Episode 111: Amanda Casari on ACROSS and Measuring Contributions in OSS

Guest Amanda Casari Panelists Richard Littauer | Ben Nickolls | Eric Berry Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. We are very excited for today’s podcast. Our guest is Amanda Casari, who is a Developer Relations Engineer and Open Source Researcher at Google Open Source Programs Office (OSPO). Today, we learn about some open source work Amanda is doing with her research team at the University of Vermont Complex Systems Center, she tells us about a project called ACROSS, and a paper that was written by her team that was actively looking at contributions that are measured for code centric repositories. Amanda goes in depth about what open source is to her, she shares advice if you’re looking to collaborate more effectively with people in open source, she talks more about how we can support projects financially to other parts of the world and mentions some great groups she worked with. Go ahead and download this episode to learn more! [00:02:00] Amanda fills us in on the open source work that she started working on with the University of Vermont Complex Systems Center. [00:06:43] Amanda explains the “assumptions we have that aren’t verified,” as well as a paper that came from their research team and what they examined. [00:09:52] We learn more about how people interface with closed decisions behind doors and open source. [00:13:30] Ben asks Amanda to tell us what kind of behaviors and differences she sees between communities that emerge and continue to exists off of platforms like GitHub and GitLab. [00:15:50] Amanda tells us about a project their team is working on called ACROSS, and a paper that won a FOSS award last year that was about actively looking at contributions that are measured for code centric repositories. [0019:18] Eric wonders what type of responsibility Amanda sees that would come from GitHub and if that’s going to affect us long term. [00:23:01] Amanda explains working as a Control Systems Engineer, and she explains how sh