Lowering the Cost of Open Source by Increasing Transparency - Julia Ferraioli, Cisco
Channel: The Linux Foundation
Date: 2022-10-08

Lowering the Cost of Open Source by Increasing Transparency - Julia Ferraioli, Cisco

With the proliferation of open source projects available to do everything from complex machine learning to converting tabs to spaces, making smart decisions for what projects to take on as your dependencies has never been harder. What is important to one project, developer, or company when adopting an open source dependency may vary greatly from another. The uncomfortable situation that many find themselves in is not knowing what to evaluate or even how to find the relevant information. Current open source initiatives focus on the composition of open source software, the security posture of its operational practices, and other forms of compliance – the importance of which should not be downplayed! Still, given the importance of open source software in today's technological landscape, we need to think outside of the box and examine what other challenges consumers of open source face when assessing, adopting, and patching open source code. This talk will take a look at how maintainers can provide critical information about their own projects to potential adopters, as well as introduce ways that open source programs offices can consume this information to streamline evaluation, improve maintenance, and facilitate contributions back upstream.