interested in understanding why some projects joining Apache incubator grow >> and succeed, and others fail. Based on this study, our eventual goal is to >> formulate recommendations for projects considering to join Apache in terms >> of expectations and best practices. We aim to share our findings with the >> Apache community as well as software practitioners and researchers. >> >> So far we have manually classified the incubator proposals of 292 projects >> to understand their motivation. We have found that these are the top-5 >> reasons for joining the Apache incubator: >> Community building >> Community diversity >> Follow an established development process (such as the "Apache Way") >> Increase user base >> Expected collaboration with other projects >> >> As the next step, we would like to evaluate to what extent joining the >> Apache ecosystem has enabled projects to achieve their goals. In particular, >> we are interested in questions like: >> Did the number of organizations contributing to Apache projects increase >> compared to before joining the Apache incubator? > > We have been using Apache Kibble to generate statistics for all our projects > and we don't currently track track organisational affiliation properly but > there have been discussions about ways to improve and include it. > > For projects coming into Apache Incubator, I believe some organisational > affiliation is captured initially to ensure diversity of project affiliation > and the lack of dependency on one specific company. As you mention sometimes > a project enter incubation to grow their communities as they need to > diversify to survive. > >> Did the geographical spread of contributions to Apache projects increase >> compared to before joining the Apache incubator? > > I don't think Apache Kibble captures geographical location of contributions > but it does capture the time and date of the contribution, if that is any > help. > >> Did the gender diversity of contributions to Apache projects increase >> compared to before joining the Apache incubator? > > We do have the contributor id but Apache Kibble doesn't specifically capture > or report on this information. Perhaps our D&I community may be able to help > you here with some relevant details from the last Apache Diversity survey. > >> While the GitHub and Subversion repositories of Apache projects provide >> information about the kind of contributions made (size, complexity, etc.), >> the information needed to address the above questions is not as readily >> available. >> >> Hence, as the current VP of the Apache Community Development, we would like >> to have your thoughts on what would be the best way to obtain access to the >> above diversity data, without breaching any confidentiality concerns: >> Is there a means to get access to Apache patch submitters’ contributor >> agreements, for research purposes? If so, what is the process for this >> (e.g., NDAs to sign)? > > Tha ASF site publishes publicly the list of people and companies that have > signed an Individual or Corporate Contributor Licence Agreeement (ICLAs). If > you are asking for access to the actual document signed, then no - this is > not possible. > >> Alternatively, is there a way for us to provide R or Python analysis >> scripts that someone with data access could run on our behalf, as such only >> exposing aggregate data to us? >> Another alternative would be to perform a series of interviews and/or a >> survey amongst Apache contributors, although the success would heavily rely >> on a large participation rate. > > If your focus is on Incubator then by reaching out to them you maybe be able > to gather enough survey participants. What sort of participation levels do > you need to reach? > >> >> What are your thoughts on these points? Of course, we would be interested in >> organizing a virtual call to clarify our research objectives and/or >> questions. > > I think you that have asked some interesting questions, but I am not sure > that we have all the information available. Some of the information you have > asked for, we cannot give you. Perhaps it would be good to continue this > discussion on our mailing list to explore a bit more what public data we have > that could help with your research. > > I have copied our VP Apache Incubator Justin McLean and our VP Apache > Diversity & Inclusion Gris Cuevas who may also be able to respond with their > comments or any additional details that could help you. > > Thanks > Sharan > > >> >> Kind regards, >> >> Isabella Ferreira, Polytechnique Montréal, Canada >> Bram Adams, Queen’s University, Canada >> Alexander Serebrenik, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands >> Nan Yang, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands >> >
