Deliverable D4.2. Open Source Management Charter Template. ICT Project. The European Open Source Market Place.

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1 The European Open Source Market Place ICT Project Deliverable D4.2 Open Source Management Charter Template This project has received funding from the European Union s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme

2 Project Number : Project Title : AppHub Deliverable Number : D4.2 Title of Deliverable : Open Source Management Charter Template Nature of Deliverable : Report Dissemination level : Public Licence : Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License Version : 5 Contractual Delivery Date : June 30, 2015 Actual Delivery Date : June 30, 2015 Contributing WP : WP4 Editor(s) : Cédric Thomas (OW2) Author(s) : Cédric Thomas (OW2) Reviewer(s) : Olivier Bouzereau (OW2), Peter H. Deussen (Fraunhofer) Abstract The purpose of this deliverable is to present the template for the open source and community management best practices charter to be published by the project. Keyword list method, procedure, quality, software, documentation, Europe, open source, license, marketplace, directory, factory, discovery, accessibility, image, deployment, execution, cloud ii

3 Document History Version Changes Author(s) 1 Outline Cédric Thomas (OW2) 2 Draft Cédric Thomas (OW2) 3 Final draft Cédric Thomas (OW2) 4 Approved for submission Cédric Thomas (OW2) 5 QA Peter Deussen (Fraunhofer) Document Review Review Date Ver. Reviewers Comments Outline 2015/06/03 1 N/A Accept Draft 2015/06/18 2 Olivier Bouzereau (OW2) Accept QA 2015/06/28 3 Olivier Bouzereau (OW2) Accept Final 2015/07/01 4 Peter H. Deussen (Fraunhofer) Accept iii

4 Glossary, acronyms & abbreviations Item Description EU SME European Union Small and Medium Enterprise iv

5 Table of Contents 1. Introduction The concept Why the AppHub Open Source Charter How the AppHub Open Source Charter was developed The Benefits of the AppHub Open Source Charter The scope of the AppHub Open Source Charter Best Practices in Context Developing the Charter Definition of the Charter Difference between charter and quality program Development steps Open Source Charter References Advisory Board meetings Charter issues Charter process The Template Next steps Conclusion... 6 v

6 1. Introduction This document provides an Open Source Management Charter Template for the AppHub project. The template is part of a service support that will make EU-supported open source projects better prepared for market acceptance. A number of best practices is proposed to build reputation and trust as essential drivers of market acceptance and the attraction of contributors. Nowadays, EUsupported open source projects adopt the open source approach more by convenience than by strategy. AppHub will help to reduce this trend and will help project managers and coordinators develop proactive open source strategies. After two years, it is envisioned that 10 to 20 projects will have published their open source charters. AppHub is a marketplace developed to promote open source software delivered by EU-funded R&D and by European open source SMEs. The market place will also be populated by OW2 projects. In order to ensure software on the market place is provided by well-managed open source projects we expect projects to sign their open source project management charter committing to comply with open source projects best practices. We have set up an Advisory Board of experienced open source contributors and community leaders to help us to draft the AppHub open source project management charter template. 2. The concept This section explains the concept of the open source management template and provides details about its development, expected benefits, and processes Why the AppHub Open Source Charter The purpose of the AppHub Open Source Charter is to provide potential users and contributors assurance that AppHub's projects are committed to run a well managed open source project and deliver quality software. The AppHub Open Source Charter acts as a gate-keeper: only those projects that have signed the charter will be fully endorsed by AppHub and will make it to the Store and Factory of the AppHub marketplace How the AppHub Open Source Charter was developed AppHub developed its Open Source Charter with the help of a Community Advisory Board comprised of experienced practitioners from successful open source projects, communities and organizations. The Community Advisory Board discussed the charter and provided inputs via online workshops on community management topics submitted AppHub stakeholders The Benefits of the AppHub Open Source Charter AppHub Open Source Charter is an incentive for a project development team to evaluate itself and implement an on-going improvement process. The AppHub Open Source Charter enables projects to communicate on their commitment in favour of quality software and governance. It is a communication tools for the project toward users, sponsors and potential contributors. The AppHub Open Source Charter helps differentiate projects and teams with a genuine long-term open source commitment from the opportunistic ones The scope of the AppHub Open Source Charter The AppHub Open Source Charter concentrates on 10 topics representative of open source best practices. It reflects reflect an on-going commitment on behalf of the project team to implement recognized best practices in open source software project management. The AppHub Open Source Charter is a first step toward the implementation of a full-fledged quality process Best Practices in Context Best Practices is quite popular concept within the IT community. It may be however more a marketing term since software engineering is a hugely vast domain where one can easily find examples of AppHub 1

7 practices considered "best" in one context and questionable within another. The AppHub Open Source Charter refers to best practices in the context of open source software development. Here, best practices are those that help produce quality software that is easy to use and contribute to. 3. Developing the Charter 3.1 Definition of the Charter By basic laws, principle, etc. in AppHub's case we understand best practices in open source project management. This charter concentrates on project management, it is related on the quality of the code itself indirectly only: A well managed project is one that implements quality control mechanisms. But the charter is not just a description of open source project management best practices. We expect the charter to express a commitment by project leaders. This commitment is a way to ensure a high standard in the projects showcased by AppHub and to build trust in, and therefore traffic to the market place. 3.2 Difference between charter and quality program The charter itself is not a quality program. The charter is a document expressing the commitment of project leaders. It is a sort of moral contract, it expresses an intention. A quality program is not a document but a set of actual mechanisms destined to demonstrate the quality of a project, whether the code or the governance. A charter is only a document, as opposed to a quality program which must combines measuring project characteristics with improvement actions and produce actual data about the project. When the results are good they demonstrate the quality of the project, in any case, they help make the projects better by providing guidance as to where to focus improvement efforts. 3.3 Development steps Developing the AppHub charter followed roughly a three-step process. The first step was to prepare the task on he AppHub website with a dedicated page centred on open source best practices titled Leveraging open source best practices. This page calls for help in developing the AppHub charter, it highlights the importance of good governance and introduces the role of the AppHub charter. The second step was to review available open source best practices, exploring the current state-of-the-art. In drawing our references, we concentrated on contributions by actual professionals and practitioners and avoided academic papers because they mostly provide second hand information. The third step was to consult with the AppHub Advisory board. It is comprised of 11 professional open source practitioners. See the report D4.1 for details. We conducted two meetings with the Advisory Board and shared online contributions by an online web space (Google docs). 3.4 Open Source Charter References The following table provides several references sources that were used to develop the charter. These sources have been shared with the Advisory Board in preparation of our first meeting. Title URL Community at the speed of light: Best practices for the new era of open source Key Open Source "Best Practices" supported on this site For the purpose of AppHub, we use the Merriam Webster definition of a charter as a document that describes the basic laws, principles, etc. of a group. [ l.en AppHub 2

8 Best practices in open source development Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS, FLOSS, or FOSS)? Look at the Numbers! Top 5 Best Practices for a Successful Open Development Community (Ian Skerrett) Governance Models by Ross Gardler and Gabriel Hanganu Open Source Governance Models by Ross Gardler Governance in Open Source Software Projects by Peter Murray. 3.5 Advisory Board meetings best-practices-for-a-successful-opendevelopment-community/ governance-models We organized two web conference meetings with the advisory board, on April 14th and June 19th. In preparation of the first meeting, advisory board members were provided with a draft version of the charter and the links to reference documents as detailed above. The objective of the first meeting was to explore the concept of the charter itself, to test and validate the format. The agenda included covering the scope, the format, the update frequency of the charter. The discussion was open and helped position the concept of the charter in the scope of comparable or alternative efforts that could be developed in the context of AppHub. For the second meeting, advisory board members were provided with a new draft version of the charter as well as a link to an editable online version of this document. Advisory board members reviewed the draft and contributed remarks and complements. The agenda of the second meeting included a review of the online annotations, a discussion of the process how to publish it, introduce it to the projects and how to make them sign it. 3.6 Charter issues Developing an Open Source Software charter that would determine which projects are to be showcased on AppHub is a challenging task. The advisory board raised and discussed several issues relevant to the development of the charter. Some issues will require some work to find a solution and some fine tuning along the duration of the project. 1. Alternatives There is already available information about lines of code, number of contributors, releases, etc. (on GitHub and OpenHub for example) but it is difficult to go deeper than that, to have more meaningful information. 2. Concept Is the charter approach right? At the end of the day you are prompting the project leader and as a project leader I would not do it. Too dry. If you have a good project management then it must be already documented somewhere. The charter could be just a list of relevant urls Differentiation How does the charter intend to make a difference compared to other market places? How does it add value? What does it provides that opens up OSS adoption? 4. Frequency Charter should be updated at least once a year. Projects should be reassessed every year. Make it automatic. Every year the project has to reapply. 5. Mentoring It is good to have a list of questions, issues to be covered. The charter has educational virtues. The charter could be the basis for some sort of mentoring for the project. Mentoring that could be delivered by OW2 or by other projects AppHub 3

9 6. Project selection 7. Software Quality (Projects could verify one another). Mentoring could be the added value provided by the platform. What is a European project? How do you define one? With a significant contribution by EU-based contributor. People do not use OSS just because the project management is good. Thinking must be expended to software quality. 8. Technology Expectations with regard to server-side technologies are not the same as expectation for client-side or mobile device applications. 9. Trust What do you add to this market place that increases trust? How about user rating? ('But people ratings are usually biased and not reliable. ) You have to address the fears. 10. User rating User rating could be another interesting approach. Once the charter is published, users could comment on it. 11. Value proposal What is the real motivation for a project to go to such platform? You have to make the case why the project should be on AppHub. 12. CLAs Do you intend to allow contribution agreements? 3.7 Charter process Discussion on how to implement the idea of the AppHub charter led to the following remarks. 1. Timing Charter must be introduced to projects right from the beginning it is not something they should discover after registering. 2. Introduction Introduce charter during a launch workshop to emphasize its importance and identify potential resistance. 3. Granularity OK for high-level commitments but some guidelines would be a good idea Make it two-level: high-level commitment and detailed explanations 4. Committing A form with check boxes for each commitment (and a proceed button only when all boxes checked) 5. Signing Electronic signature What value do you give to the signature? Do you want to legally enforce the Charter? Who signs the Charter 6. User management Signing the charter is a prerequisite to accessing the Factory but some Factory pages must be public, charter signed or not. 7. Benefits What's the incentive? How about a stamp like in OCEAN? 8. Support How do you support projects? For instance: Should we warn about dealing with dependency licensing, e.g. how to work when project X depends on project Y and they are released under different Open Source licenses? 4. The Template Topic Commitment Enactment Governance License Implement an open source governance Appropriate OSS License Selection and Management AppHub's projects commit to implement a transparent governance aimed at fostering the principles of open source cooperation. Being transparent, fair and open with stakeholders, sharing with stakeholders, maintaining a communication infrastructure, defining rules of engagement is key AppHub's projects commit to implement and manage a suitable intellectual property policy and select appropriate licenses and AppHub 4

10 Documentation Architecture Testing Maintainability Requirements and Roadmap Configuration Standards Contributions Develop and Maintain Project Documentation Apply patterns and component-based architecture Implement a thorough Testing Process Promote Project Maintainability and Stability Manage Project Requirements and Roadmap Establish a Configuration Management Process Use of Established and Widespread Standards Manage contributions transparently copyrights. This include ensuring that all project artefacts are properly covered by a recognized open source license, that all licenses are compatible and contribution ownership is properly managed. All stakeholders, whether code-contributors, users, evaluators, project managers, or customers need documentation. Whatever its size and shape, software must be documented. AppHub's projects commit to create and maintain decent documentation. AppHub's projects commit to applying well-known patterns and a component based architecture. Because using components permits reuse, improves maintainability and extensibility, facilitates third-party contributions and promotes clean division of work among teams of developers, and enables the integration of commercially available components. Recognizing that software testing is an integral part of the development processes, AppHub's projects commit to conduct software testing for each new release in a proactive and timely manner covering appropriate scope with suitable methodologies. AppHub's projects commit to specify, develop and maintain nonfunctional requirements that aim at improving the project's maintainability and stability. This include managing the interoperability between old and new versions and paying special attention to the most often used older versions. While open source projects often evolve in response to most influential contributions, requirements are dynamic and expect them to change with time. AppHub's projects commit to properly manage requirements and to publish and maintain a project roadmap. AppHub's projects commit to establish and maintain the integrity of the projects and its different versions and configurations. This includes tracking changes and managing releases and the state of all artefacts that make up the project efficiently through the use a state-of-the-art configuration / version management system. AppHub's projects commit to promote the use and implementation of open standards, specially those certified by FLOSS-supporting standard organizations such as IETF, IEEE, OGF, OASIS, W3C, etc. Managing contributions is fundamental to open source software projects. AppHub's projects commit to managing this activity transparently by using a state-of-the-art environment that facilitates documentation contributions, bug reports and code commits. We accept and agree to work within this Charter Project Logo: Date: Project Coordinator: Organisation: AppHub 5

11 5. Next steps The charter as it is is more than a template and pretty much the final charter since it was developed with guidance by the Community Advisory Board made of professional open source practitioners. What remains to be done includes the following: Contents: some fine tuning, checking that it is understandable by outsiders and may some rewriting. Publication: finalize the layout and graphics; design the Charter stamp for signing projects. Script: develop the web form and script registering charter signature. A second version of the charter may be published after testing it with the first few projects on AppHub 6. Conclusion This report provided an overview of the development of the AppHub Open Source Charter. It identifies ten areas in open source project management where best practices should be implemented. This charter will be used to illustrate the commitment by implement open source project management best practices by the projects showcased on AppHub. The charter does not replace a quality programme, however it is an instrument that serves both quality and marketing purposes. The charter will help distinguish projects that will benefit from the full support of the AppHub market place. A few tasks remain to be completed until full implementation of the AppHub charter in the overall market place process. AppHub 6