Loyalty, competition and collaboration on the Linux Kernel
Channel: British Computer Society Open Source Specialists
Date: 2020-09-19

Presented by Dawn Foster

While there is quite a bit of data about the people and companies who commit Linux kernel code, there isn’t much data about how people work together on the kernel mailing lists where they decide what patches will be accepted. Using a few of the top subsystem mailing lists as examples, Dawn Foster will share her PhD research into how people collaborate on the kernel mailing lists, including network visualizations of mailing list interactions between contributors. You can expect to learn more about the people, their employers, and other data that impacts how people participate on the mailing lists. For example, do timezones influence collaboration? How about source code contributions? Dawn will also give a brief overview of her 20+ year career both before and after going back to school to get her PhD along with some information about her involvement in OpenUK.

Dawn is an open source strategist and Kubernetes contributor at Pivotal, now part of VMware. She has 20+ years of experience at companies like Intel and Puppet with expertise in community building, strategy, open source software, metrics, and more. She is passionate about bringing people together through a combination of online communities and real-world events along with analyzing the data associated with participation in developer and open source communities. Dawn is on the Governing Board of the Linux Foundation’s CHAOSS project and is a maintainer for several of the working groups. She is also on the board of OpenUK, a UK organisation committed to develop and sustain UK leadership in Open Technology. She holds a PhD from the University of Greenwich along with an MBA and a BS in Computer Science. She has spoken at dozens of industry events, including many Linux Foundation events, OSCON, SXSW, FOSDEM and more.