# A toolkit for measuring the impacts of public funding on OSS development

Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.06027
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/A-toolkit-for-measuring-the-impacts-of-public-funding-on-OSS-development?index=0x6823c80bed0024fc7b8537a5186f4c32978e964a8ae2ca07cb852d85619db326198b6cf5
Submitted by cerv1.eth on 2025-05-13 UTC, 2 upvotes, 0 comments

## Summary

Osborne, Sharratt, Foster and Boehm present a toolkit of methodological considerations for measuring the impacts of public funding on open source software development, arguing that these impacts remain poorly understood because there is no consensus on how to measure them. The toolkit draws on prior work on OSS valuations and community health metrics by the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software (CHAOSS) project, as well as the authors' experience evaluating funding programmes for the Next Generation Internet initiative and the Sovereign Tech Agency. It covers considerations such as funding objectives, project life stage, social structure, and regional and organisational cost factors. It also presents a taxonomy of positive and negative social, economic, and technological impacts across various time horizons, and discusses qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches and the hazards of estimating multiplier effects.

## Article

A Toolkit for Measuring the Impacts of Public Funding on Open Source Software Development

Authors: Cailean Osborne, Paul Sharratt, Dawn Foster, Mirko Boehm

Governments are increasingly employing funding for open source software (OSS) development as a policy lever to support the security of software supply chains, digital sovereignty, economic growth, and national competitiveness in science and innovation, among others. However, the impacts of public funding on OSS development remain poorly understood, with a lack of consensus on how to meaningfully measure them. This gap hampers assessments of the return on public investment and impedes the optimisation of public-interest funding strategies. We address this gap with a toolkit of methodological considerations that may inform such measurements, drawing on prior work on OSS valuations and community health metrics by the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software (CHAOSS) project as well as our first-hand learnings as practitioners tasked with evaluating funding programmes by the Next Generation Internet initiative and the Sovereign Tech Agency. We discuss salient considerations, including the importance of accounting for funding objectives, project life stage and social structure, and regional and organisational cost factors. Next, we present a taxonomy of potential social, economic, and technological impacts that can be both positive and negative, direct and indirect, internal (i.e. within a project) and external (i.e. among a project's ecosystem of dependents and users), and manifest over various time horizons. Furthermore, we discuss the merits and limitations of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches, as well as options for and hazards of estimating multiplier effects. With this toolkit, we contribute to the multi-stakeholder conversation about the value and impacts of funding on OSS developers and society at large.